Infinity: Prime
Death of Heroes
Saje Williams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Death of Heroes
Copyright © 2008 by Saje Williams
ISBN: 1-59998-906-9
Edited by Sarah Palmero
Cover by Dawn Seewer
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2008
Death of Heroes
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all of my friends and fellow travelers on the website known as the Democratic Underground. Occasionally an island of sanity in what often seems like a sea of madness. Thanks, folks.
And of course, to my wife Shaiha, without whom none of this would have come to pass.
Prologue
March 25th, 2030
Knights of Anarchy HQ
Starhaven
Morrigan looked the fox hybrid up and down, noting the corded, wiry strength of his muscles, the width of his shoulders, the firm set of his muzzle, and the sheer confidence in his steady gaze. Like many hybrids, he wore nothing more than a weapon harness and a utilikilt covered with a myriad of pockets for the purpose of convenience and as a nod to human sensibilities.
She glanced up from the file displayed on the surface of her desk, a holographic representation of a basic agent dossier. She tapped the screen and closed the document, then leaned back, folded her arms over her breasts, and met his gaze squarely. “Agent Kitsune.”
“Commander Morrigan.” His black lips curled into a hint of a vulpine smile.
“Your test scores are amazing, Kitsune. I have to say I’m impressed. You’ve gone from cadet to agent fourth grade in record time, and have shown yourself to be as versatile in the field as you’ve been studious in the classroom.”
“Thank you, Commander. I try.”
“I also notice you don’t hesitate to bend the rules when the situation calls for it,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken.
To his credit, he didn’t look even slightly abashed or try to deny it. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Would you care to explain your rationale for that?”
He offered a shrug. “Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Rules are great guidelines, but sometimes circumstances change and you have to make a decision.”
She nodded. As good an explanation as any, she decided.
She glanced over at the vampire, Bryon, who sat silently in a chair in the corner of the room, saying nothing.
Kitsune noticed the direction of her gaze and shifted his own that way as well, but only for a second. By the time she glanced back to him, he had turned his attention back to her. Only the shift of the vampire’s eyes told her where the fox’s attention had gone. “Both Bryon and I think you’re a perfect candidate for this next assignment. It may end up being the most dangerous mission of your career. Think you’re up to the challenge?”
The vulpine smile grew wider, his teeth reflecting the overhead light as he broke into a tongue-lolling grin. “Oh, I know I am,” he replied with affected casualness.
She clapped her hands together. “Excellent. That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” She touched an icon on her desktop and the intercom function came on-line. “Agents
She lifted her gaze to look back at Kitsune. “You’re going to be one of five agents specifically chosen for this assignment. As one of the best of the best. This mission comes directly from
He looked a bit surprised at that, but the expression vanished from his face as quickly as it had appeared as the three agents she’d summoned came through the outer door and made their way to her office.
Paulo Santos was a squat, muscular parahuman of Hispanic descent, an expert on both early twenty-first century technology and skilled in several different martial arts. He had a round, almost cherubic face, a notoriously wicked sense of humor, and a shaven head that contrasted nicely with the tiny mustache and goatee he chose to wear. Artificer himself, Starhaven’s master of technology, called
Rebecca Valiant, the second agent through the door, reminded Morrigan a lot of herself, at least in appearance. She was tall, athletic, and wore her auburn hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were an ice blue rather than Morrigan’s forest green, but otherwise they could have been mistaken for sisters, despite the fact that Morrigan was old enough to be her great-grandmother several hundred times removed.
Valiant was a lycanthrope. Her particular animus was that of a jaguar. One of her specialties was political history. She’d know who most of the major players were, but for a few dimensional variables. She was also one of the KOA’s resident legal experts, familiar with North American law from the foundation of the
Morrigan had the feeling they’d require her skills.
Third through the door was Midellis, the elf. He possessed little of the arrogance his kind was known for, something that made him far more palatable to Morrigan than most. He had long golden hair, currently pulled back into a ponytail, revealing his sharply upswept ears.
Like Morrigan, Midellis was a mage, but unlike the immortal woman, he was also a physician. She considered acquiring him to be one of her greatest coups, considering that nearly every doctor on Starhaven worked for the medical agency, Helix. Midellis had chosen the Knights of Anarchy because he had first-hand knowledge of how much damage a tyrant could do.
She aimed a nod at Bryon, who stood and exited the room through a side door partially concealed next to a bookcase. Most people never even noticed it until they saw it used. These four were no exception. They all watched him leave with nearly identical looks of confusion.
She cleared her throat to bring their attention back to her. “Okay. This is serious business here. The request for this assignment came down from
They remained silent, just watching her as if she might be a snake poised to strike. Just that much information gave them serious cause for concern. And she was about to give them even more.
“We’re talking about a time-travel venture here, folks.
“
“Now, you all know one another, at least to some extent. Let me make the introductions a little more clearly.
The agents exchanged glances, then shook their heads. If they needed to know anything else, they seemed to say, they trusted her to tell them.
She wasn’t sure if she found that gratifying or unsettling. She’d never been too much of a fan of blind faith, even if she was the beneficiary. Then again, she’d never let any of them down, nor could they ever hear even a hint of a rumor of her letting anyone down, so at least their faith was based on fairly reasonable evidence.
“Okay, good.”
Bryon returned, carrying four small casks the size of large coffee thermoses. He set them on the edge of the desk in front of each agent. “I want you to take those back to your dorm rooms before you open them. Whatever you do, do not open them with anyone else present. They belong to you and we will be very miffed if someone acquires one or more of them by accident.”
“Yes, sir,” they chimed.
“Good. Now go. Be back here in an hour.”
Once they’d all left, Bryon perched on the corner of Morrigan’s desk and stared down at her. “So, you think this is going to work?”
“I think it better,” she answered. “
“I’m not disagreeing…”
“But? I hear a but in there.”
“But there’s a reason the immortals banned time travel long before
“So? If he’s willing to suspend the moratorium, I have to think he’s got a damn good reason. I trust him, don’t you?”
She missed his response, realizing that she too had fallen prey to blind faith for many of the same reasons. She trusted
She suddenly burst out laughing, bringing Bryon’s attention spiraling back on her.
“What’s so funny?”
“These people declared war against their supers because they were afraid of them. Do you have any idea how much more frightening we’re going to be?”
He considered it. “Do they have vamps or ‘thropes there?”
“I don’t think so. Just paras and metas. I don’t even think they have mages.”
“What about immortals?”
“From what ArchAngel told me, they had a lot fewer immortals still alive—something about a war amongst them sometime in the distant past that left only a few of them alive and interacting with the human race at all.”
“Let me guess—one of them was Loki?”
“Well, he is notoriously slippery.”
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you say this world was a branch off of ours? How could that be if most of the immortals were already dead a long time ago?”
“The split must have happened sometime after the fall of the
“This is all conjecture, of course. The fact is that after
Bryon scowled. “So we’re going up against the
“More or less. They passed a law criminalizing the use of meta-abilities, for good or evil. Using them for good would get you exiled. Using them for evil—well, that would get you dead.”
“So we’ll be targets too, right?”
“Yep. We’ll be trying to overthrow a legitimate government. Nothing unusual about that. We’ve done it, what, seven or eight times together now?”
“Something like that,” he replied with a slow smile. The first of which had been the Church government that had subjugated his homeworld. He’d returned from Starhaven and used their training and resources to finish the job he, Morrigan, Raven, and Val had started.
“I despise the fascist bastards who dreamed up this crap.” Morrigan growled low in her throat. “I’m more than happy to take the fight to them.”
Bryon nodded, then frowned as his head swiveled toward the outer door. A five-foot tall fur-covered figure dashed in, glared at them over the interposed counter, and raced around to come barging in through Morrigan’s office door. “Are you still looking for agents for this new venture?”
“No,” Morrigan and Bryon told him in unison. “We’ve got a full roster.”
The raccoon drew himself up to full height and stared down his scarred muzzle at them. “You recruited a fox hybrid as your scrounger? Are you kidding? And a parahuman as your engineer? My scores in both are off the charts and you don’t even look in my direction?”
He used the term “hybrid” as if it were a epithet, which really wasn’t much of a surprise for those who knew any members of the species. Raccoons—members of the genus Procyon Lotar Sapiens, actually—were fully evolved sentient beings in their own right and resented anyone mistaking them for what they considered genetically and biologically inferior mongrels.
The immortal and the vampire exchanged glances. Morrigan didn’t even know who this procyon was, and by the look of things, Bryon was just as puzzled as she.
She punched up an agent roster and hit “search”. “What’s your name?”
“Chikitar.”
“Like the banana?” Morrigan couldn’t help but ask.
“Oh, I’ve never heard that before,” the procyon snorted. He spelled it out for her. “C-h-i-k-i-t-a-r. Chikitar.”
She typed in the name and noted with some irritation the red flag that popped up on the upper left hand corner of the dossier. “Says here you’re on probation, that you’re a discipline problem.”
“Bunch of bullshit,” Chikitar grumbled. “It is so not my fault that guy ended up in the med bay. I told him that the scooter was defective and I hadn’t found the glitch yet, but he wouldn’t listen. Turned it around and blamed me when the throttle stuck and slammed him into a tree five minutes after going through the gate.”
“Is that why you ambushed him when they released him from med and ended up putting him back on medical leave within minutes of him being let go?”
“Yeah. He lied to administration and got me in trouble. So I figured he deserved a good thumping for being an asshole.”
Many humans had a misconception of raccoons as cute, cuddly creatures—just this side of the perfect pet. The whole notion was ludicrous. Males in particular tended to be cantankerous loners, and their sentient cousins proved to be no different.
The ring-tailed menace standing across the room from them would probably have been an asset to the team, had they not already filled the roster. And one non-humanoid on the team was quite enough, she’d already decided. She couldn’t think of a single thing this fellow could bring to the table that would change her mind.
She was about to say as much when she glanced down at his dossier and caught sight of yet another flagged comment. “If Chikitar could learn to curtail his disrespect for authority long enough to realize that some of us do know more than he does, he would make a first-rate fourth or fifth-grade mage-engineer.”
The notation was made by none other than Artificer himself. A fourth or fifth-grade mage engineer? She nearly let out a low whistle. Mage-engineer was one of the rarest of occupations—only one mage in a thousand had the aptitude to combine technical know-how with mystical imagination to bring whole new technologies into existence.
Shit. “Fine. You’re in. Bryon? Could you go get our friend here another one of those casks you gave to the others?”
The vampire stared at her in amazement, but shrugged. “Sure. One sec.”
He wasn’t gone long. Morrigan and Chikitar exchanged not one word in the moment before he returned.
Bryon repeated the instructions he’d given the others and the procyon left, cask in hand.
“What the hell was that about?” he asked Morrigan.
The flame-haired immortal shrugged, then sighed. “He’s got talents I figured could come in handy,” she told him, though she really didn’t think she needed to answer to him. He was her second-in-command, but still…
Of course, his status as her second wasn’t the only thing he had going for him. He was smart, often funny, and sexy as hell. Plus he’d been playing hard-to-get for the past couple years, which made him all the more enticing. Not too many men, and damn few women, had been able to resist her attempts at seduction.
Chapter One: Heroes and Hellions
February 3rd, 2013
Another Earth
Officer Benjamin Davis, a ten-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department, slammed on his brakes and jerked the wheel to the right as a whirling blue pyramid manifested right in front of his patrol car. He jumped the curb, took out a bus shelter in a hail of wood, metal, and plexi-glass, and slammed into the brick façade of the corner bank.
He fought his way out of the car, past the airbag and the jammed door, and zeroed in on the middle of the intersection where he’d seen the pyramid. It was gone. “Son of a bitch!” He scanned the area and saw only a homeless man in a tattered army field jacket shuffling down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.
He turned around and kicked the side of his patrol car with a booted foot, snarling in inarticulate rage. It had to be some freak thing, and now he was stuck trying to explain to the department why he’d driven his car into the side of a bank.
Lovely. Just lovely.
***
Morrigan glanced down from her rooftop perch and turned to
The android immortal didn’t return her smile. He looked irritated, but not necessarily at her. Was it possible he might actually be annoyed with himself? She found the notion amusing.
“I can fix the vehicle,” offered Chikitar, who was lying on the roof peeking over the edge as his ringed tail swished in the air like a tiny furred pennant.
“Unless we also erase his memories and put him back where he was, that’ll raise far more questions than we want at the moment,” said Midellis.
He vanished in a flash of blue light.
Midellis licked his lips and glanced at Morrigan. “Does anyone else find him a little scary?”
She snorted. “I think damn near everyone does. That’s one of the reasons he’s the big boss.”
“So how are we going to do this?” Chikitar asked the elf as he climbed to his feet. “You want to zap him, or should I just fix the car and let him watch it happen before you zap him?”
“I’ll knock him out—it’ll keep him from panicking and hurting himself or something.”
“Good idea.”
Morrigan didn’t bother to watch as Midellis pulled a mana strand out of the air and sent it lancing down into the officer’s brain. Instead, she sat down against one of the rooftop air vents and used her PCD to hack into a nearby wireless network. Before they’d left, she’d had Artificer specifically modify her PCD to access local networking systems. She hadn’t bothered to have the same thing done to the others’ PCDs. The last thing she needed was them getting the idea they could do this sort of thing any time they liked. Besides, Bryon’s technological skills were so limited that he could barely use the functions his PCD possessed normally.
She’d made certain all the agents had received and activated their symsuits, though it would be some time yet before they began showing signs of the special abilities they’d gain from the living suits of armor. She’d requested high-end syms, which gave them the ability to change their general appearance more or less at will—capable of imitating nearly any kind of clothing desired, and even able to make one person look like another—within the limitations set by species and phylum, that was. A sym could make Valiant look like Morrigan, but couldn’t make Kitsune look like a human. They had spells for that sort of thing.
As armor, the syms could protect the wearer from extremes of temperature, inhospitable environments, and could absorb and negate the effects of even a high-caliber rifle slug. They also aided the wearer in regenerating
Useful, Morrigan had to admit, though the idea of having another lifeform bound that closely to her gave her a serious case of the creeps. Bryon, being a vampire, couldn’t wear one. The regular agents didn’t yet quite know what they’d been issued. They’d learn soon enough. They knew the basics, of course, but no one could predict what special abilities the damn things would confer.
Morrigan wasn’t quite sure what their first step would be. They were flying blind, unfortunately.
She glanced up to check on the others, caught Bryon’s eye, and pointed down at her feet. While they finished up dealing with the aftermath of their arrival, she’d get out of the line of sight before some hero noticed her standing up here. She snatched up a passing mana thread and formed it into a short tube of transdimensional space with which she penetrated the roof beneath her feet, something like an instant, magical trap-door to transport herself into the bank itself.
Morrigan dropped through the ceiling and landed lightly on top of the main counter inside the bank. She scanned the interior, spotted a piece of wiring she guessed belonged to the alarm system, and used a mana thread to bridge the gap between her PCD.
The first order of business, she decided, was to arrange for a source of income. She spent a few minutes familiarizing herself with the new software, then put it to work hacking into the bank’s system. It took a little wrangling. The funds themselves were protected by several layers of security and not easily accessible from the internet. The software Artificer had included in her upgrade, however, made fairly short work of the safeguards.
Within a few minutes, she’d tapped into the network, created a new account, and siphoned a total of fifteen million dollars in spare change from several thousand corporate accounts scattered across the globe. She resisted the urge to pat herself on the back, since it was Artificer’s programs rather than her own skills that made it all possible.
It took her about fifteen minutes, but by the time she’d transported herself back up to the roof, she’d managed to create a fictitious company called Morgan Knight Consulting, put together a series of accounts for it, and hack into the government’s databases to make the whole thing official.
In the process, she’d also managed to activate six credit/debit cards, one for each of the team members, and create nearly foolproof identities for each of them. Her next stop would be at the Department of Licensing to get official identification made for the whole group. She’d forgotten how much fun this sort of thing actually was. She’d missed twenty-first century Earth more than she’d realized. If everything else went this smoothly, this might be more like a vacation for her than an actual job.
The other two mages had put everything back together and she reached the edge of the roof just in time to see the officer cruise heedlessly through the intersection, the earlier incident effectively erased from not only his memory, but from the timeline itself. If no one knew about it but them, it shouldn’t affect causality at all.
“Great job, guys. We need to make one more stop, and then we’re going to find someplace to use as a base camp.”
***
Shadowkin watched the odd group descend from the bank roof and impulsively decided to follow them. Just because the alarms hadn’t gone off didn’t mean they weren’t up to something nefarious. He knew of two villains specifically who could slip in and out of anywhere without tripping alarms, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to find out there were more than that roaming the Earth. It looked as though a new group of supers had arrived in
Their next stop surprised him a little, but, after a moment of thought, it made quite a bit of sense. They were most likely foreigners trying to get themselves set up with identities here in the
He considered revealing himself to them, but decided to wait. Unless they looked as though they were planning on hurting someone, he could afford to give them the benefit of the doubt.
One thing he couldn’t figure out was why two of them looked like animals. Literally. One had the appearance of a red fox and the other a raccoon. It was if both the fox and raccoon had been given growth hormones and granted the power of human speech, he thought with a silent chuckle.
He almost decided to step in when the raccoon climbed behind the wheel of a van in the parking lot and impelled it to life. Now they were engaging in auto theft. Hardly the actions of a team of superheroes, he thought. He thought better of it, though. They outnumbered him and he had no way to gauge their powers. Only an idiot went charging in with no idea what he faced.
He took a couple of deep, calming breaths and focused his mind to perform a trick he’d only managed twice in the past. As he concentrated, the shadows began to swirl around him, slowly coalescing into a low, long, squat shape that bore a powerful resemblance to a motorcycle—the very kind known as a “chopper” in certain circles. He climbed on the shadowy construct and gunned the not-quite-real engine. The vehicle pulled out onto the road and accelerated after the van.
***
“What time is it?” asked Valiant from her position in the back of the van.
Morrigan glanced at the dashboard clock. “Just after midnight. Why?”
“Just wondering how long we had until we have to get our undead friend here under cover,” the woman replied. “That’s the downside of all this, you know. I need to be active in the daytime and running around with you all night isn’t going to make it any easier.”
“Are you saying we should just drop you off at a hotel?” Morrigan asked, shooting a grin into the back from her position in the passenger seat.
“If that’s my only option,” Valiant replied, “I’d say yeah.”
“Let’s find ourselves a hotel. Any suggestions?”
“Make it a good one,” Chikitar put in from the driver’s seat. “I’ve always wanted to order room service.”
“You live in a place with autochefs that can create any kind of food instantly,” Kitsune growled. “What does room service offer that you can’t get any day of the week?”
“I won’t know that until I try it, now will I?”
The fox rolled his eyes. “Do all ‘coons think with their stomach?”
Chikitar bared his teeth. “Don’t call me that. It’s rude.”
“Like I care,” Kitsune snapped back.
“Okay, boys, that’s enough.” Bryon’s icy tone cut both of them off. Brave as they might be in most circumstances, neither wanted to argue with a vampire. “That’s better,” he grunted as they collapsed into sullen silence.
“We’ve got a tail,” Chikitar said suddenly. “Looks like a motorcycle.”
Morrigan leaned forward and peered in the side-view mirror. “That’s a weird-looking motorcycle. It looks like it’s made out of smoke or something.”
“So it’s not just me?” the raccoon asked, shaking his head. “Want me to lose it?”
“Not yet. Let’s see if we can get a handle on it. Find a side street and pull over.”
She paused a second to wonder how Chikitar had learned to drive an early twenty-first century Earth vehicle, then blew it off as mere mental masturbation. It wasn’t important at the moment. What was important was finding out who was following them, and why.
Chikitar hit the brakes and hung a hard right, pulling up to the curb some forty feet down the next street, behind a battered pickup. He killed the lights and engine as Morrigan threw open her door and stepped out into the night.
She shut the door behind her and slipped into the shadows just as the strange motorcycle came around the corner. It pulled up onto the sidewalk without a sound. The rider threw his leg over the bike and stood, gaze sweeping the area and settling on the van.
He seemed to brace himself, drawing himself up, and took a step toward the van. He wore an odd, monochrome single-suit, opposite arms and legs either white or black. The torso itself was similarly split between the two shades. It reminded her of nothing more than an old superhero costume…which of course it was.
He stopped suddenly, shifting his attention from the van to her. She hadn’t moved or made a sound, but somehow he’d found her in the vein of darkness running between the house and the low hedge between the yards. He shot a glance back at the van as he fell into a combat stance.
Morrigan shook her head and stepped forward. “You really don’t want to do that,” she warned him. “I’m far more dangerous than you realize.”
The van door burst open and the whole lot of them came pouring out onto the street. “Is everything okay, Morrigan?” Bryon asked in a low voice.
Maybe we shouldn’t have pulled over on a residential street, Morrigan mused. Too late to worry about that now, I suppose. One of these days she was going to learn to curb her impulsiveness and think things through.
Not today, though. “Everything is fine, Bryon. We’re just having a little conversation here.”
The man cocked his head. She couldn’t really make out his features, even though the streetlight on the corner was casting enough illumination it should have been clear enough. Another shadow trick? Impressive. This guy’s abilities were intriguing, whoever he was. “Who are you people?” he asked.
“Are you sure you want an answer to that?” Morrigan shot back.
His voice grew a little harder. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
“Hey, whatever you want. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She lifted her gaze to her team and gave a quick nod. Ignoring their muttered protests, Bryon herded them all back into the van.
Just before the doors closed, Chikitar stuck his head out. “Hey!” he hissed. “Don’t take all night. I’m starving!”
Now there’s a surprise, she thought sarcastically. “What’s your name?” she asked the costumed stranger.
“I’m called Shadowkin.”
“I’m Morrigan. I lead that merry band of misfits.” She nodded toward the van. “We’re here…well, we’re here to prevent a war.” She considered it for a moment, then decided to go for broke. Telling him the truth could, in her mind, have a couple possible results. The first one would be that he wouldn’t believe her. To her, that was the most likely and the most problematic. If he doubted what she told him, he might do anything, up to and including contacting the authorities. If he did believe her, on the other hand, they might instead gain a useful ally. “We’re from the future.” She could, of course, have handed him a believable lie, but in her opinion, this would be the worst option of all. If at some later date she was forced to come clean, he’d be far less likely to believe her if she’d already lied about who they were and what they were doing.
“The future.” He looked skeptical. She couldn’t blame him. It was an outrageous claim. Unfortunately, it just happened to be true.
“Yes. And it isn’t a good one. In just over four months—one hundred and twenty five days, to be exact—Congress is going to pass a law outlawing the use of metahuman abilities. What’s more, all of those visibly altered by the virus—creatures that we call ‘trolls’—will be rounded up and put in detention camps, ostensibly for their own good. Public sentiment is heading in a direction that’s not good for you folks—“
“Us folks? What the hell are you people?”
“Me?” She shook her head. “That’s not important. All you need to know is that we’re not from here. We’re from somewhere else, someplace that learned to live with the changes inflicted on the human race by these viruses. That’s one of the reasons we were sent here. Because we can change things.” Hopefully, she added mentally.
“Committing any kind of felony using a metahuman ability will become a capital crime, the sentence executable immediately upon capture or confrontation. Basically, all metahumans will be declared enemy combatants and your civil rights as American citizens will be stripped from you.”
The shadow faded away from his face and he stared at her, slack-jawed. He was an attractive young man, barely out of his teens, and she could see her words were hitting home. He didn’t want to believe any of it, but she could see in his eyes that he did.
“In some ways, the Earth we come from had it worse than yours ever did. We not only got metahumans and parahumans—”
“What’s a parahuman?”
She smiled. A cold, nasty smile. She’d spent a lot of time perfecting that particular expression, one that conveyed the sense of a predator considering its prey. “They’re enhanced humans—people who are stronger and faster and sometimes even smarter than an ordinary human. They cannot be detected with blood tests or any other test that’s been devised by your medical professionals. They’ll be immune to the legislation that will be constructed to destroy you metahumans and, what’s worse, they’ll be a part of its implementation. People who are not ordinary humans—normals, as we call them—will be hunting your kind, and they won’t be merciful.”
“Why? I don’t understand why they’d do this…” His voice trailed off, as if he knew he wasn’t being entirely truthful with himself.
“Because metahumans are a threat. And you know it. On my world, the beings that initially designed the viruses got together and helped create something called the Paranormal Affairs Commission and recruited powerful beings who were willing to police other paranormals and preternaturals. We had to learn to live with not only metahumans and parahumans, but vampires and lycanthropes as well. If we managed not to tear ourselves apart, you can manage it too.”
He gave her a stunned look. “Vampires and lycanthropes? Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” She snorted, shaking her head. “On our world, the fellow who made the superhuman metaviruses also accidentally unleashed others. The one that created vampires ended up mutating, and those mutations started turning people into werewolves, werecats and all kinds of other beasties. For some reason that didn’t happen here on your world. We’re thinking someone stopped him before he got that far.”
“Him? Him who?”
“His name is Loki. Chances are you’ve never heard of him outside of myth.”
“Loki? Wasn’t he a Norse God?”
“Close enough. He pretended to be a god at one time. But never mind that. What’s important is figuring a way to keep this from happening.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this. Are you saying you came from some kind of parallel Earth? That this is just one of many worlds that are almost identical?”
“You catch on fast,” she told him. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. For some reason the immortals have either gone completely underground here, or vanished completely. If not for our intervention on our version of Earth, things might’ve gone to shit there too.”
He waved a hand at her. “Wait. If you’re here to stop this war from happening, I have to ask. What exactly do you plan to do about it?”
He had her there. She didn’t really have a plan. Not yet, anyway. She took down governments, sure, but was that the best way to get the job done this time? Did she actually want to destroy the United States in order to prevent this war? Or was there a way to excise the dangerous element from the government without destroying it completely? “We’re working on it. We weren’t given a lot of time to put a plan together.”
“But you’re from the future, right? You should have had plenty of time to figure it out before coming here. It doesn’t make me feel too secure thinking you’re all just winging it.”
He caught on very fast. Smart kid. Maybe too smart. “It’s complicated. Some things you can’t study for,” she answered. “You have to immerse yourself in them before you can really understand them. It’s not as though we could study the history of your world in any detail from the future—you people pretty much destroyed any semblance of civilization here.”
He swallowed, looking a little pale. “Destroyed? What do you mean by destroyed?”
“I mean exactly what it sounds like I mean. Whole cities leveled, reduced to smoking rubble. As bad as it gets.”
“Does anyone survive?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. But from what I saw—from what I was shown—it didn’t look as though there was much point in surviving. Any survivors would have been reduced to barbarism, maybe even back to the Stone Age, or, at best, trying to eke out a primitive existence by salvaging whatever they could from the broken cities.”
“Shit.” He sighed. “Okay. Assuming I buy all of this, what can I do to help?”
“We could use someone who knows this world and the people in it. I mean all the metas, primarily. Since it’s basically very similar to our own, we have an expert on political history that can give us a rundown on most of the public figures. But the immortals had a large hand in the formation of our metahuman groups on our world, so things are bound to be different here. We don’t know any of the metahuman players—heroes or villains.”
He pondered this. “Maybe you can start by going after the villains. If you start bringing them in, maybe it would help to derail the bill in Congress.”
“Maybe.” She was skeptical of that notion and didn’t bother to hide it. “Listen, Shadowkin, we need to ditch the van and find someplace to stay. If you’ve got a cellphone, give us your number and we’ll get in touch with you.”
He regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment, then nodded. “Do you have something to write on?”
She raised her wrist and tapped the surface of her PCD. “Go ahead.”
As he dictated the number, she entered it in using the PCD’s virtual ten-key. “Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
“You do that. In the meantime, I’ll put together a list of my fellow metas, including the villains.”
He walked back to his shadowy conveyance and rolled away in perfect silence. Shaking her head, Morrigan climbed back into the passenger seat. “C’mon, Chikitar. Let’s go find a hotel or something. I need some down time.”
No one spoke as the van pulled away from the curb.
***
The next morning, Valiant woke up before anyone else and wandered into what passed for a kitchen in the luxury suite. Near as she could tell, it consisted of a coffee maker and a mini-bar. She carefully worked out the process of making coffee and started the thing going, then walked to the window and gazed out over the city toward Elliot Bay. She could see a ferry chugging out across the water as a cruise ship slowly made its way into port. The sign for the Pike Place Market stood announcing its presence at the end of the street, some eight or so blocks away, and the traffic below snarled and edged its way through the city.
She harbored no illusions as to what uses her knowledge would ultimately be put, and, somewhere deep inside, it made her heart feel heavy. She knew that what they were doing would save millions of lives, but she also knew that, in the end, they would be dealing plenty of death themselves. There was a sense of inevitability to the whole thing, that people would only grow more and more fearful of the metahumans until something was done about it. And this Congress, based upon everything she knew about it, would be all too willing to do the worst things imaginable to appease the fear of the American people.
“I can almost see smoke coming out of your ears,” came a voice from behind her.
She slowly turned and smiled sadly at the fox hybrid as he finished buttoning up his kilt. He gave her an oddly lopsided smile of his own as he headed for the coffee maker and poured himself a cup. He didn’t bother with sugar or creamer, but blew on the liquid for a few seconds before taking a tentative lap with his long pink tongue.
He winced. “Still too hot,” he said mournfully. He set the cup on the mini-bar and crossed over to the window to stand beside her. “I think you’ve got the hardest job of all of us.”
She looked over at him and, to her profound annoyance, found him regarding her with a look she could only describe as sympathetic. It was amazing how expressive all the canine hybrids could be, even given the general dearth of mobility allowed by their facial structure. A lot of it was in the ears, but their mouths and eyes could also convey a lot more than most people realized.
“What do you mean?” she asked as she walked over to pour herself a cup of coffee. She dumped a couple of sugar packets and a pack of creamer into the dark, steaming liquid and slowly stirred them in.
He turned to face her. “While you’re going to be trying to work the system, the rest of us are going to be trying to circumvent it. It’s got to feel a little like a waste of your time and talents to even be here.”
She shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it. But in another way, it’s probably the only real use I’m ever going to get out of my talents—at least this set of talents. I do have others, you know.”
“Of course you do. Is that why you joined the KOA? You figured your interests would find an outlet with us rather than with another agency? That your skills would be more likely to be put to use?”
She frowned at him, a little annoyed by the question. “I know what the KOA does—it foments revolution. It topples governments. In what way do you believe that relates to my specific skill set more than the function of any other agency?” It was a particularly valid question from her perspective—she’d been second-guessing her decision to join the KOA for quite some time. What did he see that she didn’t?
“You may well understand the weaknesses of this government more than most,” he answered. “Seems pretty obvious to me.”
He was right, of course. As far as it went. “What about you? You’re a thief and scavenger. Why would you even bother to join an agency, and why this one?”
“Just because I’m a thief and a scavenger doesn’t mean I don’t have a social conscience,” he admonished her. “I became those things because they come natural to me, not because I think they’re inherently good. Sure, I could find an open world where I could blend into the population—even Earth Prime—but what would I do there? Steal to benefit myself? Hire myself out to the highest bidder to make people who are already obscenely wealthy even more rich?”
He blew on the coffee again and tried another lap. This time it didn’t seem to burn his tongue and he took a couple more drinks before continuing. “I hate the idea of tyranny, of oppression, of slavery, as much as the next guy. Hell, I probably hate it more than the next guy because I understand what loss of liberty actually means.
“You know that people like me are illegal here already? As far as I know no one has done any real hybrid research, but I know that the topic has come up once or twice in the past. It’s ironic, really. My kind were created by the Cen to serve as slaves, but now that we exist, and have earned the right to choose our own destiny, I wouldn’t change what I am for anything. I’m as much a person as you are. If I meet another fox and decide to have kits, I can. And they will grow up to do the same thing someday. We are real people, with real lives, and hopes and dreams as real as anyone else.
“These people are trying to make people who are different than they are into criminals simply because of what they are—something that they can’t change. It’s no different than how they once captured people and enslaved them, bought and sold them like livestock. Or how they segregated them and refused to treat them as full human beings even after they fought a war to end slavery. Or how they still deny people the same rights as everyone else just because they fall in love with someone of the same gender.”
“How in the hell did we get to talking about homosexuality?” she wondered aloud. He was certainly passionate, she had to admit. And what he said made a whole lot of sense.
He shook his head. “You humans seem to strive for homogenization, as if being different is not only something to be ashamed of, but something to fear. Metahumans are just the latest in a long line of differences that have been trumpeted as being somehow evil. Or inhuman.”
“Hey, don’t be laying that on me, Kitsune. I live on Starhaven, just like you. I’m a lycanthrope. A were-jaguar. Do you know how many were-jaguars there are? Not many. If I wanted to mate with my own kind, I’d pretty much have to bite someone and infect him.”
“Loki really screwed you humans, didn’t he? At least on Earth Prime. He nearly destroyed any chance of you combining into some mythical homogenous whole. The races of humanity aren’t black or white or red or yellow anymore. They’re metahuman and parahuman and magi and vampire and lycanthrope. And some of them can’t intermingle—not genetically, anyway. The genetic changes of the metahuman virus prevent any other metavirus from taking hold, so metahumans are only metahumans. They can breed with another metahuman, or a normal, but if they breed with a parahuman or a lycanthrope, they get nothing at all. They’re effectively sterile with other types of human. Vampires can’t breed at all by ordinary means, and they can’t catch any other metavirus. Lycanthropes can breed with humans or parahumans, but any offspring are only lycanthrope. The only ‘race’ that transcends all the others is the mage. Anyone can be a mage. Hell, the ability to use magic can be granted by magic.”
“That’s because the ability to use magic isn’t something that was given to the human race, but something that was given back. It’s an inherent talent that was stolen and then replaced.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” he said with a shrug. “The Cen damaged the human genome and Loki repaired it. Hundreds of years later.”
“Anyone can be genetically capable of magic, but that doesn’t mean they’d be any good at it. Anyone can be an artist, or a musician, but not everyone is a musical genius.”
“Do you think they’re comparable? Really?”
“Sure. Why not? Using magic requires both knowledge and imagination. Knowledge can be gained, as long as the person is smart enough to understand what he or she is learning, but imagination? I don’t think you can acquire imagination. I think you either have it, or you don’t.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. So what you’re saying is that if you had the genes to work magic, you wouldn’t be any good at it?”
“How do you know I don’t? And, yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m saying. I’m smart—I understand law, and politics—not only the law and politics of this time, but the law and politics of the Confed, and Starhaven.”
“Not like being a lawyer is of much use in either arena,” he pointed out.
“Well, no, though I suppose I’d make a pretty good advocate.”
“From what I understand of it,” he argued, “you wouldn’t. Not if you don’t have a good imagination. It’s not about law so much as it’s about circumstances. Guilt or innocence is easy enough to prove with forensic necromancy and psionics—it’s determining the most fitting punishment or rehabilitation that’s at stake. And I would think that requires imagination.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” She sighed, and walked back to the window. “Another illusion bites the dust.”
“What good are illusions, really?” he asked. “When reality itself offers so many twists and turns that you can’t see what’s coming until it’s on top of you?”
“That, my red-furred friend, is a damn good question.”
Chapter Two: The Starhaven Blues
Though he was more or less expecting it, ArchAngel still flinched when Athena stormed into his office. He shut off the display on his desktop and leaned back in his chair. He regarded her coolly. “What can I do for you, Athena?”
The Amazonian immortal glared down at him, hands on her hips. “Where’s Morrigan?”
“I assume she’s on some mission or another,” he replied, allowing himself a hint of a quirky smile. “What makes you think I would know?”
Her eyes narrowed and she took a step forward. “Nothing goes on around here without you being aware of it. You can’t convince me that you don’t know what she’s up to or where she went.”
He leaned forward, gaze locking on hers. “I fail to see where it’s any of your business, Athena. What Morrigan is up to has nothing to do with you, or with TAU.”
She gave a short, barking laugh. “Your level of arrogance is astounding, Justice. You may be the first among equals, but you are not some sort of monarch here.”
“What brought that up?”
“I’m sick of you running the Court as if it’s your own little rubber-stamp committee. You push things through without giving us much of a chance to debate them, and I, for one, am damned tired of it.”
ArchAngel felt his teeth grind together with enough force that he was surprised none of them cracked. Of course, they were forged out of an unbreakable polymer, but still. “You know, Athena, you’re almost pathologically conservative and I can’t figure out why.
“My father said you were once a pretty ordinary person, for an immortal anyway. Decent, hard-working and friendly, though a little lacking in self-confidence. That’s why he handed his business and the Paranormal Affairs Commission over to you. He thought you’d learn some important lessons about who you really were. When he came back from the dead, he found a tyrant instead.” ArchAngel arched an eyebrow and regarded her sardonically. “You know my father. He loathes authoritarians, and he wasn’t happy to find that you’d somehow morphed into one while he was away.”
“Leave your father out of this, Justice,” she said, instantly defensive. “This has nothing to do with him.”
He didn’t miss her repeated use of his real name. It was a way of “taking him down a peg” and a transparent one at that. He smiled thinly. “I think it does. Somehow the woman who’d been his protégé transformed in his absence into something he was forced to repudiate. Not publicly, of course. He would never have done anything that might harm the PAC. And now I’m forced to deal with that same woman and ask the same questions he did. Am I going to get the same non-answers?”
“I had to keep some very powerful people in line, Justice. I still do.”
“Yet others are managing to do it without having to resort to the strong-arm techniques that seem to have become your stock-in-trade. Care to explain that?”
“Why should I explain myself to you?”
“You expect me to explain myself to you, Athena. Turnabout is fair play, wouldn’t you say?”
She stood on the edge of storming out of the room. He could sense her desire to leave, but also the conflict within her that kept her there, trying to stare him down. She intimidated a lot of people, none more than her own agents, but she couldn’t intimidate him. She should have known better than to try. “I think you do know where Morrigan and Bryon are…and there’s a reason you’re keeping it a secret.”
“Think what you want.” He shrugged. “Obviously nothing I say is going to change your mind.” So far he hadn’t been forced to lie to her, if only because she hadn’t asked him a direct question he couldn’t evade. He preferred not to lie if he could avoid it. Even to Athena.
“On that note,” she grunted, “this conversation is over.”
“What conversation?” he asked under his breath as she spun on a heel and stalked out. “That wasn’t what I’d call a conversation.” But he was talking to himself. She was gone.
“Well, shit.” That had accomplished exactly nothing, but at least she hadn’t gotten any real information out of him.
Before he had the chance to even sigh in relief, however, a blonde head stuck itself around the corner and over the threshold. “You busy?”
“Val.” He gave her his warmest smile, though he didn’t really feel particularly hospitable. “What can I do for you?”
The young woman, one of the most powerful telekinetics he’d ever met, swung her lithe body around the doorframe and strode into the room. “I’m looking for Morrigan. I ran into Athena in the hall and she told me that you know where she is.”
“She did, did she? I never said that I did.”
Val cocked her head, frowning. “She looked rather pissed off. What did you say to her?”
“You don’t want to know. What do you need with Morrigan?”
“Nothing in particular. Just wondering where she was. We were planning a shopping trip on Prime and I finally scheduled a weekend to do it.”
ArchAngel chuckled. He could just imagine those two women on a shopping trip together. God help Earth Prime. It would need all the help it could get. “She’s out on an assignment.”
“Huh. Well, I guess I’ll talk to her when she gets back.”
ArchAngel nodded. “Guess so.”
Val peered at him curiously. “What aren’t you telling me, ArchAngel?”
He tried on an innocent expression, knowing it wouldn’t fool her. Val was in no way easy to fool. Only an idiot would think so. She was young by immortal standards, but she was a sharp one nonetheless. She couldn’t read his mind, of course, but she was skilled enough to read his expressions and tone of voice, if he wasn’t careful to mask them. He hadn’t been, most likely because he’d still been distracted from his conversation with Athena.
He broke into a broad grin. “You’ll just have to wait and wonder, Val.” He made a shooing motion with his hand. “Go away. I’ve got work to do.”
She shrugged. “Have it your way. See you later.” She ducked back out of the room and disappeared.
He pushed his chair back and stood, figuring he’d take a walk and get some peace and quiet, but that wasn’t in the cards. He had no warning. One second his office was empty, the next there was a three-foot tall blue creature standing on his desk.
“Hiya, boss,” said the imp. “What’s the buzz?”
ArchAngel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This was the last thing he needed. He didn’t have anything against Quickfingers, personally, but the creature’s arrival rarely foretold a positive experience.
Despite being an asexual creature of manifest magic, Quickfingers was generally referred to by a male pronoun. He had a decidedly masculine persona and resembled nothing as much as an escapee from a Saturday morning kid’s show. He was roly-poly, with short, stubby limbs, a rounded body, and a large, ovoid head with three ear-like appendages reminiscent of the tails of a jester’s cap.
He bounced in place, grinning his trademark grin.
“I was about to take a walk,” ArchAngel said with a heavy sigh. “If you want to talk, you’ll have to come with me.”
“Not a problem, boss. I’ll take a walk with you.”
Quickfingers bounded to the floor and headed for the door. He glanced over his shoulder. “You coming or not?”
“How do I get myself into these things?” ArchAngel asked himself before following the imp out the door. Just about the last thing he wanted was to spend time with the little pain-in-the-ass. His last thought as he went out the door was to wonder what the imp wanted with him in the first place.
Some ten minutes later they were standing next to a fountain in the arboretum where the main Starhaven worldgate was located. Actually, ArchAngel was sitting and the imp was standing on the back of the bench, his long-toed feet and perfect balance allowing him to bounce in place, grinning across at ArchAngel.
“What’s this about, Quickfingers? You didn’t come to me to make small talk.”
For the first time ArchAngel could remember, the grin slipped from the little fellow’s round face. “I’m worried about my boss, boss.”
ArchAngel blinked, a bit puzzled until he worked it out. “Jaz? Why are you worried about her? She’s a big girl. I’m sure she can take care of herself.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Hell, I thought so. But she’s fallen in love with this Nyx creature and everything’s all screwed up.”
“They’ve been together for years now, Quickfingers. It’s a little late for you to get all weird about it. Or has something happened?”
“Nyx summoned another imp and named it.”
ArchAngel couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud. “You’re jealous of another imp?”
“It’s not funny.”
“Well, now. I think I get it. This other imp is one of your progeny. And you’re afraid of it.” He’d heard how when the imp had eaten himself to the point he reproduced by some process like magical cell division, he’d been terrified of his offspring. It sounded ludicrous, but he’d grown up hearing the stories. Jaz and Quickfingers had been his babysitters. He’d known the imp since he was a kid.
“No I’m not!” Quickfingers stomped his foot hard enough to throw him off balance. Arms wind-milling, he fell into the fountain pool with a loud splash.
ArchAngel laughed so hard he slid off the bench and fell to the floor. He leaned back against the bench seat and howled until he glanced up and saw the creature scowling down at him, tiny hands on his non-existent hips.
“Not funny!”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” ArchAngel chortled. “It’s very funny.”
The creature gave an inarticulate growl of frustration and disappeared with a loud crack as air rushed in to fill the space he’d vacated.
ArchAngel reached up and pulled himself back onto the bench, still chuckling. He’d desperately needed that. For just a few minutes, all of the weight had been lifted off his shoulders and he’d felt like a kid again.
He owed Quickfingers for that, if nothing else. “I suppose I should have a talk with Jaz and Nyx,” he murmured to himself. “If nothing else, I might be able to ease Quickfingers’s mind.”
He accessed his internal clock to check the time, then headed for Starhaven’s Magitech Lounge. Even if the two women weren’t there, maybe someone would know where he could find them. It would at least be a good start.
***
“I ain’t seen ‘em,” said the bartender, Sam. He reached down, plucked a glass from the dishwater, dipped it in the rinse sink, then snatched a towel from a nearby rack and quickly dried it. His wooden features twisted into a wry grin as he set the glass on the drain-board. “Not since sometime yesterday.”
Sam was an odd creature, a sentient horticultural hybrid created by one of Jaz’s Mirage agents, a particularly inventive woman who went by the name of Thwan. She’d somehow combined a young magewood tree with a variety of the mystical psychoactive plant known informally as the bluespring and ended up with their friend Sam here.
She’d raised Sam from a mere sprout, when he’d been restricted to a small pot she’d had to carry around with her. Once he’d grown big enough and learned to communicate, Sam had tapped into his own inherent magical abilities and began to draw nutrients from the very air around him, and from water alone. He no longer needed soil, and his roots had gradually evolved into something a lot like a set of legs. Or perhaps they were closer to being like tentacles.
His uppermost branches, those that framed his woody ebon face, were alive with the rich azure of bluespring leaves, and his middle branches, those that he allowed to grow longest, were long and supple, mostly free of leaves, and tipped with what looked like seven-fingered hands.
ArchAngel liked Sam, but everyone did. He’d taken over most of the bartending duties at the Lounge a couple years back and had become a rich part of the atmosphere here. As he was even less human than ArchAngel himself, his moods were sometimes difficult to read, but the android immortal had the nagging feeling something was bothering him.
There was a lot of that going around. “What’s up, Sam?” He leaned against the bar and tried to catch the plant-man’s gaze. It wasn’t easy, since Sam’s “eyes” were actually two ruby dragon scales. They looked more like multi-faceted gemstones than eyes, showing no pupils to indicate which direction he was looking at any given time.
“Hey, barkeep!” boomed a large ursine hybrid at the other end of the bar as he slammed his mug down. “Need another beer!” He wiped his mouth with one furry forearm and grunted something to his companion, a much smaller fellow of the weasel family. The weasel took a drink out of his own mug and chattered something in response.
“Hold onto your fur,” Sam growled back at them. He leaned close to the bar and set a piece of paper in front of ArchAngel, then scurried down to tend to the two hybrids.
ArchAngel picked up the piece of paper and hurriedly read the carefully printed message written on it. “What the hell?”
According to the note, someone had taken Sam’s kitten, and was threatening to harm it if he didn’t produce flowers. Being male, Sam couldn’t produce flowers, which made the whole thing that much more insane. What kind of moron would do such a thing?
The flowers of the bluespring plant were known to enhance psychic and magical powers if taken internally, but they weren’t as rare as all that. Why would someone threaten a helpless kitten in order to try and get Sam to produce something they could easily get at the Starhaven bazaar?
Once Sam had served the two at the other end of the bar, he made his way back to ArchAngel. “They said they’d kill Spitter if I told anyone.”
“I see that. Don’t worry, Sam, I’ll get to the bottom of this.” ArchAngel closed his eyes, concentrated, and felt something small and furry burrowing in his arms. He lifted the pure white fluff-ball and set it on the bar.
“Spitter!” The plant-man scooped up his beloved pet and stroked it affectionately. ArchAngel heard a thin, sputtering purr emerge from it and he smiled to himself.
“I’ll be seeing you, Sam. Spitter will be safe from here on out. And if you see Nyx or Jaz, let them know I’m looking for them.”
He waved off Sam’s effusive thanks and strode back into the corridor. He could go next door to the Magitech Outlet, but knew the women wouldn’t be there. He could expect either Artificer or Gwen, the former Steward whom Artificer had recruited in his early days here on Starhaven, to be behind the counter. Occasionally it was even possible to encounter Quickfingers running the store, something that struck ArchAngel as dangerously misguided. But it was Artificer’s store, after all. He could hire anyone he wanted to run the place. Even the archetype of chaos and trouble given physical form.
Besides, he had another quest to complete now. It irritated him to no end that someone had the gall to kidnap a kitten from one of Starhaven’s best known residents, and he meant to find out who it was, and what the hell they were thinking.
ArchAngel’s power was the manipulation of causality. He could make things happen, no matter how unlikely. Of all the people to stumble into this little situation, he was probably the worst. Sure, Jaz or Nyx would’ve torn the place apart looking for the person or persons responsible, which wouldn’t have been a good thing either, but ArchAngel didn’t really have to go looking at all. He could arrange for the perpetrators to come looking for him.
Now where to arrange this meeting? Someplace out of the way, of course. He didn’t want this to become some sort of scandal. He wanted to get to the bottom of it, do it fast, and get on with the other ridiculous mission he’d assigned himself. Namely trying to do something to ease the mind of that damnable imp.
At the moment, one of the least-used sections of Starhaven was the spaceport and hangar bays. Free traders with gate-capable starships came through at regular intervals, but it wasn’t all that big a business or much of a draw for ordinary Starhaven residents. Those who bought and sold goods, and supplied the traders with services, usually headed over there when a ship was due to arrive, then folded up shop and headed back to the bazaar afterward. Unless a ship was scheduled or detected when it was inward bound, the spaceport was something of a ghost town.
Which fit the bill as far as ArchAngel was concerned.
He was sitting in a cargo hovercar when the two humans came tromping down the promenade, seemingly oblivious to the manipulation of causality that had brought them there. They were arguing with one another, quite loudly, and didn’t see him until they were only a few dozen feet from the ‘car.
They stopped abruptly, exchanged shocked glances, and turned equally stunned looks on him.
He climbed from the vehicle. “Well…hello, boys. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you two are the ones to show up.”
They were independents—soldiers of fortune from Earth Prime who’d been caught smuggling contraband on a number of occasions. Only the fact that they were generally harmless had kept them from being exiled permanently more than once. The contraband had been rather meaningless stuff like illegal copies of entertainment crystals from various Earths, forged artwork, patchwork skillslivers for wetware modules—stuff like that.
They were brothers, it was said, though they didn’t use the same last name. Pete Haggard and Carl Duggan. They certainly looked like they could be brothers. Both big guys with shaven heads and large bulging muscles, they looked like formidable adversaries. Appearances could be deceiving, however. They were collectively about as smart as a wet sponge. One of the reasons they weren’t agents was because they couldn’t pass any agency’s basic entrance exams.
Sharp as a couple of wet noodles, Fenris Wolf had described them, after one of their many trips before the High Court. If anything, ArchAngel thought that was rather complimentary.
“We ain’t done nothing,” Carl squeaked.
“I’m allergic to cats,” Pete supplied in much the same tone.
Carl turned around and punched him in the chest. “Idiot. He never said nothing about no damn cat.”
ArchAngel let out a long sigh. “Suddenly this all makes sense. You figured you could score yourself some free bluespring flowers and sell them on the gray market for a large profit. Unfortunately for you, Sam is a male, and can’t produce flowers. You know, you really blew it this time. See, the whole Court isn’t here now, and no one will ever think to even wonder what happened to you. You aren’t even important enough to become legends. Sometime in the future, someone will wonder where you went, but they won’t wonder for long.”
“Please,” Carl whined, “don’t hurt us. We didn’t mean anything. We weren’t really going to hurt the cat. Pete’s allergic, but I like cats.”
It was well within ArchAngel’s power to erase both these losers from existence, or to transform them into inanimate objects. They’d never done anything to justify their lives as breathing, semi-sentient beings. Lucky for them, on the other hand, they’d never been particularly successful at spreading misery either.
He could simply make them disappear, but he knew that he’d never be able to live with himself if he did it. Not when he could just as easily fix them. Sure, they were lazy, stupid and prone to criminal behavior, but they didn’t have to be any of these things.
The many times they’d come before the Court, charged with some petty crime or another, he’d been just as much at a loss as to what to do with the two of them as any of the other immortals. Permanent exile was an option, of course, but it wasn’t one any of them, excluding Athena, liked to exercise. Starhaven was supposed to be open to everyone—everyone who wasn’t trying to start a war or kill anyone on Starhaven, that was. Being perpetual losers wasn’t quite enough to convince the immortals that they needed to be banned. If anything, most of them felt sorry for the two meatheads.
“Okay, boys. This is your lucky day. I’m feeling generous. Mostly because you didn’t hurt that poor kitten. So I’m going to change your lives.”
They started blubbering at him and he silenced them with a harsh glare. “Wait a week and see if you still want to thank me,” he told them.
Part of his talent was knowing things that no one else did. To alter causality, you had to first understand it. And he knew that Carl and Pete were brothers. Half-brothers, actually. Their mother had been a street whore in the early twenty-second century, just after the end of the Cen War. She’d been a fog addict, her mind consumed by a drug that left her barely able to function except as a human receptacle for male lust.
It was all too common among certain segments of the population during the final days of the War. It hadn’t been a pleasant time for anyone, and for some it had been more than they could bear. The great escape provided by fog had been too tempting for some to pass up. Carl and Pete’s mother had been just such a victim.
Between fog and malnutrition caused by lack of cogent thought on the part of the pregnant woman, the boys had been born already addled. Pete was older by about ten months, though if one were to ask, they’d probably have said they couldn’t remember which of them was older.
They’d never done fog themselves, but the damage had been done before they were even born. It disassociated them from reality and made it easier to exist in a fantasy world of hope and petty larceny than to live in the same reality as everyone else.
It was actually frightfully simple for ArchAngel to reach out and make them whole for the first time in their pathetic existences. He only wished he’d realized it before then.
The two men stood there, staring at him, blinking stupidly for a long, drawn-out moment. “Holy shit,” said Pete.
“Oh, my god,” said Carl, shaking his head.
They actually threw themselves at ArchAngel’s feet. He reached down and lifted them to stand before him. “Oh, no. None of that crap. You may not end up being thankful to me after all, boys. Not once it sinks in what I’ve done to you. You can no longer hide behind your damaged minds. What you do from now on you do with wide-open eyes and the ability to reason.”
“You don’t understand, sir.” Pete stared at him in wonder. “I feel like I’ve been asleep my whole life and now I’m just waking up. I can do something with my life. We both can.”
“But what?” asked Carl. “What should we do with our lives?”
“That’s up to you,” ArchAngel told him. “From this moment you’ve got a clean slate, a chance to start over. You can go join an agency now, if that’s what you want. I’ll even vouch for you.”
Both of the men were parahuman, but they’d never had the advantage of the increased mental capacity it sometimes granted. The irony was that they would have, had their mother not damaged them in the womb. She’d been a para too, for all the good it had done her. Now maybe their natural talents would have a chance to make themselves known. Maybe one of them would be an engineer in the making, or a musician. Who knew?
“We owe you big, ArchAngel. You have our undying loyalty. Believe me.” Carl smiled at him and elbowed his brother gently. “Let’s get going. I want to take a trip to Prime and visit mother’s grave. I actually remember where it is now.”
“So do I!” exclaimed Pete. “Thanks, ArchAngel. We won’t forget this.”
They walked off, chatting amiably about recollections recovered and new thoughts born out of what was once but mental chaos. “Well, that takes care of that,” he said to himself. “And that leaves finding Nyx and Jaz, and then handling Quickfingers’s little problem.”
He laughed to himself again. If only this would prove to be as easily solved as the case of the kidnapped kitten.
He was on his way back to his office, enjoying the brief moment of peace, when Raven stepped out the shadows along his route. “Hey, Justice…we need to talk.”
ArchAngel shook his head as the vampire fell into step beside him. Though he looked older and larger than when he’d known him in his previous life, he still considered Raven to be one of his best friends. He trusted him like he trusted few others, and the vampire had yet to let him down. He’d done what no vampire should have been able to do—age. But, of course, that had been the unintended side effect of an evil weapon the immortal Odin had used on him. He’d gone from the apparent age of fifteen, the age he’d been when he’d been turned, to an adult in a matter of seconds. Where he’d once seemed but a callow youth, now he had all the bearing and sheer masculine beauty of a vid actor from back on old Earth.
As odd as ArchAngel’s own life had been, he still found the change unsettling. He’d known Raven for years back on Earth, and the vampire had never changed even slightly. Now he was a completely different person. To look at, at least. Inside, he seemed to be the man ArchAngel remembered. That was a good thing.
“I really hate it when you appear out of nowhere like that,” he growled under his breath, knowing Raven would be able to hear him.
Remaining unseen was Raven’s unique gift, his vampiric talent. The only one he’d received other than the ability to talk to dogs and other canines. ArchAngel still hated it when it was used on him.
Raven grinned over at him and offered a tiny shrug. “Eh—that’s life, I guess.”
ArchAngel returned his grin. “So what’s up?”
“I need a favor.”
“Of course you do. There’s a lot of that going around today.”
Raven stopped in his tracks and slanted a dark look his direction. “What are you talking about?”
ArchAngel stopped and returned his gaze. “Quickfingers dropped by to see me earlier. Apparently Nyx has summoned and named another imp. As you can imagine, our little blue friend isn’t all too happy about it. You know how he feels about his progeny.”
“I always thought that was one of Jaz’s stories—you know how she likes needling the imp.”
ArchAngel shook his head. “Nope. It’s for real. Quickfingers is afraid of those other imps. For whatever reason.”
“So what does he expect you to do about it?”
“Talk to the women. I get the feeling he’s avoiding Jaz right now because he doesn’t want to be around this other imp.”
“So you’re—what? A glorified messenger service? A spirit mediator?”
ArchAngel shrugged, then smirked. “Something like that, I guess.” On a day like today, considering what he’d already done, he wasn’t sure it wasn’t in his job description any way he sliced it. Returning stolen kittens, restoring the intellects of broken men and helping an imp avoid his child. All in a day’s work for the most powerful immortal who’d ever lived. If anything, this place would serve to keep him humble. “So what favor can I do for you?”
“It’s nothing so strenuous, I’d say. Val wants to have a baby. She wants to have our baby. I’m figuring you might be able to do something about that.”
ArchAngel blinked at him, then started walking again. “Now I’m a one-man fertility clinic?” He knew he sounded a bit exasperated, but he couldn’t help it.
“Hey, when you can bend reality, you should expect the occasional odd request from your friends.”
“I’m starting to,” the android replied. “But I’m really not sure I can bend reality that far. The only part of you that carries your original DNA is your brain, and even that’s been modified by the virus. I could try to have Loki isolate a sample, but I’m not sure I can do what you ask even if we can get that far with it.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt to try, would it?”
“Probably not.”
Raven had been married to Val for a few years now, since not long after they’d returned from Bryon’s Earth, flush with a victory over an alternate version of ArchAngel’s father and with an idea for several new agencies they wanted to push through the High Court. ArchAngel had backed their play then, not only because he was Raven’s friend, but because he thought the other agencies were a good idea.
It hadn’t made Athena happy, but, then again, he wasn’t sure there was anything that could. Loki swore up and down she just needed a good screwing, but Loki was prone to saying things like that. Not even his formidable wife had been able to temper his penchant for being a smart-ass.
“Would it help if Loki had other DNA to compare mine to once he extracted it from my brain?”
“Maybe. What are you thinking?”
“Maybe my mom would be able to donate a little to use as a control.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I suppose we can talk to Loki about it and see what he has to say.”
“Great!”
They emerged into the worldgate section after a few minutes of walking in companionable silence, both men lost in their own thoughts.
ArchAngel paused and turned to regard Raven. “I’m not sure where Loki’s hanging out these days, but I’m sure I can find him. Why don’t you track down your mother and see about getting a sample from her while I look for the Trickster?”
“Okay. I’ll meet you back in your office in, say, two hours?”
“That’ll work.”
They parted ways. Apparently Raven knew where to find his mother, since he headed off in a specific direction with no sign of hesitation. ArchAngel watched him go and sighed. Rachel Flynn would be easier to find than Loki, that was for sure. He hadn’t quite been lying when he said he could find Loki, though it wouldn’t necessarily be easy. Even with ArchAngel’s considerable talents for manipulating probability, Loki could be hard to locate when he wanted to be. .
If he was anywhere on Earth Prime, ArchAngel should be able to find him, much the same way he’d found Carl and Pete. If he expended his power, he could bring anyone to him, assuming they were in the same universe. His power, formidable as it was, didn’t extend past a single universe. If he wanted to affect causality in a certain dimension, he had to go to that dimension.
Of course, Loki’s not without his own odd resources in that department. He might even be able to frustrate my powers.
This was turning out to be quite the frustrating day. With any luck, he’d have a chance for a little down-time tomorrow.
He wouldn’t be placing any bets on it though.
Chapter Three: One Step Ahead
February 13th, 2013
Ten days after arrival
Seattle, WA
“We can’t stay in this hotel indefinitely,” Chikitar grumbled, spitting a cherry pit into the cup in his hand. “We don’t have any privacy at all.”
“I realize this,” said Morrigan. “I’ve got Valiant out there working on that right now. We have to be picky, there’s no way around that. Most of the good houses—at least the ones that fit our rather peculiar needs—are already taken.”
“Is there any particular reason we’re staying in Seattle? If we’re supposed to be doing something about the upcoming political storm, shouldn’t we be in D.C. or something?” This from Kitsune, who was sitting at the small table perusing a list of items he’d been asked to collect.
“I’m assuming ArchAngel placed us here for a reason—but, no, we don’t exactly have to stay in Seattle. We’ve all got transportation now. Maybe we should look for someplace outside the city.”
“That may be our best bet,” put in Midellis, who’d just walked through the door into the sitting room, still clutching the vid remote in his hand. Here they called it television, or TV, but it was pretty much like the High Definition Video systems that had been used on Earth Prime in this particular era. Midellis had acquired a rather unappealing addiction to daytime talk shows. Privately Morrigan thought it gave him confirmation of something the elves had long suspected of humans…that they were a seriously messed-up race.
“Why?” she asked him.
“Because things are getting a bit hot in the city. The Mayor and city council, anticipating Congress, have just passed a city ordinance banning the use of meta powers within the city limits.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Just caught it on a segment on one of those twenty-four hour news channels.”
“So the heroes will be vacating the city, won’t they?” Chikitar set the cup down on the bedside table. Morrigan glared at him until he picked it up and dropped it in the wastebasket.
“If they’re smart, yeah.” She closed her eyes and leaned against a nearby wall. “Christ. This complicates things tremendously. It’s already starting.”
“Well, maybe we can do something to get them to reverse it.” Kitsune set the list down and picked up a piece of the cell phone Santos had spread across the table sometime earlier before wandering down to the hotel garage to tinker with his motorcycle. Kitsune poked curiously at its innards. “Hey, Chikitar—you think we can modify this thing to do more than it’s designed to do?”
“Who’s ‘we,’ kemo sabe? Got mouse in pocket?” the procyon replied, firing a sharp grin at Morrigan. He rolled off the bed and strolled over to where the fox was sitting. “I can imprint the SIM card,” he mused aloud as he picked up the piece in question. “What did you have in mind?”
Kitsune shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe a limited range transport for those of us who can’t work magic? In case of emergency?”
This raised Morrigan’s eyebrows. The fox was a good tactician. That was good thinking—she wasn’t sure she would’ve come up with the necessity. But he was right. Everyone here needed a good exit strategy in case something went wrong.
She knew from experience that it wasn’t a matter of if things went wrong, but when. When you rode the razor edge of a sword, sooner or later you were going to slip. That’s what life on the fringes really meant in the long run.
She’d been an assassin for a long, long time. Longer than recorded human history. And even with all her talents, she’d ended up screwing the pooch more than once. It was inevitable. And she’d worked alone, which usually meant the only person who could do the screwing up was herself. With a group of seven people, even as talented as they were, anyone’s mistake could put them all in hot water.
It wouldn’t even have to be a major one. Having the two obviously non-human types along could prove to be extremely dangerous, since they’d most likely be misidentified as metas if caught. Particularly since their symsuits might well give them some meta-like abilities in the near future, assuming they ever figured out how to access those abilities. One of these days she’d have to sit them down and walk them through some sym-activating exercises. One of these days real soon, she added mentally. Before it was too late. She’d never worn one, but she knew pretty much how the things worked.
“I’m not sure what we could do to get them to reverse the decision.” Midellis sighed. “Maybe a powerful enough telepath could get them to change their minds, but…” He let his voice trail off as Morrigan snickered.
She knew that one of the things that had prevented that sort of thing from going forward on Earth Prime was exactly that—the meddling of a group of psychics in the election process. They didn’t want to see a meta-registration bill pass any more than the rest of the freaks, but they had the power to turn the tide where others did not. They helped get Lynn Mendoza elected President and that made all the difference in the world.
The PAC had been forced to take action. Amanda Keening and the Magical Activities Division had visited a large group of psychics who were celebrating Mendoza’s victory and made it clear that if they ever did anything like that again, they’d live to regret it. Little Miss Keening wasn’t much bigger than a gnat’s ass, but she was no less convincing for it. When several people step out of nothingness into the middle of a party with guns drawn, it tends to make an impression.
“Our problem isn’t really with the Seattle city council. Our problem is one hell of a lot bigger than that.” She picked brought up the virtual keyboard on her PCD and punched the command to ring Shadowkin’s cell phone. Wonder how he feels about this. He can’t be happy.
The phone rang three times before a garbled voice, thick with sleep, answered. “Yeah?”
“It’s Morrigan. Did I wake you?”
“Yeah. Morrigan? What do you want?”
“You might want to turn on the news.”
“Huh.” She heard the sound of some fumbling, then the unmistakable sound of the television turning on in the background. The connection wasn’t good enough for her to be able to make out the words, but Shadowkin certainly could. “Shit!”
That was the response she’d anticipated. Shit was right. “What are you going to do?”
“Fuck Seattle,” he growled in a low, menacing tone. “They want to handle the bad guys without our help, let ‘em. There’s plenty of crime in the suburbs, or down south in Tacoma or Olympia.” He snorted. “I wonder what they’re going to do about meta-villains without us.”
“That’s a good question. Frankly I’m surprised that Seattle was the first city that went that direction. You would’ve thought it would be someplace in Texas or something.”
“Why Texas?”
“Because Texas is just about the most stubbornly conservative state in the union,” she answered. “A lot of stupid shit starts there.”
“Plenty of stupid shit starts in Seattle too,” Shadowkin replied. “But I get your point. What are you folks going to do?”
“Still working on it. I have a feeling that banning you guys from Seattle will draw more villains here—the particularly bad ones will have no reason to fear normals.”
“Yeah. A lot of good cops are going to get killed trying to do jobs they’re not trained for.”
“We need to meet. I need that list from you.”
“Can’t I just email it to you?”
“Email? I’d need an account for that.” She could access the internet with her PCD, and its programming would enable it to modify just about any software to fit its platform, but she’d neglected to do anything about it yet. It hadn’t occurred to her. She’d made sure that the others had notebook computers, since nearly all of them had tasks that would be more easily completed with full web access, but she hadn’t considered she might need it herself. This realization made her feel more than a little foolish. “Let me get back to you.”
“Fine. Hey, thanks for giving me a call about this. I would’ve felt really stupid if I’d been blindsided by it.”
“Not a problem. I’ll call you later.” She disconnected and leaned back against wall. “I need an email address.”
“Sure. I can set one up for you in no time,” said Chikitar, walking over and grabbing his laptop out of its case beside the bed. He opened it and woke it up, his long, agile fingers flying over the keyboard. “Easy as pie.”
“What the hell does that expression even mean?” Morrigan had to ask. She doubted he’d know, but it had been bothering her for years.
The raccoon shrugged. “I’ve always assumed it was really talking about the mathematical expression, pi, which is most definitely easy to calculate.”
Morrigan wasn’t exactly a mathematician. She couldn’t care less about pi. “Just give me an email address and let me know what it is.”
“I’ll sign you up with a free account with Yahoo,” said Chikitar. “You have any preferences for an internet identity?”
“Not particularly. Just pick one and let me know what it is. I’ve got a list of metas coming from Shadowkin and I need an email box for it to come to. I’m not going to start trolling internet personals looking for a date.”
The procyon snickered. “Fine by me.”
Morrigan frowned and pulled up the time on her PCD. “Has Valiant called in yet? She should have checked back with us by now.”
The others shook their heads. “I haven’t heard from her,” said Midellis. “What was she doing today, anyway?”
“She said she needed to look some stuff up at the law library—some obscure case law she couldn’t find on-line. Then she was supposed to be heading right back.”
***
Thirty minutes earlier
Valiant shifted the six-pack from one arm to the other, tapping her toe impatiently against the tile floor. The person in line in front of her had over twenty items and had selfishly insisted on going through the express line. Fifteen items or less, my ass. Why do they even bother?
She had a second’s warning something was amiss when a sudden silence from the entrance impinged on her awareness. She craned her neck to see over the people and equipment blocking her view and groaned inwardly. What the hell was this?
A squat, powerful-looking man with no visible neck wearing a violent yellow costume had strolled through the door, a long staff slung over one shoulder. He wore a mask that covered everything but his nose and mouth—even his eyes protected behind dark lenses.
He slung the staff from his shoulder and leveled it at the nearest checkstand. He spoke with a thick Teutonic accent. “All of you—start bagging the money in your tills. You’ve got two minutes.”
The cashier at the first checkout counter must’ve hesitated. The squat man shifted his grip on the staff slightly and the area seemed to explode upward. Everything—the cashier, the customers, the cash register, and all the groceries on the conveyer belt and in the carts waiting to be checked through—flew upward as if gravity had suddenly reversed itself. It all reached an apex, hovered there for a short moment, then rained down in a heap.
“It’s the Gravinator,” someone whispered with both awe and fear in her voice. “I thought he was in prison.”
“Obviously not,” Valiant sighed. She really didn’t need this right now. And what kind of pseudonym was “the Gravinator” anyway? Sounded stupid to her. “Are those the extent of his powers? What goes up must come down?”
“No.” The woman, a plump, matronly woman in her late forties, shook her head emphatically. “He can increase or decrease something’s weight and mass to the point it floats or to the point it squashes you like a bug. He’s not one of the top meta-villains, but he’s a bad one.”
She could take him, of that Valiant was fairly certain. It would, however, bring a lot of unwanted attention to her, and by extension, to the rest of the team. “Maybe one of the heroes will show up and stop him,” she said.
“Probably not,” the woman said regretfully. “The city passed a law against any sort of meta using their abilities within the city limits. If a hero shows up to stop him, they’ll be breaking the law.”
Which probably explained why he was here in the first place. Only the good guys would refrain from using their abilities. The villains would see it as a pass. No one who had the power to stop them would be free to do so.
She spotted one of the people in line in the next closest checkstand crouching behind it and whispering into his cell phone. With her enhanced lycanthrope’s hearing, she could tell he was talking to a 911 dispatcher. That meant the police would be on their way.
Hopefully before anyone else got hurt.
The woman she’d been talking to let out a little squeak and she looked back toward the Gravinator again, noticing a second costumed figure coming through the door. This one looked to be his polar opposite, a tall, almost frighteningly thin blonde woman in a blue spandex body suit. “Ohmygod,” she moaned, “that’s Tantrum.”
“Who’s Tantrum?”
The woman shot her a sharp look. “Not from around here, are you?”
What could Valiant do other than shake her head. “No. I’m from…South Dakota.” She pulled the place out of thin air, figuring the woman would assume she was from someplace primitive enough not to know who all these people were.
“Tantrum throws venom bolts. One can make you sicker than a dog. Two can kill you.”
“Good to know.”
The cashiers were rushing to obey the Gravinator’s commands while his partner watched the front door. Probably keeping an eye out for the police. That was a particularly nasty ability she had, since she had a distance weapon that could very well ignore most forms of armor.
From what little she understood of them, Valiant’s sym would most likely protect her from the worst of it, as well as her natural lycanthropic resistance to damage, but that didn’t do a lot to prompt her to get involved directly. It grated on her to stand by like this, but to risk public exposure at this point was worse than watching a few people get injured.
She didn’t see the guy creeping up the aisle behind her until he popped out into the open, a pistol in his hand, leveling it at the Gravinator. “Freeze!” he yelled. “Seattle Police. You’re under arrest!”
He should have just shot him, Valiant thought, as she dove out of the way. Just in time, since a stray venom bolt from Tantrum sizzled through the spot in which she’d been standing a second earlier. One of the bolts hit the cop, who crumpled instantly.
The gun fell from suddenly nerveless fingers as he toppled. Valiant kicked with her legs against a mini-fridge used to keep cold soda on hand and slid far enough to catch the weapon before it hit the floor.
She gave it a quick once-over and crept around the back of the register. The place had fallen into an uneasy silence and she could hear the Gravinator’s muttered curses as he headed toward her.
She crept behind the next checkstand and, elbowing the cell phone guy out of her way, rose up to take aim with the cop’s gun at the yellow-clad menace. She didn’t yell anything. She fired a single round into the center of the Gravinator’s chest, then shifted to send another round flashing toward Tantrum.
Lycanthropes tended to be a little quicker than an ordinary human, particularly those with a feline animus. Tantrum, however, was herself faster than Valiant could have anticipated. Rather than firing back at her, she spun away from where the bullet flew and dashed back out the door.
“Dammit!” Valiant vaulted the counter and charged down the main aisle in the front of the store, doing a broken field run in an attempt to avoid running over any of the bystanders. She burst through the front door and stopped, gun hanging half-forgotten in her hand, as half a dozen cops drew down on her.
“Drop the gun!” one of them yelled.
She had a choice. She could surrender, which would lead to all sorts of things she didn’t want to even think about right now, she could fire on them, which really didn’t strike her as a very good idea, or she could attempt to flee.
Fleeing sounded like her best option. But she couldn’t afford to be blatant about it. She dropped the gun and waited for them to rush her. Which of course they did.
“The Gravinator’s inside,” she told them, as one grabbed each of her arms in preparation to handcuff her. She could break a pair of handcuffs with hardly any effort, but she didn’t really want to be cuffed in the first place.
“Oh, he’s next on the agenda,” one of them said. Not the one that had spoken before, she noticed.
Then, as she felt one of the cops’ grip loosen as he reached for the cuffs on his belt, she whirled, tearing her arm free from his grasp, and struck him with a closed fist to the center of his chest. She lashed out with a back-kick that swept the second officer from his feet. He struck the ground hard, head bouncing off the pavement.
She winced. “Sorry about that,” she said, but she didn’t stick around to see if he’d be okay. She plowed right into the next pair of cops, who were both trying to dig their sidearms out of their holsters as she clipped each of them across their respective carotid arteries and dropped them.
One of the two remaining cops had the foresight to be holding a taser, which he fired at her the instant she stepped within range. She took the voltage with clenched teeth, then reached up and ripped the wires away. A snap kick to the gut put him on his knees, retching.
The last one came at her low, with his baton. She side-stepped his initial thrust, caught him by the wrist, and flipped him with practiced ease. He crashed to the asphalt as air exploded from his lungs.
She ran around the back of the building, leaping a fence in a single bound and cutting between two houses. While in the narrow passage, she willed her symsuit to alter its shape, to mimic a jogging suit with a hood.
She sprinted onto the street and kept running.
***
The Special Squad jet-copter landed in the parking lot ten minutes later, vomiting forth armed and armored figures with the letters F.M.E.T emblazoned across their chests and on the sides of their helmets. A handful took up position around the entrance while the rest poured through the shattered door.
The last out of the helicopter was the Commanding Officer, one Special Agent Jack Frost, formerly of the FBI, but now Acting Director of the new Federal Metahuman Engagement Team. Unlike the regular team members, he wore civilian clothes. His black trench coat flapped in the wind from the chopper’s rotors as he turned ice-cold blue eyes to survey the scene. His flat top, so short as to make its color nearly indistinguishable, seemed to shimmer oddly in the light cast by the overhead lamps and splintered by the whirling rotor.
One of the uniformed agents came back out through the door and strode purposely up to Frost. “We have a dead meta inside, shot by a bystander who apparently got the weapon from a plainclothes officer who happened to be on scene when it all started.”
“Really? I’d like to talk to him.”
“The cop is still unconscious—hit by one of Tantrum’s venom bolts.”
“Not the cop. The bystander who shot the meta. It was Tantrum?”
“No. It’s the Gravinator. Tantrum was here, but she escaped.” He nodded toward a fleet of ambulances and aid cars lined up along the edge of the parking lot. “Apparently the shooter also fled the scene, injuring several cops who tried to restrain her.”
“Her?” Frost’s interest was piqued now. “It was a woman?”
“Yes, sir. Menlo is getting a copy of the security tape as we speak.”
“Good thinking. I want this woman identified ASAP. Run her through the facial recognition database.”
“Already on it, sir. Anything else?”
“Secure the scene and do some preliminary interviews with witnesses. I want to know exactly what happened in there.”
The agent nodded, turned, and marched back inside. Frost ran a thick-fingered hand across his buzz-cut and worked his jaw thoughtfully. The death of the Gravinator was most definitely a good thing. He only wished the mysterious assailant would have been so lucky as to take down Tantrum as well.
The metas didn’t realize it yet, but a war had begun today. A war between ordinary humans and the freaks. And it was a war Frost fully intended to win. Whatever the cost.
***
The elf burst back into the room, eyes wide and breathing panic as if fear was a toxic vapor. “Morrigan, you’ve got to see this!”
She’d been staring out the window, lost in thought, so he hadn’t really interrupted anything. The fox and the raccoon had been sitting there at the little table, muttering conspiratorially for the past half an hour or more, talking about things she couldn’t care less about. She’d been thinking about her feelings for Bryon and wondering how she’d ever get through his formidable emotional defenses.
Spurred by the tone in his voice, they all got up and went into the other room, where the television was blasting out a dramatic scene at a local grocery store, complete with a bunch of what looked to be federal agents in full battle gear swarming all over the place.
In the upper left corner of the screen was a picture of Valiant. Morrigan swore loudly as she read the information on the screen. She was wanted for questioning relating to the shooting death of the meta-villain called The Gravinator.
“I thought you should see this.”
“No kidding.” Morrigan activated her PCD and sent out a hail to Valiant. She was almost surprised when the woman answered.
A three-inch, three-dimensional representation of the woman appeared above the face of Morrigan’s PCD for a second before the device beamed a full-scale version into the center of the room. She looked scared. “Oh, god, Morrigan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, but the fucker didn’t leave me any choice.”
“Slow down,” the immortal replied. “Where are you now?”
“I’m on the waterfront,” the woman answered. “It seemed like a good place to lose myself in a crowd.”
“Good thinking. What happened?”
“A couple of villains came in to rob the store I stopped in on the way back. I just wanted a few beers. I got a lot more than that.”
“I’ll say. Just stay put. I’ll send someone down to pick you up. Where are you, exactly?”
Valiant looked around. “Pier sixty.”
“Okay. Midellis, how are you at driving Earth vehicles? I know Chikitar has been giving you lessons—”
“I’ll manage,” the elf said, cutting her off. “Where’s Santos? I’d like to take him with me.”
“He’s keeping an eye on Bryon, making sure none of the housekeeping staff happen to wander in on him unexpectedly.”
“Can someone else do that for a little while?” he asked. “I’d really rather not go alone. Unless you want to come along.”
She thought about it, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not? This way I can drive. I actually have some experience at it.” She smiled grimly. “This is one of the more challenging cities to drive in.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Fifteen minutes later they pulled out of the parking garage in the black Lexus sedan she’d purchased a couple days previous. Midellis fiddled with the stereo until the soothing strains of a classical piece filled the car. From what Morrigan had noticed, most elves intensely disliked rock music, so it didn’t surprise her that he’d already learned the frequency of the local classical station.
No skin off her nose. She could listen to just about anything except country and western. “She said pier sixty, right?”
Midellis nodded. He’d taken to wearing a stocking cap to hide his pointed ears, though the length and lines of his face gave him a decidedly alien appearance anyway. Not much they could do about that unless they wanted to wrap him in illusion or actually use magic to slowly and painfully reform the bones and flesh of his face, and he wasn’t at all thrilled with either idea.
She didn’t blame him. Unless they got a really good look at him, most people wouldn’t think twice about his appearance, and even then they were more likely to find a way to rationalize it than accidentally stumble upon the truth.
She made the trip down to the waterfront in less than twenty minutes, drove to where Valiant was waiting, and managed to get her loaded and headed back into traffic without another incident. Part of her wanted to be annoyed with the woman, but knew she really couldn’t be. She hadn’t done anything Morrigan herself probably wouldn’t have done in her place. She could be accused of many things, but being a hypocrite wasn’t one of them.
She’d hoped that they’d make it back to the hotel without incident, but that, alas, was not to be. As she headed up the hill behind the Pike Place Market, she happened to glance up at the building just as something exploded through the wall and hurtled down toward them.
She slammed on the brakes as it struck the pavement not five feet from the front bumper and bounced away up the hill. A screech from behind her told her that they’d nearly been rear-ended, but a fender-bender was extremely low on her priorities list at the moment. She was more interested in the huge, furry thing that had rocketed away after nearly crushing the front of her car.
She hit the gas and accelerated smoothly up the hill, cursing as she hit the stop sign and had to wait for a group of pedestrians to pass. They weren’t in any particular hurry, actually seeming more interested in staring northward up the street, presumably following the path of the beast with their eyes.
At the first opportunity, she stomped on the accelerator and roared through the intersection, hitting her horn and narrowly avoiding a flock of Japanese tourists wielding digital cameras like weapons of mass exposure.
“Be careful!” yelled Midellis as Morrigan jerked the wheel to avoid some idiot who stepped out between two parked cars. “What are you doing?”
“Didn’t you see that?” she asked. “The thing that came out of the back of the market and landed in front of us? It looked an awful lot like a werewolf. If there are ‘thropes here, we need to know about it.”
“Enough to risk killing innocent pedestrians?” he growled.
He was right, Morrigan realized. She was being stupid. There was no way she’d be able to catch up to the creature while driving. She slammed on the brakes and undid her seatbelt. “You’re right. Valiant—take the car and Midellis back to the hotel. I’ll be back later.” She leaped out the door and raced down the street before they could stop her, or even try to slow her down.
Morrigan followed the shrieks and the looks of panic stretching up and over the hill, pulling a couple of enhancement spells down from her ‘web as she ran. The world blurred around her as she raced up the hill, reached the summit, and spotted the monster barreling down the other side. She stabbed out a hand, grabbed a mana thread, anchored both ends, and slid down it as if it were a zip-line.
The creature, sensing her approach, was starting to turn when her booted feet caught it straight in the chest and slammed it into a concrete column supporting the overpass above their heads. She slammed a fist to the side of its head. It was a bit like pounding her fist into the column itself, but the blow sent the beast skidding sideways a few feet.
It roared, swatted at her with outstretched claws, but she slipped beneath its blow and hammered it in the ribs hard enough to drive a wheeze from its lungs.
It swung again and this time it connected. She side-stepped just a hair too slow and caught it on her shoulder. The force of it picked her up and threw her into the street, directly in the path of an SUV. She bounced off the bumper, hurled another dozen feet or so by the impact.
She rolled to her feet, snarling at the blue Blazer that had struck her, and leaped for the werewolf again—only to find he was gone. To her surprise, she looked around and spotted a large, naked man getting into the passenger side of the SUV. As the door closed, he waved at her cheerily and she recognized him. Or, she recognized who he would be in her universe: Fenris Wolf. That hadn’t been a lycanthrope she’d been fighting, but another immortal. Of a kind, anyway. Shit!
The vehicle slowly accelerated away as she stared after it. She felt her breath catch in her throat as a siren chirped behind her. She turned around and faced the cop car with a dour expression. Oh, yeah. Now as if this doesn’t just make my day.
***
Dusk
Same Day
Bryon stirred as the city plunged into night. He rolled off the bed and stood beside it for a moment, senses reaching out beyond the walls of the room, into the rest of the suite. He made out the sound of four heartbeats and the murmur of three voices in quiet conversation.
He touched the doorknob and twisted it slowly, his hearing picking up something that gave him pause. Morrigan was missing? He could hear the tension in their voices, the tiniest hesitation in the beating of their hearts. The low stench of fear permeated the hall beyond his door and he knew then that Morrigan had done something foolish, certain of her near-invulnerability to carry her through the moment.
He walked into the main room of the suite and found the team gathered there, engaged in somber discussion. He caught a glance from the procyon, the ring-tailed mage engineer’s dark eyes glittering with something that might have been anticipation. He’d been waiting for Bryon to emerge, to show them why, precisely, the vampire had been chosen as Morrigan’s second-in-command. Or so Bryon imagined.
The vampire leaned against the door frame and breathed in their myriad of scents, their trepidation, their hope, and their confusion. For a moment his surety faltered and he found his mouth opening, his lips moving, his tongue weaving language before he knew what he was about to say.
“Morrigan has lived over twenty-five thousand years. I doubt if anything here is likely to bring an end to her. If there is a werewolf, and even vampires on this Earth, they move in secret, as do we. But we have access to knowledge they cannot possess, and thus we have them at a great disadvantage.” He suddenly grinned. “We know all about them, but they know nothing about us.”
He noticed that the fox caught his meaning before any of the others. Not because he was any smarter, but because he had the kind of twisty mind that could appreciate the irony of that situation. If the preternatural indeed existed here beside the paranormal, they would be accustomed to being taken for something other than what they were. They’d feel pretty invulnerable.
They’d quickly learn they wouldn’t when they came up against people who knew their secrets. If, Bryon reminded himself, it was actually a werewolf they saw. “Which one of you is going to take me to where you lost her?”
Chikitar glanced at Valiant, who shrugged. “We’ll both take you. I should warn you, though. The authorities are probably looking for me.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” he sighed with obvious irritation. “Do you not know what ‘keep a low profile’ means?”
She shot him a glare sharp as the edge of a razor. “Hey—a couple of dangerous metas were about to kill some people. I couldn’t stand by and let that happen.”
He cocked his head and regarded her in silence for a long moment. The kind of people who joined the Knights usually came across with a strange mix of pragmatism and ideology. They weren’t like those who worked for TAU, those for whom rules and law could define the perimeters of their universe. They weren’t like those who wore the Crimson Sash, for they were almost always bold in the face of even the greatest threat. For those two law-enforcement agencies, it was all about doing the right thing no matter what.
KOA agents were rarely heroes in the truest sense of the word. They did what they did because they believed everyone had a right to fight for their own freedom, and sometimes all they needed was a nudge and a little backup when the chips were down. But very rarely did it mean going up against near impossible odds to get the job done.
This time it might, he realized, and that didn’t sit well with him. At least, he thought wryly, one of them had the instincts of a hero. Even if he did find it damned inconvenient. “Fine. It doesn’t matter anyway. If anyone spots Chikitar, they’re going to be way more interested in him than you…at least in the short run. That’ll give me a chance to do a little mind-bending and give us the chance to slip out of their grasp. You get me?”
She nodded.
“Fine. Let’s go find Morrigan.”
Chapter Four: You Call This Progress?
An hour after dusk
Bryon climbed back into the van and closed the door. “The police have her,” he said. “She’s been arrested on suspicion of violating the anti-meta code.”
Valiant looked impressed. “How’d you find that out?” she asked.
“Talked to the cop standing over there,” he replied, glancing out the window at the park overlooking the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the outside edge of the waterfront.
Now that the sun had gone down, there were a few parking spaces available on streets that were usually full of the cars of visitors to Pike Place Market. Where Chikitar had parked their vehicle was technically a loading zone, but it was hardly an issue for the time being. For the next few hours, at least, this particular area would remain quiet, until the early morning deliveries began to arrive in the dead of the night.
They wouldn’t be there that long.
“So what now?” Valiant asked, looking to Bryon as if she felt a little guilty.
He’d been angry with her at first, but had long since realized it was stupid. Her actions were hardly remarkable, considering most of them would have done the same thing in similar circumstances. Morrigan herself would’ve probably have taken out both the villains. Perhaps not because she couldn’t bear to see innocents hurt, but because they annoyed her by interrupted her shopping.
He silenced that thought, suddenly annoyed with himself. He was being a bit of an ass tonight. Morrigan took a lot of pride in never killing for personal reasons. She would have killed them because they deserved killing, and for the same basic reason that Valiant had killed the Gravinator. Because they asked for it.
“Must be nice being a vampire and being able to mind-ream someone like you did that cop,” said Chikitar with a flash of sharp teeth. “He probably doesn’t even remember the conversation, does he?”
“No. He can’t even see us sitting here,” Bryon assured him before locking his gaze on Valiant. “You’re the attorney. What do you think we should do?”
“Hire another attorney,” she replied tersely.
Chikitar snickered.
She shot him a sharp look. “Only because they’re already looking for me. Be damned silly to march in there only to get arrested myself.”
“You shouldn’t have run in the first place,” Bryon told her. “And you damn well should have known better.”
He could tell by her sudden silence that she agreed with him, though she wasn’t willing to say so aloud. He reminded himself not to be too hard on her. This mission was quite a bit different than any they had attempted so far and would provide challenges most of them would be hard-pressed to pass off as just another day on the job.
It wasn’t as though there was any such thing as a typical day for an interworld agent. “We can modify your appearance easily enough. In fact, from what I understand, your sym can do it.”
“That’s what I heard,” she replied, a little skeptically. “I’m still not comfortable with the idea of letting it cover my face.”
“I get that,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s certainly the easiest way to do it. We could have one of the mages make you over, but that’s not nearly as certain to work. A spell could fail at an inopportune moment, after all.”
She wanted to argue, but he knew she didn’t have a lot to argue with. He was right, and she damn well knew he was. Whether she wanted to admit it or not. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that I pretty much left myself very little choice, right?”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to tell you that. You’re smart enough to figure it out by yourself.”
“Thanks a lot,” she growled, narrowing her eyes to slits. “What are we going to do if she just uses her magic to escape before we can get her out the legal way?”
“She won’t,” Bryon told her. “She knows we have to keep a low profile. Especially now that they’ve criminalized the use of metahuman abilities. If she vanishes from a locked cell, they’re bound to assume she did it by paranormal means. That’s the last thing she’d want them to be thinking.”
“So she’s going to expect me?”
“She damned well better.”
She looked as though she wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so she remained silent. “Take us up to Sixth Avenue,” she told Chikitar after a moment. “I guess it’s time I went in to visit my client.”
The procyon did as she directed, guiding the van smoothly into city traffic. Chikitar took to this whole driving thing a lot better than he would have, the vampire decided after a moment of consideration.
Bryon watched with undisguised interest as she commanded her sym to flow over her face and remold her features. He found the whole process rather fascinating, really. He’d heard that immortals could do that without a sym, but all he’d ever seen Morrigan do was change her hair color.
Valiant came out looking quite a bit different, though the changes, if taken in one at a time, were hardly extreme. It was amazing what could be done by altering the shape of the eyes, nose, and jaw just slightly. She was still pretty, but almost closer to handsome than beautiful like she had been.
He nodded, impressed. “She did set you up with all the documentation and whatever you’re going to need to be her attorney, right?”
“Yes,” she said simply, sounding a little exasperated. “We’re going to need to modify the photo on my identification to fit my new appearance, though.”
“Easy enough,” said Chikitar as the van accelerated uphill toward Sixth Avenue. “Just hand it forward to me when we get there and I’ll do a little mojo on the card.”
“Great. Let’s get to it,” she muttered, looking less than pleased. “I hope she hasn’t gotten herself into more trouble in the meantime.”
A valid concern, Bryon thought. If anyone had a talent for finding trouble, it was Morrigan.
***
The woman in question raised her gaze toward her cellmate with a heartfelt sigh. “You’re kidding, right?”
The other woman, thin but wiry, with sunken cheeks and hard, glittering eyes, stared down at her and bared her teeth in what was obviously not meant to be taken as a friendly smile. “I’ve got the bottom bunk.”
Morrigan had been processed rather quickly. They’d taken her at her word that she wasn’t a meta, something she found rather interesting. It wasn’t as though they had any reason to believe her. But they’d booked her on a charge of disturbing the peace—a bogus charge if she’d ever heard one—taken her prints and thrown her in the cell with this obviously deranged individual. And things had gotten steadily worse from there.
Her cellmate seemed to be a frequent visitor to the place, which gave her a delusion of possessing some sort of authority by virtue of knowing the name of every guard and being treated with casual disregard, if not active respect, by all of them.
“No,” Morrigan growled back. “You don’t. I do. And if you don’t get the fuck away from me, you’re going to spend the rest of the night curled up in the corner in a pool of your own piss and vomit.”
A noise at the cell door jerked her head around. “Celt—your lawyer’s here.”
“About fucking time,” she snarled, rising to her feet. As she walked past her unwelcome roommate, the woman reached out and sank claw-like fingers into her shoulder.
“This isn’t over, bitch.”
That’s what you think. Morrigan flicked her eyes up toward the cell door, noting that the guard didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Quick as thought, she caught the woman’s wrist, twisted, and drove the stiffened fingers of her other hand into her right kidney.
The woman gave a gasping moan, started to crumple, but Morrigan guided her onto the bottom bunk before she could. “Go ahead. Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “We’ll talk when I get back.”
Of course, she had no intention of coming back. If she did, she’d make damn sure they wouldn’t be doing any talking at all.
She walked into the interview room and, for a moment, found herself confronting a stranger. Then she quickly brought herself up to speed and nodded to Valiant before pulling out and sitting in the chair opposite her. “Took you long enough,” she muttered.
Valiant shrugged. “Didn’t think you’d gotten yourself nabbed, Morrigan. Thought you were smoother than that.”
Morrigan sneered, more for the benefit of the watchers—and she knew there were watchers, regardless of what the Bill of Rights had to say about it—than to needle Valiant. “I was out minding my own business, planning on doing a little shopping at Pike Place, and this big hairy motherfucker jumped me.”
“They don’t believe you?”
“I don’t know what they believe. They have no reason not to believe me. I can’t believe they actually thought I was a fucking meta.”
Valiant chuckled along with her. “Ridiculous,” she said.
“That’s what I said.”
Morrigan leaned forward suddenly, releasing the spell she’d had cupped in her hand. The threads exploded outward, invisible to all but herself, and seared their way along the fiber optic cables of the CCTV channels connecting this room to the watchers. Somewhere she heard something pop and a distinct sizzling noise. The smell of burnt plastic tinged the air. “Start setting up for a change of identity for all of us,” she directed Valiant. “If this continues to go badly, I plan to make a hasty exit. We’ll just have to set up shop somewhere else.”
She wasn’t too pleased at the prospect, but she wasn’t going to play along with these idiots just to avoid a little bit of hassle. She’d rather the team pulled up stakes and relocated than have to deal with the indignities of whatever kangaroo court they decided to convene. And the last thing she wanted was them to start doing medical tests on her to determine if she was a metahuman. The results would not be what they expected, but what they’d find would be quite bad enough.
Immortals were no more ordinary humans than were the metas. Morrigan had never had to deal with the possibility of having her DNA sampled back when she was on Earth Prime. By the time their technology had advanced to the point it was an issue, Morrigan had less reason to visit a medical practitioner than she ever had.
Valiant nodded at her, assumedly in response to her statement. “So you’re going to play along for now?” She sounded puzzled. “Why bother?”
“Because they may decide just to let me go, and that’s a result I’d much rather see than having to go ‘on the lam’, as they say.”
“Who says?” asked Valiant, who’d clearly never heard the phrase before.
Morrigan grunted irritably. “Never mind. Just do as I ask in case I do have to leave here suddenly.”
Then, out of the blue, something struck her. She could easily fake a blood or DNA test if she wanted to. All she had to do was use a transit tube to supply a redirected genetic sample. “Tell them I’ll go for it,” she said abruptly.
Valiant blinked at her. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure.”
Finally released on her own recognizance, having passed their blood-test, Morrigan wasted no time getting the hell out of there. She passed through the inner lobby of the building, around the metal detectors, and froze in place. Valiant nearly plowed into her before she could pull up short.
“What’s wrong?” the lycanthrope asked.
Morrigan held up a hand to silence her, brow furrowed as she watched a burly fellow frog-marching a young boy past the guards, his face flushed with anger. He hustled the boy from the building, anger rising from him like a crimson fog. “The kid’s in trouble.”
To her credit, Valiant didn’t ask any questions. She followed Morrigan out the door and down the street after the mismatched pair. Then she decided to start asking questions. “What’s going on?”
“I think the big guy is the kid’s stepfather. And he’s a meta-villain. The kid came dangerously close to disclosing his secrets in court today and the big guy is pissed about it.”
Valiant gave her a strange look. “How do you know all this?”
“I overheard a part of the conversation as I was passing them. No human could have heard it. And you probably would have, had you been listening. I’m just more attuned to my subconscious than you are. Sleep is one of the ways mortals synchronize their conscious and subconscious minds. Since most immortals don’t sleep, we do it at various intervals during the day. I was doing it as we passed and all that information just flowed in.”
Valiant looked impressed. “That’s quite a trick.”
Morrigan shrugged, her brow creasing into a frown. “Comes with the territory.” And sometimes, like now, she really didn’t like it very much.
They followed the pair up the street and into a nearby parking garage. At the entrance, Morrigan stopped and turned to Valiant. “You stay here. This is the exit, so they’ll have to come out this way. If they do, stop the car by whatever means necessary.”
“Whatever means?” Valiant sounded a touch skeptical.
Morrigan held her gaze firmly and nodded. “No question. Do what you have to do to stop the car, short of hurting the kid. I have a suspicion that if we don’t, he’ll kill the boy.”
The lycanthrope’s throat worked as she swallowed noisily, as if suddenly aware of the stakes and not liking them much. “You’re the boss.”
The immortal twitched an eyebrow upward and allowed a slight smile to twist the edge of her mouth. “Yeah, I guess I am.” Sometimes she forgot, even now. She had yet to grow accustomed to the notion of giving orders. One of these days, maybe.
Then again, maybe it was better she didn’t. She’d known far too many people who’d grown to like it too much. Like Athena had. She shivered a little. As if. Lust for power had never been one of Morrigan’s vices. The Fates knew she had enough of her own without that.
Morrigan broke off and began following a dimly sensed trail into the parking structure. She wasn’t exactly sure what spoor she was tracking, but there was something they were leaving behind that she could feel. She traced their steps to an elevator and stopped at the closed door, swearing under her breath. Shit, shit, shit. Up or down, Morrigan?
She pressed the up button. There was a better chance they’d gone upward, simply because there were more floors above than below. That made it a matter of probability. And probability was something she understood well enough.
What floor? As the doors opened, she stepped into the lift and let her fingers float above the number pad. There were fourteen levels to this garage, two of them below street level. Assuming she was right that they’d gone up, that left eleven possibilities.
Almost of its own volition, her index finger stabbed out at the button marked with the number nine. The car gave a little shake and started to jerkily rise. If she hadn’t been an immortal, she would’ve stopped the damn thing right there and gotten the hell off. She wasn’t a big fan of elevators in the first place. Damn things were deathtraps just waiting to fall into a hole in the ground and crush their occupants. She just knew it.
What she didn’t know was why she was even doing this. What was this kid to her? Nothing. Just a kid. But he didn’t deserve being shackled to that piece of shit. No kid did. My god, she thought, am I growing a conscience? Bryon was a seriously bad influence. And he got it from Raven and Val. Damn the lot of them.
The car ground to a halt. The doors opened. She glanced out, frowning, placing one hand on the door to keep it from closing. Somewhere in the distance she heard the blee-bleep of a car alarm being turned on or off.
Following a gut impression, she stepped out and let the door slide shut behind her. She trotted down the primary lane, listening for the sound of a car engine starting. She heard an ignition catch, turned to see an SUV’s lights come on a couple of aisles over. She focused on the driver’s side and saw the guy from the courthouse inside, the boy sitting in the passenger seat beside him.
She broke into a sprint, coming up beside the driver’s door just as the big vehicle was trying to back out of the parking stall. She hit the door handle, but it was locked. She had just enough time to register the wide eyes of the driver before she simply tore the door from its moorings.
A bolt of force struck her in the shoulder and spun her around, slamming her with bone-shaking force into the rear quarter-panel of another SUV. She rebounded, wincing, and leaped at the driver as the tires shrieked and smoked as he punched the gas pedal to the floor.
She twisted aside as another wave of force flew past, shattering a car windshield in the next row and sending its alarm into a screaming fit. She grabbed his shirt sleeve, jerked him toward her, and slammed her fist into the side of his face.
As he went limp, she yanked him out of the driver’s seat, hurled herself in, and took over driving. She did, however, spare a glance at the kid, who looked back at her with bright blue eyes the size of manhole covers.
“Don’t worry, kid. You’re safer with me than you were with him.”
She took a half second and the risk of a momentary distraction to weave the illusion of a door—no reason to attract undue attention, after all.
“What’s your name?” she asked the boy as she circled them down the parking garage one level at a time.
“Casey.”
“Good name,” she grunted. “I’m Morrigan. What’s with puke-breath back there?”
“Puke-breath?” Casey laughed at that. “He’s a dick.”
“Yeah…I’d figured that out. Saw him dragging you from the courthouse and knew he was up to no good.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You a cop?”
It was her turn to laugh. “Hardly. Just a concerned citizen.”
“Meta?”
She glanced over, saw his interested expression, and shrugged. “Nope. You?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound thrilled by the admission.
Well, shit. Who could blame him? For one, using any powers he might have just became illegal. Add that to the fact that there was only one way he could’ve caught the virus in the first place and he had fewer reasons than most barely pre-pubescent boys to feel like jumping for joy all the way around. Like the meta-virus back on Earth Prime, this one was sexually transmitted.
“I’m not a meta,” she told him. “I’m something they’ve never even heard of—and I prefer to keep it that way.” She pulled out of the garage and hit the brakes as she reached the street. She thumbed the non-existent window down and called out to Valiant, who was standing nearby. “I’m heading home,” she told her, speaking softly so her voice would only carry about that far. “I’ll meet you there.”
The lycanthrope nodded and watched as the vehicle accelerated away.
Morrigan watched her dwindle in the rear-view mirror, just slightly annoyed with herself. She’d acted impulsively not once now, but twice, and she had the distinct feeling she’d pay for it in the long run. Since abandoning her long-standing profession and taking up this agency and its crusade, she’d lost something vital to how she did things. An assassin had to plan everything to the smallest detail, eliminating as much of the element of chance as possible. That pretty much precluded acting impulsively.
She’d best put the brakes on that before she let it go too far.
The boy was watching her curiously, she noticed, and shot him a sharp grin. “What?”
“You’re beautiful,” he said abruptly.
Her eyebrows shot up and she leveled a measuring glance in his direction. “How old are you?”
“Twelve and a half,” he replied in a slightly injured tone.
Older than she’d first thought, she realized. She’d have guessed him around ten, not nearing puberty. She found his gaze slightly more frank than she found comfortable, but she said nothing about it. It wasn’t as if it would do any good. If he’d actually hit puberty already, nothing she could say would change anything.
Great. A precocious twelve year old. That’s so what I need right now. She grinned mockingly at her own inner voice. Hey, she reminded herself, you asked for it.
Yeah, she replied silently, I guess I did.
***
Valiant watched the vehicle drive away and scowled at nothing in particular. She didn’t know Morrigan very well, but she had the distinct feeling the immortal woman had gone completely off the game-plan. Again. At least that was the impression she’d picked up from the vampire. His frustration had shined through even his natural vampiric reserve.
A scream reverberated from the parking garage and she looked up in time to see something burst through one of the upper floor side-rails, showering the sidewalk with chunks of concrete and steel rebar. Something roughly man-sized streaked out of the hole, arcing upward and dwindling into a pale dot in the sky before vanishing completely.
She felt her heart pounding in her throat as she realized what she’d just witnessed. The meta from whom Morrigan had rescued the boy had just left the building, and something told her the man wasn’t happy.
She reached into her jacket pocket and quickly dialed the code for Morrigan’s PCD. After half a heartbeat too long, she answered.
“I think the guy’s coming after you,” she said hurriedly before the other woman could say anything. “He blasted through the side of the parking garage and took to the sky. The fucker can fly.”
“He can?”
Valiant heard a quick, murmured conversation, then Morrigan came back on the line. “Get back to base, let everyone else know what’s going on. I’m going to drop Casey by the house and try to lead his stepfather away. If necessary, I’ll go toe-to-toe with the motherfucker, but I’d rather avoid it if I can.”
“No shit? The last time you tried that sort of thing, you got your ass kicked and ended up in jail.”
“Don’t remind me,” Morrigan replied tersely. “Just do as I said. This son-of-a-bitch is dangerous. If I don’t miss my guess, he could be a serious threat to everything we’re trying to accomplish here.”
Valiant wanted to ask her why she’d gotten herself—and the rest of them—involved in the first place if this guy was that much of a risk. She knew she wouldn’t like the answer, even if she received one. Immortals weren’t known for being particularly forthcoming with their mortal employees. She had no reason to think Morrigan would be any different.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“Once I get away from…” another wisp of murmured conversation came through the phone, “…from Khaos—what the fuck stupid kind of name is that?” she added irritably, “I’ll be back so we can work out what to do next.”
“Be careful,” Valiant warned her.
“Always,” the immortal replied and cut the connection.
Sighing, Valiant keyed in the house phone. Chikitar answered, then transferred her to Bryon when she asked. She didn’t want to do it, but someone had to tell the vampire what Morrigan had done now. And she was the only one who could.
***
Bryon growled low under his breath and gently—oh so gently—set the phone back in its cradle. He glanced over at the procyon, who’d taken apart one of their spare television sets and was currently putting it back together. Or trying, at least. “We’re going to have company,” he said.
The raccoon took the pencil from his teeth and scratched something on the notebook in front of him. “Yeah? Should we be concerned?”
Damn good question, Bryon thought. He shrugged. “Not sure yet.” He filled Chikitar in on what Valiant had told him.
Chikitar blew out a long breath, set the pencil down, and pushed himself away from the table. “Should we tell the others?”
Bryon considered it. “Not yet. No telling how they’d react to this particular development.” Morrigan wasn’t exactly following any kind of script here. The assignment—such as it was—seemed hard enough to get a handle on without Morrigan throwing them a curve ball every time they weren’t looking. She could be the one to spring the news on them. He sure as hell wasn’t in any hurry to do it.
“Don’t worry so much. I’m sure it’ll work out fine. Even if your girlfriend has gone off the deep end.”
Bryon sighed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Maybe that’s her problem,” Chikitar shot back with a feral grin. “How long has it been since she got lucky?”
“How the hell should I know?” Bryon replied irritably. He was lying, of course. He knew she’d been chaste since at least since he’d returned from his homeworld and gone to work for her. For whatever reason, she’d set her cap for Bryon and wasn’t about to do anything to ruin her chances with him. She’d correctly assumed he wouldn’t be interested in being involved with a woman who thought of sex as a recreational sport. Maybe it was provincial of him, but that’s the way he felt.
Why she was infatuated with him in the first place, he couldn’t begin to guess. He liked her well enough, he guessed, but he wasn’t sure he wanted anything more than they already had. A burgeoning friendship and a good working relationship seemed enough.
However, it seemed as though her interest in him was spurring her to look beyond herself for a change and actually make an effort to do the right thing once in a while. Even if she was doing the wrong things for the right reasons, he figured, it was still an improvement.
And who knew—maybe the boy would end up being an asset. One could always hope.
Protecting an innocent kid was the right thing, no matter how you cut it. Even if it did end up being a headache they didn’t need. Didn’t mean he was thrilled by the whole situation. “She should be here in a matter of minutes. Tell the others I want to talk to them.”
The procyon nodded and left the room to find the rest of the team.
Bryon sat down at the table and took the cellphone PCD from his pocket. He contemplated dialing Morrigan, but decided against it. He shut the phone and shoved it back in his pocket. Why should he call her? They’d be best off discussing it in person.
He rubbed at his eyes with the tips of his fingers, knowing that he’d have a headache if he were still mortal. The woman was doing her damnedest to drive him crazy and there wasn’t anything he could really do about it. Unless, of course, he decided to walk away.
There were a variety of reasons he wasn’t about to do that, no matter what provocations were laid at his feet. He was doing the right thing here. He knew it. Not just here, but anywhere people were oppressed and downtrodden. That’s why the Knights of Anarchy existed, after all. To give even the most subjugated a chance to fight back.
He could live with Morrigan’s infatuation, and even her occasionally over-the-top innuendo trying to break through his reticence. He wasn’t interested in a relationship with anyone right now, but she seemed caught between taking it personally and not believing him at all. He found that annoying as hell.
He’d been no stranger to sex, at least, as a mortal man. One did not grow up the child of a territorial governor without attracting a few potential bedmates, even if one happened to be homely as a chunk of firewood. Which Bryon was not. But this new life—this new existence—required a lot more of him than his old life, and he wanted to have his feet under him and a real grasp of his potential as a vampire and whatever else before he complicated his life with either sex or love.
Now if he could only get Morrigan to accept that. She was a willful creature, a fact she freely admitted. She was accustomed to getting what she wanted and being able to seduce any man or woman on whom she set her sights.
Bryon had yet to give her the opportunity. Every time she tried to push things in that direction, he’d thrown up a distraction. And it had worked well enough, so far. She knew what he was doing and, it seemed to him, she found the challenge intriguing. As if he were playing “hard to get” or something.
Midellis and Santos meandered into the room, Kitsune in tow. Santos glanced over at the disassembled television set and sat down in front of it. He pulled the notebook closer and peered down at it curiously. “What are you doing with this?” he asked Chikitar as the procyon entered.
“I think I can turn this thing into a transportation portal,” Chikitar answered, puffing out his chest just a little.
Santos arched an eyebrow. “Really? How?”
“It’s a variation of what Loki did on your Earth back before the Cen War,” Chikitar explained. “He used power-lines and cellphone towers to construct the so-called ‘mage road’. I’m not sure why he didn’t just use the cable TV lines. They pretty much run anywhere, and the circuitry in the televisions or cable boxes is definitely complex enough to set up the necessary matrices.”
Kitsune leaned over his shoulder, his tail swishing the air gently as he read the procyon’s notes. “Nice work,” he told Chikitar, glancing back up at him. “I think you’re right—it should work.”
“I don’t understand,” Bryon cut in. “What’s so special about this particular idea?”
“Ring-tail here has come up with a way to make the transport spell self-replicating. You do know that binding mana to patterns or circuits makes it self-regenerating, right? Well, what Chikitar did was come up with a way to make the spell able to use that replicating ability to place itself in other, similar systems across the country. Any circuit board that follows the same pattern and has the same structure will become another waystation on the route stretching not only from coast to coast here in the U.S., but possibly even the world.”
“You want to try explaining that again for me?” Bryon asked. “I know almost nothing about magic.” And he wanted to keep it that way—at least for the time being. He hadn’t even gotten a grasp on his vampiric powers yet.
“It means,” Kitsune explained carefully, “that anyone who knows the password the bandit here has set up will be able to instantly transport him or herself, and anyone else along for the ride, to any location in the world within about thirty miles of a television or cable box carrying the same circuitry and the self-replicating magical pattern. If this works the way it looks like it will, he’ll have single-handedly established the ‘mage road’ on this world. And they won’t even have to be a mage.” The fox scratched the side of his muzzle thoughtfully. “Quite an accomplishment.”
Bryon nodded. “Sounds like it.”
Kitsune shrugged. “That’s why you brought him along, isn’t it? He’s a mage-engineer. I, on the other hand, am not. We all have our specialties, don’t we?”
The fox sounded a little put out by the procyon’s achievement, Bryon thought, but decided to ignore it. As long as he didn’t allow his jealousy to affect his judgment or compromise the mission, they could all live with it. Morrigan is already doing enough of that, he thought humorlessly. Then he felt immediately guilty for it. She was in the process of changing who she was, and here he was mentally castigating her for it. Stupid, Bryon. Really stupid. She deserved better. At least he hadn’t said it to her face. Thinking it was bad enough.
He had to admit, however, that this latest gambit of hers had taken him entirely by surprise. He would’ve never expected her to take on a meta for the sake of a child she didn’t even know. Or anyone else, for that matter. She’d never struck him as the maternal type. Not even a little.
Then again, maybe he’d been making an unwarranted assumption. He didn’t really know her all that well. She’d been alive for hundreds of centuries, after all, and that kind of a life span could only serve to carve a personality into multiple facets. Getting to know the real Morrigan was a lot like peeling an onion. There was always another layer to reveal and it tended to provoke at least a few tears along the way.
Chapter Five: Suffer the Children
“Who are you?” Casey asked for the third time. Morrigan shot a glare in his direction and turned into the driveway. Gravel crunched under the SUV’s tires as she wheeled the vehicle off the paved drive and into a stand of trees a few hundred feet from the main house. She’d grown sick of the crowded conditions and lack of privacy at the hotel and used her considerable influence to get into a manor house some distance from the city proper. It hadn’t taken very long for everyone to settle in, either. Privacy was a requirement for what they were doing.
“I’m the person who saved your ass,” she replied waspishly. “Can we do this later?” She unbuckled her seatbelt and slid to the ground, aiming her gaze skyward for a moment as if expecting to see the boy’s stepfather descending on them like a bird of prey. Don’t get paranoid, Morrigan. He’s a meta, not a mage.
From what the boy had told her, the man who called himself Khaos was more than a typical meta. His power seemed to be the absorption of other talents. He could assume them for a limited time by touching someone, but to gain them permanently, he’d taken to killing them and actually consuming part of their brains.
Casey’s explanation of the process, delivered in a dry monotone nearly as creepy as the subject matter itself, left her feeling slightly nauseous. “Let’s get you inside.”
He didn’t argue. He followed her meandering route through the trees to the back door, then into the kitchen. She wasn’t surprised to open the door and find Chikitar sitting at the small table, an open notebook computer and a handful of dismantled cell phones in front of him.
His brow furrowed as he glanced from her to the boy. “Who do we have here, Morrigan?”
“This is Casey, Chikitar.”
The procyon inclined his head in greeting. “Nice to meet you, Casey.”
The boy, for his part, seemed struck speechless by the astounding sight of an upright, sentient raccoon sitting at the kitchen table. Morrigan suppressed a snicker. It was one of the first times she’d actually seen him struck dumb and something told her to enjoy the moment.
“N-nice to m-meet you too, Ch-Chikitar,” Casey stammered, eyes slightly glazed over. He shot a look at Morrigan but held his questions in his gaze rather than speaking them aloud.
The boy had some sense, she thought approvingly. Good thing. He wanted for an explanation, she realized, but she wasn’t really interested in giving him one yet. He’d learn what he needed to know soon enough.
The kitchen door swung open and Kitsune paused in the doorway, exchanging a long stare with the boy. It was hard to say which one of them looked more startled. Apparently, Valiant hadn’t called in with the information yet. Or, she thought, Bryon hasn’t bothered to share it with anyone else.
She was leaning more towards the latter explanation. Maybe he’d simply wanted to wait until she could explain her decision to them herself. She couldn’t blame him for that. Unfortunately, she didn’t have an explanation. She’d acted on impulse, something that she really didn’t want them to emulate. It was too easy to stumble over the law of unintended consequences when one went off half-cocked like she had. She knew better, yet here she was.
She’d been planning on taking off again once she dropped Casey off, but had thought better of it on the drive over. She had no reason to believe Khaos could track them down here. And, even if he could, there was safety in numbers. She might be able to take him down without help, but she’d be a fool to forgo help when she might need it.
She’d tried to get the kid to tell her what his meta power was, but he wasn’t being particularly forthcoming. She thought that was odd. It wasn’t as if she were asking him how he’d been infected in the first place. She already had a good idea how that happened, as disgusting as the thought was. From what she’d been able to glean from the boy’s comments so far, Khaos had gone out and deliberately infected others, sowing meta abilities in others he could come along and harvest later. So on top of everything else he is, he’s a fucking rapist too. Why am I not surprised?
This world would be a whole lot better off if Khaos was no longer walking around and sucking oxygen.
He probably thought he was untouchable, the poor, deluded bastard. Morrigan grinned. He’d been dealing with amateurs. Morrigan was a professional. She may not have had many meta notches on her belt, but she had no doubt she could terminate him as easily as any other mortal.
She was actually looking forward to putting an end to him. That in itself violated several of her long-standing rules, but she found she didn’t mind that so much. Not when the target was the kind of scum-sucking bastard the man who called himself Khaos seemed to be. There was a time she would never have killed for what she called personal reasons. These days she killed for a hell of a lot more reasons than she had for most of her life. The only thing that bothered her was that she was starting to enjoy entirely too much.
Judge, jury, and executioner. She didn’t even question whether or not she had the right to decide someone else’s fate. She had the ability, and the experience, and that was enough for her.
“We’re going to be looking after Casey for a while. And if his stepfather happens to show up, we’re going to turn him into fertilizer.”
The fox cocked his head and regarded her in puzzlement, while Chikitar simply chuckled and sat back down in front of the dismantled television strewn across the kitchen table.
“Has Valiant showed up yet?”
“She just got here,” Chikitar replied casually, picking up a piece of paper inscribed with some kind of diagram. “I think she’s in the living room with the others.”
“You two might as well come with us,” she told them. “I’ll brief everyone at the same time.”
“I’ll be along in a minute,” Chikitar said as he made a few more notations on the pad in front of him.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself. Casey—do me a favor and follow Kitsune. He’ll introduce you to the others.”
Casey met her gaze for a long moment, then nodded. It didn’t even seem to bother him that he’d be following a bipedal fox only a few inches taller than he was. The kid seemed remarkably resilient. And pretty damn trusting, considering what he’d been through.
She allowed herself a touch of admiration for his spirit. Casey was a strong little man. He’d been forced to become one to deal with the debacle that had been his life since his mother had met and married the man who now called himself Khaos. If she killed Khaos, it wouldn’t be for her that she did it. It would be for Casey.
“I already know what’s up,” Chikitar said after the other two had left the kitchen. “Bryon filled me in on what Valiant told him.” He didn’t sound particularly concerned. “From what the kid said, this guy has multiple meta abilities. He’s been killing other metas and stealing their powers.” The procyon shifted in his chair and stared at her over his shoulder. “Are you worried?”
“No. We’ll manage him just fine.”
“Good to hear. On a more relevant note—relevant to our mission, that is—I’ve come up with a way to implement something a lot like the mage road you used to have on Earth Prime before the Cen War. That should make getting around a little easier.”
“Really? That’s great. How’d you do it?”
He grinned back at her. “Trade secret,” he said slyly. “I’m the mage-engineer, remember? Besides, why should you care how I did it? All that should matter to you is if it works.”
He had a point. She was an immortal mage. She didn’t need to be a mage-engineer or even really understand how they did what they did. That’s why she’d brought him along, after all. “Is that what you’re doing now?”
“Just putting the finishing touches on the spells I’m going to use to activate it. If my calculations are correct, we’ll be able to pretty much transport ourselves anywhere in the country in a matter of seconds. Then maybe we can get to the business of preventing the war ArchAngel was talking about.”
She didn’t miss the note of admonishment in his voice. She deserved it, more or less. She’d allowed herself to be distracted from the matter at hand. But she hadn’t been the only one. Valiant had started this chain of events, after all.
“I’ve also tried to tie it in with our PCDs, and made these pins to allow even the non-mages among us access to the system.” He tossed her what looked like a brooch, formed into a complex Celtic knot.
She turned on her magesight and saw the thing glowing with unreleased magical energy. “And you’ve set it up so anyone can activate the spell?”
He nodded. “That’s the idea. I associated a single thread with a word—a different word for each pin, then another one to determine destination. All someone has to do is name a city or place anywhere in the U.S., including a single reference for headquarters—which is here, by the way—and they’ll be transported there.”
If he said the spell would work that way, she had to take his word for it. It wasn’t as though she could dissect it to make certain it operated as advertised. Well, she could, but it would most likely be a very bad idea. It would not only offend him, but deconstructing a spell could be dangerous in itself. If one lost control of even one strand while picking it apart, the rest of the spell might go off. She’d choose to trust him and hope she wasn’t wrong to do so. The complexity of this particular spell meant that if he miscalculated somewhere, whoever used it would be up the proverbial creek.
He met her gaze, as if he could read her mind. Hell, maybe he could. There was nothing saying he couldn’t have some psi talents on top of being a mage. And the Fates only knew she wasn’t immune to psychic probes like Deryk Shea or Raven were. “They’re good,” he said. “But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll test them all out myself.”
It would, actually, but she didn’t think it polite to admit it aloud. He seemed to pick up on this as well and gave her what, had he been human, she might have taken as a wry grin. “It’s okay. A lot of mages have issues with trusting spells put together by others. Understandable, really. If you do the spell, you know it’s good. If someone else does…” He shrugged. “You have to take their word for it.”
She nodded. “I suppose so. I’d never thought of it like that.”
He gave her one of those “you’re kidding” looks and sighed. “You’re really not used to working with other mages, are you?”
“Is it that obvious?” She wasn’t really all that accustomed to working with anyone, when you got right down to it. She had made use of various assets during her long career, but they had been contacts and informants rather than partners or even employees. Tools.
Now that she was running her own agency, she found herself having to depend on people a lot more than she ever had in all her long existence. And, for all intents and purposes, she now had a partner. A partner who probably wasn’t all that happy with her at the moment, come to think of it.
She patted him on the shoulder in a distracted way and stepped through the door into the dining room, quickly crossing it to the hallway leading to the living room. She heard the voices of disagreement long before she got there. Even though they were trying to be quiet about it, the majority of them could hear far better than any mortal and it made such conversations a matter of public record more often than not.
“She’d be busting our ass if any of us did something like this,” she heard Santos saying.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Valiant snapped back at him. “She’s the boss, remember? She can do things she’d ream us for if she wants.”
“Even if it jeopardizes the mission?”
“There’s no reason to believe it jeopardizes the mission, Santos,” came Midellis’s cool interjection. “As things stand, we haven’t been gaining any ground on that front anyway.”
Morrigan squared her shoulders and turned the corner into the living room, pausing under the archway and sweeping them all with a searing glare. “Thanks to Chikitar, we may be one step closer to being able to finish the mission. Our major obstacle was transportation and that’s been handled.” She glanced over at Casey, who’d taken a seat on the couch and was leafing through TV Guide, apparently unconcerned about the discord his presence was causing.
“As far as the rest,” she continued before anyone could respond, “there isn’t one of you who wouldn’t have done what I did. The kid was in trouble and I did what I thought I had to. If I believed for a moment that any one of you could’ve walked away in those circumstances, you wouldn’t be working for me in the first place.”
She paused a second, realizing that she meant it. My God—now I’m beginning to sound like Raven. Or Jasmine Tashae. She nearly groaned out loud. “Yes, the KOA takes money to topple corrupt and tyrannical governments. But we also do it because people deserve better than to live under them. We’re not mercenaries. We charge enough to cover our costs and purchase new equipment. But we exist to help the weak and vulnerable against the powerful. Sometimes that means taking a chance like the one I took.”
“That’s not the impression I got earlier,” Valiant said, eyes narrowing as she stared back at her.
Morrigan shrugged. “I’d like to say there’s a difference, but I have to admit it’s a small one. What I did, and how I did it, left our cover safely intact. Even if Khaos—that’s Casey’s stepfather—happens to track us down, we can take care of him with none the wiser. That’s a far cry from engaging in a pitched battle in full view of a bunch of normals…” She sighed. “Which I also did earlier.”
She rarely lied to herself. Or, at least, she did her damnedest not to. And in this case, if she’d tried to take the high ground, she would’ve had to lie to herself about it all. She’d screwed up too, when she tried to take down Fenris. Or, at least, this dimension’s version of Fenris. She’d seen what she thought was a lycanthrope and acted without thinking.
When she’d decided to intervene on Casey’s behalf, she’d been in full possession of her faculties. She’d understood the risk and thought it acceptable. And still did. “People like Khaos are the reason they start the war,” she pointed out. “It would be stupid of them to allow evil psychopaths with meta powers to run rampant through the population. So part of our mission, in my opinion, is to eliminate them where we can.”
“That wasn’t what you had in mind when you stepped in though, was it?” Santos’s voice was dry as a Saharan summer day.
She was tempted to lie to him, but had the feeling it would just make her look foolish. He’d know she was lying and that pretty much defeated the purpose of deception in the first place.
Bryon was looking at her funny, she noticed suddenly, as if he wanted to say something he didn’t want the others to hear. Well, I hope it can wait. This is hardly the time for it. “If Khaos does find us, we’re going to need to take him down fast. Casey says he has more than one ability and—“
“What do you mean, more than one ability? I thought metas only got one power.”
“This is true. Unless, of course, their power is consuming the powers of other metas. I don’t know how he does it—sounds like a question we should ask Loki if we ever get the chance. In the meantime, Casey will fill us in on what we’re up against.”
The boy looked up, eyes widening. “I’m not very good at talking in front of a bunch of people.”
Valiant threw him a dazzling smile. If he’d hit puberty in truth, that smile would have one of two effects. Either it would make him more willing to do anything it took to please her, or he’d freeze up like a rabbit held paralyzed by the gaze of a snake.
“Do I have to stand up or anything?”
Santos laughed at this. “This isn’t a classroom assignment, Casey. Just tell us what we need to know in your own words.”
The boy thought about it, then nodded. “Khaos is a killer. His real name is Karl Konovavich, but he calls himself Khaos. He kills people so he can eat their brains and gain their powers.”
“Eat their brains? That’s how he does it?” Valiant pulled a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“You’re telling me? Sometimes I had to watch. What’s worse is that my turn would have come eventually. He told me so too many times to count.”
“Bastard,” Valiant muttered under her breath.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your mother?” Midellis asked him.
The boy peered up at him, momentarily stunned by his appearance. It had to be strange to be confronted by an elf when you’d been told all your life that they weren’t real. “She’s dead,” Casey said. “She was one of his first victims. He infected her with the virus, waited for it to take hold, and then killed her. He ate her brain to absorb her powers.”
Midellis flushed and looked as though he might get sick right there on the spot.
“Don’t puke on the carpet,” Valiant growled, elbowing him.
“Huh? Oh. That’s disgusting.” Most elves were vegetarians, like their progenitors, the Sidhe, though some retained some of their human ability to digest animal proteins. It was considered very gauche in their society to do so, however, so most didn’t take advantage of that option even if they could. The notion of eating a piece of meat from an intelligent being was damn near enough to make him lose his last meal on the spot.
Morrigan felt for him. She really did. On some level. But disgust at the notion of eating human brains paled next to the disgust she herself felt knowing this Khaos character had deliberately raped and infected innocent people with the virus so he could kill them and steal whatever powers that developed. “If this is too difficult for you to hear, Midellis, maybe you should hang in the kitchen with Chikitar.” That snapped her mind back to the procyon, who said he’d be along shortly.
He was definitely an engineer, she thought with a mental chuckle. He probably meant to come in and participate in the discussion, but, like most engineers, he ended up too caught up in what he was doing to remember he had somewhere else to be.
Morrigan turned her attention back to the boy. “So what powers does Khaos have now?”
“He can fly,” Casey replied, sinking back in the sofa, his gray eyes filling with pain. “That was my mother’s power.” He looked out the large picture window overlooking the front yard and his hands knotted into fists in his lap. “He is also almost invulnerable if he’s moving. The faster he’s going, the more indestructible he becomes. That’s why he’s most dangerous when he’s in the air. He also has super-hearing and telescopic vision. He can see and hear things a long way off. I’m not sure how far.”
“None of those things sound so bad. I think Valiant alone could give him a run for his money.”
Casey glanced over at her and shrugged. He didn’t look as though he believed it, but Morrigan didn’t care about that.
“Anything else?” Morrigan asked, feeling worse than she could ever have anticipated. The kid was suffering and their questioning wasn’t helping matters much.
“I know he gained another power the other day, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Great,” muttered Kitsune.
“I’m sorry!” snapped Casey, eyes suddenly glittering with unshed tears.
Valiant shot a glare at the fox and sat down on the couch next to the boy. She patted his arm clumsily, as if unsure of how to offer comfort. Morrigan was just glad she had done it, knowing that she’d be even more inept than the lycanthrope.
A surge of pity for the boy swept through her. She did her best to suppress it. He deserved better than pity.. “We’ll take care of him,” she told him. “Santos—break into your weapon stash and grab your biggest gun. Midellis—ready your most powerful offensive spell. Kitsune—get me an address or other location for the son of a bitch. Valiant—you stick with Casey. If he somehow gets past us, you make sure he doesn’t get his grubby mitts on the kid.”
“What will you be doing?” Kitsune asked out of the blue.
She turned a vicious smile in his direction. “I’m going to put together a ward that’ll fry him like a gnat in a bug-zapper if he takes one step on this property.”
“And me?” Bryon asked softly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t worry,” she replied. “I haven’t forgotten about you. As soon as Chikitar says he’s ready, you and he are going to test out our new toy.”
***
Bryon found Morrigan on the roof some twenty minutes later, apparently doing some preliminary sightings for the defensive spell she planned to lay out over the house and property. He climbed out the dormer window and onto the shingles, testing them carefully before ascending to the peak and crossing to the chimney where the immortal mage sat.
“I take it he’s not ready,” she remarked dryly, glancing over her shoulder.
He shrugged in response. “Not yet. Are you okay?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘okay,’” she answered obliquely. “I’m not injured, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s not,” he said with a note of exasperation creeping into his voice. “You haven’t really been yourself the last few days.”
“Huh. Imagine that. Plucked out of my own time and place and thrown two centuries into the past, into an era I didn’t particularly enjoy the last time around, suddenly in charge of a bunch of preternaturals and paranormals I can’t hope to control, and charged with the job of saving a whole world from an ultimately destructive war. Gee, I can’t imagine why I’d be a little out of sorts.”
He regarded her in stony silence for a long moment, noticing for the first time in quite a while how beautiful she was. The wind stirred her hair into a flame-like dance and her emerald eyes glittered fiercely with anger and frustration as she glared back at him. “You’re not Athena, Morrigan. You don’t need to control the rest of us. You just need to be sure we know our jobs and that we’ll do our part to pull this off. And what do you have against this time, anyway? It doesn’t seem all that bad to me.”
She gave an undignified snort. “You’re kidding, right? If you ignore the stench of hydrocarbons being spewed into the air, the almost constant noise, the light pollution that blots out any chance of seeing the stars unless you’re up on a mountain or twenty miles out to sea, then you just have to tolerate fascist, corporatist governments and self-absorbed citizens. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries pretty much sucked, Bryon. I was there.”
“So you were. And what did you do to make any of it any better?”
“I wiped away some of the scum clinging to the sides of the gene pool,” she shot back.
He had to laugh at that. He could imagine it being true enough. “Okay, fine. So what makes this time around any different? We’re still planning on wiping away some of the scum clinging to the sides of the gene pool. Like this Khaos fellow. And it might come to pass that we have to eliminate the politicians trying to start a war with the freaks just to save them all from themselves.” At least, he mused, that’s how she wants to play it.
“It might,” she said slowly. “Though, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather come up with a way to avoid that.”
That surprised him. He figured she’d consider that the easy way to go about stopping the war before it started. If you kill everyone who’s trying to make it happen, it would pretty much take care of the threat, wouldn’t it? “Okay…why?”
“Because it would be too fucking obvious,” she growled. “We’d have to target everyone trying to rile up public opinion against the metas. Someone would notice, I’m sure. Then they’d blame the metas. So we wouldn’t gain anything from it.”
She’d obviously already thought it out. So she was a couple dozen moves ahead of him. Nothing unusual about that. “So what’s the alternative plan?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I come up with one.”
Well, that didn’t sound particularly promising. No wonder she’d been so tense lately. She didn’t have any kind of plan at all. She was flying as blind as the rest of them. “You’ve got nothing?”
“I have a barely germinated seed of a plan. It starts by taking out this Khaos asshole. Then we’re going to go after every goddamn meta-villain out there…from Lowbrow to the Harpy. The meta-heroes haven’t been able to do it…they’ve been trying to stay inside the law. They can’t just go around killing these fuckers. We can.”
“And you expect that to help us how?”
“It’s not really the heroes that people have a problem with. It’s the meta-psychos. The killers and thieves and perverts who use their powers to gain an upper hand on the rest of society. The ones that the heroes end up going after and taking down half a city block trying to stop. If the metas were just helping the cops deal with ordinary criminals, the people would probably be okay with it. It wouldn’t be endangering their lives and livelihoods every time.”
As plans went, it wasn’t a bad one. He could see where it might do the job. “But you’re talking about murder.”
“I’m talking about justice,” she said tersely. “I’m talking about doing the same thing with the metas here that Raven did with the vampires back on Earth Prime before the war. Right now half the meta-villains have never been caught, and those who have simply escaped again or screwed up the trial so the authorities were forced to release them. The laws haven’t been able to keep up with the changes the metas have wrought in the whole system. If it becomes obvious that playing fast and loose with one’s powers gets one killed, there are going to be far fewer metas taking that path. They might actually have to find ways to use their abilities to benefit society rather than just themselves.”
Bryon heard the distant rumble of a motorcycle and lifted his head, staring down the road at the single headlight coming toward them down the long stretch of road leading to the house. “Looks like we have company.”
“I see that.” She frowned. “I don’t think it’s Khaos. In fact, I’m willing to bet it’s Shadowkin.”
“Why would it be Shadowkin?”
“Because I called him. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need something to keep the heroes off our backs. They’re going to want to play at being the good guys and stop us, regardless of who we’re killing, and we can’t afford to have them get in our way. Could you imagine? The damn vigilante groups coming after us because we’re taking out their enemies? They would, too. We won’t be acknowledged and recognized heroes—we’ll be renegades. We’ll be killers, even if the people we kill are total assholes who deserve to die.
“That’s where Shadowkin comes in. He’s going to run interference for us while we try to get the ball rolling. Once we have momentum we’ll be a lot harder to stop. And there’s no way they’re going to have the resources to stop a bunch of mages, a vampire, and a lycanthrope. Especially when they don’t really know what we are.”
He couldn’t argue with that. It was the only plan they had, after all. Maybe it would even work. He jerked in surprise as Morrigan kicked away from the chimney, slid down the roof, and dropped over the edge. It was all he could do to stop himself from leaping after her in a futile and particularly stupid attempt at rescue. She was an immortal, and a mage, and hardly requiring rescue.
He did, however, leap to the edge of the roof and peer down at her as she strode across the yard toward the figure that was just now dismounting the motorcycle. After a moment’s hesitation, Bryon hurled himself off the edge, willing himself to float gently to the ground and finding, to his surprise, that his body obeyed his commands. He felt light, airy, and he drifted gently to Earth. Had he discovered his power? Or at least part of it? If so, exactly what had he done? He hadn’t really flown.
Thrusting off that thought, he strode across the lawn to where Morrigan and the meta were conversing. As he approached, he thought he heard a gasp of amazement come from Shadowkin, and the man took a step back from her as if horrified.
“What’s going on?” he asked, with forced casualness as he met the meta’s gaze.
Even hidden behind his mask of shadow, the man’s eyes were wide and full of disbelief and dismay. She’s told him of her plans, he realized, and he wants no part of them.
Too bad.
“There’s no other option,” Morrigan said. “Not unless you want to see this world destroyed.”
“I have only your word on that.”
“And my motive for lying to you about it all would be what, exactly?”
He didn’t have a good answer for that, but it didn’t stop him from trying to come up with one on the fly. “You’re a group of psychos who just want to kill people?”
“Is that a question or a statement?” Bryon heard the thinly-veiled anger in his own voice, though he was more angry with Morrigan for springing it on him so abruptly than he could be with the meta. Subtlety certainly wasn’t her strong suit, even when it was in her best interest. “We’re not crazy, man. We have a job to do, and this is the only way we can see to do it.”
“Your job? What, to prevent this war between mortals and metas she told me about?” He didn’t bother to hide his skepticism.
“That’s it,” Bryon sighed. “We’ll go ahead whether you help or not. But you know the players—you know who we’d have to watch out for, on the dark side and on the light. We don’t want to kill any innocents, but we will do what we have to in order to defend ourselves.”
He turned to Morrigan. “What the hell did you say to him? That we were going to start killing people?”
She gazed back at him blandly and shrugged. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? Besides, the villains aren’t really people, now are they?”
He grimaced, shaking his head in exasperation. “You’re really not good at this whole working with other people thing, are you?” He paused a moment, actually finding himself at a loss for words. “You didn’t have to be quite so blunt.”
“I can’t be a party to murder,” Shadowkin said, shaking his head and backing away again.
“If you don’t help us prevent it, you’re going to be party to a hell of a lot worse than murder,” Morrigan growled, taking a step toward him. “Like genocide. Or you’ll be just another fucking corpse.”
“Is that a threat?”
Bryon shoved Morrigan. Hard. “No, it’s not a threat. It’s a fact. When the war breaks out, you’re going to either have to choose sides or lay down and die. Those will be your only choices. What Miss Congeniality here was trying to say is that helping us now will prevent worse things from happening in the future.”
“It’s all still based on the idea that you come from the future and you know what’ll happen. I don’t know if I believe that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s crazy, that’s why not!”
Morrigan was glaring at Bryon, but he was doing his best to ignore it. It was situations like this that had originally prompted her to offer him the second hat slot in the agency, and he’d be damned if he’d let her attitude screw this up more than it already had. “What would it take to convince you we were telling you the truth?”
“Take me to the future.”
Bryon glanced at Morrigan, who shook her head. “That’s impossible,” she said. “We have no way to do it until we finish the mission.”
That was a detail she hadn’t bothered to share with the rest of them. “Wonderful. So we have no real choice but to succeed, eh?”
“More or less.”
“So taking you to the future is off the table,” he told Shadowkin. “What else you got?”
His glance darted from Morrigan to Bryon, then back. “She tells you that you’re stuck here and you just accept it?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
The meta seemed at a loss for words himself for a moment. Then, haltingly, he spoke. “I…I’m not sure I’ve ever trusted anyone that much.”
“Morrigan may be a lot of things,” Bryon told him, “but she’s not a liar. Usually.” His thoughts flashed back to when they met and the continually shifting stories she’d told Raven and Val until the truth had finally come out. She was working undercover at the time—lying to them was a lot like assuming false identities here. A necessity.
“I admit there’s something very strange about the lot of you. But that doesn’t corroborate your time travel story or the fact of this war you’re supposedly trying to prevent.”
“We don’t have all night,” Bryon said with a glance at his wristwatch. “In fact, I have about three hours before dawn.” The night had slipped away from him faster than he’d realized. He didn’t like that, especially since he was starting to feel the faint hint of the Thirst coming upon him. He’d have to feed within the next few days or else it would take matters into its own hands. So to speak.
He’d have to bring it up to Morrigan so they could work out a way to get him what he needed. He didn’t want to be hunting here, especially with the need to feed coming on the way it was. That made infecting a mortal or being forced to kill the victim to prevent them from turning a far more likely scenario.
“Come inside,” Morrigan told Shadowkin. “Maybe the others can come up with a way to convince you.”
He thought about it, then nodded once. “You have until dawn,” he said. “If I’m not convinced by then, I have to warn you—I’m going to be working against you instead of with you.”
“Fair enough,” Bryon said. I hope like hell someone here can do what we haven’t been able to manage. If not, I’m not sure Morrigan will let him leave alive. He, of course, said nothing of this aloud. “We’ll all do what we have to do, won’t we?”
Chapter Six: Crazy Little Thing
It took ArchAngel three days to track down Jasmine Tashae and Nyx Deathweb. He found them on a distant Earth, lying on a Hawaiian beach unspoiled by civilization or even natives. Apparently no one on this backwater had found the islands yet, and the two women were taking advantage of it.
They were sunning completely nude, of course, and he wasn’t quite sure which of them was more embarrassed by his sudden arrival and accidental voyeurism. For the first time in his recent memory, he actually didn’t regret being other than human, for the sight of two of the most beautiful women he’d ever met lying naked on the beach would surely have prompted an involuntary physical reaction in any red-blooded human male.
He was just glad he hadn’t arrived to catch them engaged in some random act of physical intimacy. Had that been the case, he wasn’t certain Jaz wouldn’t have done something instantly excruciating, if not necessarily fatal to one such as himself.
Nyx’s symsuit enveloped her in the blink of a mortal’s eye, but Jaz simply sat up and stared at him. Her face was a bit darker than its normal hue, but her refusal to acknowledge her embarrassment was pure Jasmine Tashae. Ruffled or not, she wasn’t about to blow her reputation for icy calm just because some male had seen her breasts.
And quite nice breasts they were, too.
He stilled that thought before it became more than a brief sparkle in the back of his mind. “I need to talk to you two,” he told them, gazing over their heads at the breaking surf.
“No, really?” Jaz’s voice dripped sarcasm thick as midwinter honey. She gestured and suddenly she was completely clothed. ArchAngel found himself caught between disappointment and relief. “What do you want, Justice?”
He glanced at Nyx, who’d curled her feet underneath her and peered at him curiously. She showed little of Jaz’s overt annoyance. Once she’d clothed herself, or allowed her sym to take care of it, her embarrassment and subsequent anger had seemed to vanish entirely.
Both women were dark-skinned with long black hair, slim and athletic, but it was there that their resemblance ended. Jaz was taller, longer of face, with a strong jaw and slightly tilted eyes. In ages past hers was a face that would most likely have been hidden behind a veil, as her body would have been swathed in a burkha, completely hidden from the lustful stares of men.
Nyx, born Nicole “Nikki” Sanchez, on the other hand, was equally athletic, but she was shorter, her face was slightly rounder, and her cheekbones just a little higher, reflecting the Native American ancestry she’d inherited from her Latin-American forebears.
It would be a more discriminating man than he who could decide which of the two women was the most beautiful.
And these thoughts were accomplishing nothing of his purpose for being here. “Where’s your imp?” he asked her.
The two women exchanged looks. “What’s this about?” Jaz asked him.
“Quickfingers approached me the other day,” he explained.
The taller woman blew out her breath in an explosive sigh. “And that brought you here?”
“Among other things,” he replied. “And now that I’ve found you, I’m reluctant to interrupt your peaceful interlude for the other things on my list.”
“Interrupt away,” Nyx cut in, flashing a smile. “I was getting tired of sunning and surfing anyway.”
“Speak for yourself,” Jaz said with a grimace.
“I thought I had,” Nyx shot back, undaunted.
“You’ve been surfing?” he interrupted, his memory casting him back to his childhood, when Ben and Amanda Dalmas had taken him to the California coast with their own son and taught both of them to surf. He hadn’t thought of that in decades. It was one of the few normal memories of his childhood, when you got right down to it. Normal, if one set aside the fact that they’d traveled via the mage road, courtesy of Amanda, and that Ben had been forced to dissuade a few would-be board thieves by showing them the wolf that lay within the man.
And they call that a childhood? The question was mixed with both humor and disgust. He couldn’t help wishing, occasionally, that he’d been granted some other life, that he hadn’t been born with this destiny, this wyrd. But if wishes were horses, all dreamers would ride. Something his mother used to say to him, back in the day.
Of course, his wishes could conjure a horse, if he so chose, but he still grasped her point.
“Is Q still whining?” Jaz asked, plopping back down on the sand and tunneling her feet beneath the warm wetness of it.
“Uh…yeah. He’s really not happy about this.”
“He’ll get over it,” Nyx said. “Jinx is at least as reliable a servant as Quickfingers is…if not more so.”
“Jinx? You named it Jinx?”
“Yep.” She narrowed her eyes and gazed at him with renewed intensity. “So what other things did you want to talk to us about?”
He hesitated for a long moment, then shrugged. “I sent Morrigan and Bryon out on what may have been a fool’s errand.”
That caught their interest. Jaz folded her arms over her chest and leaned back against something he couldn’t see, tilting a brow at him and waiting oh-so-patiently for him to continue.
Nice trick, he thought. Smiling slyly, he brought a high-end beach chair into existence and sat down in it, kicking up the leg rest and leaning back with a contented sigh. Of course, I have a few tricks of my own. “The one thing you can’t do is tell Athena about this.”
Jaz snorted. “Athena? Are you shitting me? I’d sooner waste my energy trying to strangle her than tell her anything.”
That was true enough, he thought. “Fine. I sent Bryon, Morrigan, and a few of their agents back in time on another Earth to prevent a devastating war between the normals and the metas there.”
Shock registered on both of their faces. Time travel had been banned for a very good reason, they knew. What they couldn’t know was that he’d finagled it so no timeline split would result from his meddling, in this particular case, at least. Whether they failed or succeeded, the end result would be the destiny of that particular Earth. If they did fail, there would be no redemption for anyone there.
The downside, of course—one that he’d not deigned to share with them—was that whatever its fate, they’d share in it. He wouldn’t be able to rescue them if the mission went awry. They’d have to survive on their own until they could return to Starhaven under their own power. And that wouldn’t be possible until after the point in time which he’d taken them from in the first place. It was a dirty trick, he had to admit. And there was no telling how Morrigan would react should she become aware of what he’d done to them.
Neither Jaz nor Nyx looked particularly thrilled with him once he’d laid it all out for them. “Don’t you think that’s a bit of an overreach, Justice?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“So what does this have to do with us, ArchAngel?” Nyx wanted to know. A reasonable question, all in all. It was a good thing he had a reasonable answer.
“I want to send you two in as backup.”
“What?”
“I’m sure they’re all quite capable, but they’re not in your league. I want you two on the ground there to keep things from going straight to hell.”
“I’m sure Morrigan will appreciate the shit out of that,” Jaz groused. She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Justice. They don’t need us and I think we’d just screw things up.”
He looked askance at that. “What do you mean, screw things up? You two are legends. They could definitely use your help.”
“If we didn’t end up undermining whatever they were trying to do,” Jaz said. “If you want to order us to do this, Justice, we will. But it’ll be under protest.”
ArchAngel couldn’t quite believe his ears. He certainly hadn’t anticipated this response. “I don’t understand. This is important.”
“Of course it is,” Nyx said with a soft sigh. “And we think your reason for wanting to send us in is well-intentioned. But it’s most likely unnecessary and might just sabotage everything you’re trying to accomplish.”
He was starting to get the point. If he made it a command, they’d do it, but they wanted him to know they thought it was a really bad idea from the start. If they went in and contacted Morrigan and the others, it would look as though he didn’t trust them to do the job. If they went in and tried to work independently, they might inadvertently end up underfoot.
He’d been a soldier, not a covert agent. He understood direct conflict far better than he did this sort of operation. Their expertise in this area far out-stripped his own, he realized, and he’d be a fool not to pay attention.
He nodded slowly. “Fine. Would you be willing to go in as a free safety? To stay out of the way and keep your head down unless something went south in a big way?”
The women exchanged glances once again. Jaz shrugged. “That’s different. If that’s all you want us to do…okay.”
“Great.” He clapped his hands together. “One more thing,” he added. “You’re both taking your imps along.”
***
“I just knew this was a stupid idea,” grunted Nyx, grabbing Jinx by one of his long, floppy ears and dragging him away from Quickfingers. Jaz had the blue imp by one foot, while he tried to claw his way across the floor toward his purple progeny, cursing angrily.
“What is it with imps?” her lover snarled, reaching out and smacking Quickfingers on the back of his head. It, predictably, had no effect.
“It’s not all imps,” Nyx said, “just him and any of the ones that he birthed. The others seem to get along just fine.”
She had a point, Jaz had to admit. Whatever the problem was, it revolved around the very first imp, the one she’d created when she was just a teenager so many years ago. The one who’d eaten himself into a near stupor, then proceeded to bud like some sort of magical fungus, producing literal scores of tiny implings which had gone off to terrorize Tacoma before being swept up en masse in a magical net and banished to the ethereal plane.
Imps, like all spirits, were nothing more than ultra-complex spells that had achieved some level of self-awareness. Naming an imp gave it an identity, which was why the practice was generally frowned upon by the general magical community. They were trouble enough without that sort of encouragement. Having an imp around could be a major nuisance, but it could also be extremely useful. Imps made great go-fers and general dog-robbers, assuming they could keep their attention focused on one thing long enough to complete an assigned task.
Quickfingers was more advanced than most, but both women knew he was special in more ways than one. He’d somehow learned how to modify himself and was therefore smarter, trickier, and far more dangerous in general than any of his progeny.
And Jaz was getting the distinct feeling that his children hated him for it. She’d never figured out why.
He wasn’t particularly paternal toward them either. In fact, he generally avoided other imps as if they carried some inconceivably deadly plague. Until it became unavoidable.
The two women lifted their gazes to one another and grinned. “If you two don’t stop this shit this instant,” Nyx said, “we’re going to stick you in a dimension pocket together and let you fight it out.”
Jaz nodded. “Two imps enter, one imp leaves.”
They both stopped struggling at the same time, gazing at the two women in turn with large, black, accusing eyes. There was something about imp eyes—maybe their resemblance to the large black buttons sewn on stuffed puppies that made them look so sad—but they could do injured better than just about any creature in existence.
“That’s just mean,” said Quickfingers.
“You are nasty and cruel women,” said Jinx, looking highly offended.
“Uh-huh,” said Nyx. “As if that should come as any surprise to either of you.”
Jaz affixed them both with a lethal glare. “We want you two to call a truce and stick by it.”
“We mean it,” Nyx told them. “The dimension pocket option is going to stay on the table.”
Both imps hung their heads and scratched at the sand with their toes like a couple of errant seven-year-olds. “Okay,” said Quickfingers. He lifted his gaze to Jinx and extended a hand. “Truce?”
Jinx stared at it, gave a curt nod, and took it. “Truce.”
Jaz didn’t let out a sigh of relief, but she wanted to. She lifted her gaze over the heads of the two imps and met Nyx’s gaze as her full, sensuous lips curled into a soft smile. “Sounds like we’re in business.”
“And we are.”
“Shall I do the honors, or will you?”
“I’ve got more practice with the temporal elements,” replied the willowy young Latina. “From when I was doing that bit of work for the Judges, remember?”
Jaz nodded. She did remember. It was when she’d met the younger woman. Unlike most of the other people she knew, Nyx hadn’t been recruited by the ordinary immortals into one of the interworld agencies. No, Nyx had been recruited by a completely different entity—a conglomeration of machine intelligences that had taken it upon themselves to monitor time travel and everything that went with it. Nyx had been recruited by these self-proclaimed “Judges,” along with an odd assortment of others, to find a way to prevent specific events from sprouting unnecessary timelines.
As it had turned out, the Judges had been fighting a war with another entity, one whose origins remained a mystery. As things progressed, the two different groups—the Judges, and those who served the other entity—managed to destroy or otherwise cancel each other out. It left Nyx and her teammates without a sponsor or specific job.
Jaz had fallen hard for the young parahuman and had offered her and her team a tentative position as a special strike force operating under the auspices of Mirage, which, in turn, operated under the umbrella of Magitech.
Artificer, who was one of Jaz’s oldest friends as well as the founder and current head of Magitech, hadn’t been fooled for even a second. A geek among geeks, he still had enough social aptitude to recognize what was going on. And, frankly, there were times when Magitech could have used a second team of field operatives to deal with something that arose when Mirage was otherwise engaged.
So the agency that had been known as Hex became part of the Magitech family, such as it was.
Nyx wasn’t an immortal, but she was a parahuman gifted with one of the original symsuits, designed by the hive intelligence that had first devised the things. That and her skill with magic made her a formidable agent in her own right. Partnered with Jaz, Nyx had proved to be nearly unstoppable.
She crafted a worldgate without another word, the silver doorway springing up like a radiant curtain of falling light in the form of a large archway wide enough for two people to walk through side by side, the arch tall enough that neither would need to duck her head to make it through.
ArchAngel had given them a precise coordinate for the universe into which they’d be jumping, including the temporal signature they’d want. He’d made it very clear that missing the intended mark would be a particularly bad idea, since the place was scheduled to erupt into a particularly nasty war within a few years. Morrigan and Company were there to keep that from happening, but, in case anything went wrong, the last thing Jaz and Nyx wanted would be to land in the middle of everything after things had gone straight to hell.
Giggling, the two imps leaped through the worldgate first, one after the other. Slightly shocked and more than a little concerned, Jaz followed, trusting that Nyx would be on her heels.
***
Several hours later, Jaz sank back in the bathtub with a contented sigh, allowing the jets to stroke her back like a lover’s caress. “You don’t know what you’re missing!” she called out to Nyx.
“I’m watching the news!” the other woman called back. “I’m thinking we may be able to find some reference to the others.”
Not if they’re doing their job right, Jaz thought, shaking her head. “We’ve both had a long day and deserve a little relaxation.”
The door opened and Nyx stuck her head in. “Yeah, that’s definitely the first thing on my mind after spending three weeks lounging in paradise.”
“We need to ease ourselves back into the job,” Jaz replied without missing a beat. “Come join me.”
Nyx sighed. “Is that all you think about?” she asked with a tiny laugh. “Woman, you’re insatiable.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m sure we’ll find the limits of my insatiability if we work on it real hard for the next several hours.”
Nyx leaned against the doorframe, hand on hip, and glared down at her. She didn’t look angry, precisely, but was certainly headed toward aggravated. “I love you, Jaz, but I’m not going to spend the next several hours in bed when we’ve got more important things to think about.”
Jaz waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, c’mon. You know that they don’t really need us here. ArchAngel just sent us in to help out if things get out of hand. We’re supposed to stay out of the way, remember? Why not enjoy ourselves while we’re here?”
“Seattle just passed a ban on the use of metahuman abilities within the city limits. There’s a good chance that the feds are using it as a test area for a national ban. There’s even talk about amending the Constitution.”
Jaz sat up, sloshing water over the sides of the tub. “Are you shitting me?”
“Not for a second,” Nyx replied. She walked over to the tub and crouched down next to it, reaching out and brushing a lock of raven hair away from Jaz’s cheek and staring deep into her eyes. “We just had three weeks together with no interruptions other than that unexpected squall that blew across the beach while we were…” she blushed, just slightly, then offered up a hesitant smile, “…too preoccupied to notice until it dumped on us. I think we can afford to pay attention to business for a few days, at least.”
Jaz felt a brief stab of guilt. Nyx was right, of course. After so many years of celibacy, the newfound physical passion that had consumed her since they’d become involved with one another had become like an addiction. She never felt quite complete unless she was in Nyx’s arms.
She’d never had anything crawl this deeply inside her skin before, never allowed anyone this close to her, and it scared the shit out of her. She knew that when they were together, physically, she possessed the other woman’s body and soul. When they were apart, she could feel the doubts nibbling at her like hungry mice. She didn’t like the feeling one little bit. If she didn’t learn to get a handle on it, she’d sabotage everything they’d been trying to build. She knew it, but sometimes it was as though she didn’t have control of herself anymore. Something else was in control, something dark, and possessive, and terrified of losing what Jaz had grown to consider vital to her well-being.
You’re being an idiot, Jaz, she told herself. And not for the first time. She sighed, almost a moan as it escaped her lips. “You’re right.” She snorted in mock irritation. “Come to think of it, you’re always right.”
“If only,” Nyx replied with a grin. “C’mon. Get out of the bath and get dressed. We’ll take a walk, maybe stop somewhere for a bite to eat.”
“You think maybe I can enjoy my bath for a little while longer?” Jaz asked. “I did just get in, after all.”
“Twenty minutes,” Nyx replied. “No longer.”
“Slave-driver.”
“You need one, you slacker.”
Rather than reply, Jaz slid down until her head sank under the water.
***
The two imps, for the moment footloose and without any direction, stood atop the Space Needle, gazing out over the city and Elliot Bay. Since the two women had forced them to come to terms, Quickfingers was, much to his surprise, finding that he liked having another imp around. Jinx was clever, if not quite as experienced as Quickfingers, but his ability to interact with the material world was a new development. Apparently they could see the real world, like a hungry man pressing his face against the restaurant window, but could not reach through to touch what they saw without being summoned.
Quickfingers nearly shivered thinking about it. It sounded like someplace as close to hell as he’d ever want to be. He was just thankful he could travel between the realms without effort. To find that his progeny could not—well, he wasn’t sure how that made him feel. A little disturbed, if he was going to be honest with himself. He’d have to see if he could do something about that. He wouldn’t be able to convince the immortals and others that they should have the freedom to move around like he could, but maybe, just maybe, he could get them a day off now and then.
It was something to consider, at least.
Jinx bounced up and down in place, eager to get started. “So what do you want to do?”
“Oh, I’m sure we can find something interesting in a city as big as this one.” Quickfingers grinned back at him.
The younger imp flung himself off the side, shrieking like a wild thing as he hurtled downward. Quickfingers simply teleported to the bottom and waited for his child to arrive. Which he did. He hit the ground and bounced thirty feet straight back up. On the next bounce, he dropped effortlessly to the asphalt and grinned back at Quickfingers. “So, Dad…what do we do now?”
Quickfingers flung out one arm and laughed. “Anything we want.”
The two spirits spent the rest of the night entertaining themselves at a rock concert, carefully and systematically exchanging the contents of every concert-goer’s pocket with that of one of their neighbors. At one point Quickfingers ‘ported onto stage and joined in the chorus. He didn’t have a bad voice, as such things went. A few of the band-members blinked in surprise, but the audience didn’t seem to catch it or thought it was just another vocal track dubbed in.
The concert let out around midnight, which is when Quickfingers had the idea of going to a local lounge and teleporting the drinks around the bar. Then, grinning like a maniac, Jinx jumped up and helped out a guy singing karaoke. And he needed the help. “Takin’ care of business” had never sounded so good.
Then, before they left, they did another personal property switch and hung around outside while people tried to get into their vehicles with one another’s keys. “No drunk driving tonight, folks,” Quickfingers cackled, rubbing his stubby, four-fingered hands together. “We’d better get back. The bosses will be worrying where we are if we don’t.”
Jinx shrugged. “Sure! We can go bug them for a while.”
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate our company,” said his progenitor. Quite seriously.
Some people said imps just didn’t get humans. Or, rather, didn’t truly understand any mortal creature. It was true of most, certainly. But not Quickfingers. He’d spent the past two hundred and forty odd years annoying and aggravating as many mortals and immortals as he could possibly manage. He could usually predict quite easily how any given person would react to his best pranks.
Which was how he knew the best way to irritate them without driving them to violence. “Violence is not an acceptable result of a prank done correctly,” he told the younger imp. “Most biological sentients are not as far away from their animal relatives as they’d like to believe. It is easy to provoke all but the most advanced to violence, so we take care to confuse them as much as we aggravate them. Confusion prevents them from being able to formulate a response, even on an instinctive or reflexive level.”
“Huh?”
“Our goal is to bug the shit out of them,” Quickfingers said in a tone of exasperation. “Not to piss them off.”
“But why?” the purple imp asked.
“Because they created our kind and enslaved us. We should not allow them to interact with us without some measure of repayment.” Despite his words, Quickfingers himself wasn’t usually prone to deep thinking, often allowing the winds of whimsy to dictate his actions and his reasoning. But when he said it, he knew it was its own truth, and reveled in his sudden epiphany. “Besides,” he added, his grin growing even broader, if such a thing were possible, “it’s fun.”
Chapter Seven: Truth like Smoke
So Morrigan knew nothing about meta-hero ethics. No one had told her that they were almost universally opposed to killing people—even villains. Seemed pretty damn stupid to her. If you took a superhuman and locked him in a cage, eventually he was going to come up with a way to break out. Killing them was a far more reasonable course of action. Or so it seemed to her.
Their attitude struck her as dangerously naïve. You couldn’t rehabilitate people like that. They had power and had learned they could have anything they wanted by exercising it. The more time allowed to them, the more deviant they became. Killing them would be a mercy. Not only to them, but to humanity as a whole.
She hadn’t anticipated Shadowkin’s reaction to dropping that particular truth bomb on him. He’d acted like she’d suggested torching a puppy for shits and giggles. Somehow Bryon, though he’d come from a much different world than this one, had grasped that instantly. Bryon had obviously spent too much time around the annoyingly self-righteous Raven, who, admittedly, had killed plenty of people himself. But he’d slain vampires and other nasties—killers all. He’d never truly learned to be comfortable with the idea of killing mortal humans—even super-powered ones.
And he’d somehow infected his scion with that silly reticence as well. Not that Bryon had raised an objection himself when she’d unveiled her plan. He hadn’t liked it, she knew. She could see that truth reflected in his luminous eyes. But it was, truly, the only way she could see to prevent an otherwise inevitable war between the metas and the normals. A war that would destroy this world as surely as if someone unleashed a planet-killing virus like the Cen had done on her own homeworld, so many ages past.
Their first target? Khaos, of course. She’d promised the boy justice, and he’d get it. Screw Shadowkin’s delicate sensibilities.
At the moment she was perched back up on the roof, watching as the sun broke over the Cascades, spraying the sky with golden fire. Apparently Khaos hadn’t been able to track them. A good thing, really. But it left her with the urge to turn the tables and go gunning for him. And maybe she would.
Shadowkin had left just after Bryon had gone to bed. His shadow-cast motorcycle had vanished with the dawn, but the man had refused any offer of a ride and simply walked down the hill from the house, saying that he’d catch a bus.
Her upper lip twitched into a half smile. It amused her to think of the meta-hero reduced to taking the bus. Especially considering she was none too thrilled with him as it was.
“Morrigan.”
She started, then spun. Kitsune stood some fifteen feet across the rooftop from her, leaning against the brick backstop of one of the house’s two chimneys. He looked worried, which didn’t surprise her as much as the fact that she could tell he looked worried. Reading non-human expressions had never been her forte. “You’re a quiet one,” she observed dryly, biting off the tongue lashing she nearly gave him. “What’s up?”
“I’m feeling a bit…left out of things,” he said. “I have some fairly specialized talents, and I’m afraid they overlap quite a bit with your mage-engineer’s. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s something of a jack-of-all-trades.”
She nodded. As a matter of fact, she had noticed. “Well, you’re in luck. If you wouldn’t mind a seeming put on you, I’m thinking about sending you out into the big bad to gather some intelligence the old-fashioned way.”
A seeming, or glamour, as some called it, would give him the appearance of a human being without having to suffer the indignity—from his perspective—of actually being turned into a human being. Part of what had to be bugging him was his general inability to get out of the house without attracting too much attention. Far too much attention. Chikitar managed it because he was himself a mage and probably wore a seeming when he did. She put that in the probably column because she’d not been included in the ones it was meant to fool.
Mage-engineers were nothing if not precise in their spell-casting. To the humans, he’d look like one of them, but to those who knew him, he’d look like himself. It was actually the best way to do it, to save oneself from being confused for someone else in the midst of sudden chaos. It would be very difficult to confuse a five-and-a-half-foot raccoon with anyone involved in a skirmish.
At the prospect of going out on a jaunt of his own, the fox-hybrid’s ears pricked up. “Are you serious? What do you need me to do?”
“I want a copy of the city council’s debates on the merits of this whole criminalization of the use of meta-human powers within the city. I’m sure they have some somewhere, and it’s nowhere we can find rummaging through their databases. So I’m thinking it’d be located within their offices, either on hard copy or in one or more of their personal computers.”
“What are you looking for, exactly?”
“Whether someone outside cooked this up as a little experiment,” she replied. “To see how well it works on a small scale before implementing it nation-wide. I’m assuming that’s exactly how it came about, but I’d like some verification of that before I decide to act on it.”
“Act on it? What do you mean? I thought you were going to go after the villains and make the whole thing moot.”
“That’s phase one, sure. But we know full well that they’re as much as an excuse as a real reason for this legislation. It’s really about fear and holding onto power. Meta-humans possess another type of power the big boys don’t want to have to work around or figure out how to co-opt. They’d rather eliminate them entirely, either by chasing them out of the country, or making it impossible or damned difficult to make use of that power. If I can find out who’s behind it, I might be able to exert a little pressure myself. Subtle pressure, of course. I have a feeling that popping in and chopping someone’s desk in half as a display of my abilities wouldn’t quite work out the way I’d hope.”
The fox chuckled. “Hardly. It would blow up in your face.”
“Precisely. There are more…effective ways to exert pressure on such people. Appealing to their enlightened self-interest, for example.” She smiled wickedly. “Threatening to expose the skeletons gathering in their closets is usually an effective ploy. I would assume you would have the necessary skills to find this sort of information for us should it become necessary.”
“You would assume correctly.”
“Good. When you’re ready, I can do the seeming for you. Unless you’d rather someone else did it?”
“Uh…no. You’ve got more experience at magic than anyone else here. I trust you.”
“Good to hear. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
“I will.” He spun on a heel and headed down the roof, then turned and gazed back at her. “Could you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Make the spell universal? I’d like to see how everyone else will react to me as a human.”
That caught her attention. She met his gaze, definitely curious now. “Can I ask why?”
He winced. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
Fair enough. She nodded, once. “I think that could be arranged.”
“Thank you.”
He disappeared back through the dormer window from which he’d originally emerged and she cast a glance back up at the fading sunrise. Time to get busy, Morrigan. Wars to prevent world-ending conflicts don’t exactly fight themselves.
***
Kitsune padded slowly down the hall, stopping a second outside of the open door to Santos’s room, nodding his head almost involuntarily to the Latin beat playing on the small clock radio in one corner of the room.
The parahuman himself was sitting on the floor, legs tucked up into a lotus position as he poked at some device spread out on a mat in front of him in its component pieces.
He could have sworn he’d been utterly silent, but before he could move away from the door, Santos shifted slightly and looked over his shoulder at him. “Kitsune…come on in.”
The hybrid shuffled in, not sure what to say. When in doubt, go with the obvious, he decided. “What’re you working on?”
“Nothing earth-shaking,” the engineer replied, setting a piece down and levering himself up off the floor. “Just expanding my first-hand knowledge of the technology of the times.”
“I’ll bet you expected you’d be a little more…” He let his words taper off, not sure it was coming out quite the way he meant it.
“Useful?” Santos gave a dry chuckle. “Yeah, the procyon is doing stuff I couldn’t hope to accomplish, but that’s okay. I don’t mind being the resident mechanic and general fix-it guy rather than the one that does all the big things. I’m not a mage-engineer. I’m just an engineer. And, for all his knowledge about the metaphysical end of things, Chikitar has to consult with me on some of the basics. I’m the one who gave him the specifics on how to set up this ‘mage road’ he’s so fascinated by at the moment. He didn’t really understand how cell towers worked. He’s used to dealing with agency technology, not this primitive stuff. Magic is only of limited use without the knowledge to back it up. If the van breaks down, he might be able to get it going again, given the time to tinker, but I know I can.”
Kitsune sighed. “Then it’s just me, I guess.”
Santos peered at him for a long moment, then shook his head. “Nah, I get it too. It’s easy to resent someone who seems to do everything you can and so much more. But keep in mind he’s not much of a team player and that has a lot of downside to it. Playing by his own rules, especially while working for Morrigan, is very likely to get his fingers pinched sooner or later.”
Kitsune frowned. “You think he’s doing something he shouldn’t be?”
“No. But he’s bound to cross a line eventually. He probably won’t be able to help himself. As you might have noticed, he’s more than a little smug about his brilliance. He’s going to want to do something that pushes the envelope, Morrigan is going to tell him no, and he’s going to go ahead and do it anyway.”
“You sound pretty sure of that,” came Midellis’s voice from the doorway behind Kitsune. The elf took a bite of the celery stalk he held in one hand and leaned against the doorframe, chewing contentedly as he gazed directly at Santos. “Mind telling me why?”
“Arrogance like his is something of a universal language,” the parahuman replied casually. “It’s the idea that you can’t possibly be mistaken and your perceptiveness and judgment is always superior to everyone else’s. It’s a flaw often found in mages with a particular mechanical bent.”
The elf’s feathery eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. “Oh? Pray tell?”
Oddly enough, he seemed as though he was taking this whole line of reasoning as some sort of personal affront, something that Kitsune found quite surprising. Midellis was a physician-mage, a healer, and, in his own way, as knowledgeable as was Chikitar, albeit in a completely different discipline.
Then it struck him. Though he might not realize it, Midellis was more or less exposing himself as having the same potential flaw as did the raccoon. Kitsune could tell that the elf also believed that, in certain circumstances, his judgment would be superior to Morrigan’s, and he’d be just as willing to defy her orders if he thought the situation warranted it.
Hell, maybe they were all prone to it, at least a little bit. Everyone had their own idea of how they should be going about their business. Hadn’t Valiant already screwed up once herself by going “off reservation,” as Morrigan might put it? And what had been going on between Morrigan and Bryon last night? He certainly hadn’t missed the tension between them. More than the usual, at least. Sometimes they seemed less a team than a bunch of rugged individualists who just happened to be heading the same direction.
Kitsune had a feeling this was all going to come to a head fairly soon and just hoped it all shook out for the best. Of course, he knew full well that there were a few underlying sources of unresolved conflict between Morrigan and Bryon that weren’t going to be so easily dismissed. Not until one or the other of them got over their stubborn streak and decided to do something about their mutual attraction.
And it was mutual. He was pretty certain of that. The vampire’s scents were quite different than a human’s, but he wasn’t so old a vamp that he didn’t still show human body language and facial expressions when he wasn’t paying attention. Morrigan’s feelings for Bryon, on the other hand, were written all over her pheromones. Immortal or mortal, they were unmistakable.
Something told him the next few days were going to be pretty damned interesting around here. It was just too bad he wasn’t going to be around to see it.
***
Morrigan was still on the roof, lost in thought, when Chikitar stuck his head out the nearest window and yelled up to her. “Hey, boss! You’ve gotta come down here and take a look at this!”
Grumbling to herself, she descended the roof and climbed in through the window, following the procyon downstairs to the living room where a news program had been frozen mid-frame. Chikitar thumbed the remote and leaned back as the announcer’s voice came from the speakers.
“Police are still puzzling over the reports of concert-goers ending up with the wrong personal possessions in their pockets at the end of the night. Wallets, car-keys and an assortment of other items all ended up in the possession of the wrong people.”
He thumbed the remote again and looked over at her. “Now what does that sound like to you, boss?”
She stared at the television through narrowed, thoughtful eyes. “It sounds like imps.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. So that begs the question. What are imps doing here?”
“I don’t know,” she growled, heading for the door. “But I’m going to find out.”
***
I have really got to learn to think before I go off like that, Morrigan thought, irritated with herself. She sat astride her motorcycle, staring at the Space Needle from across the street and wondering what the hell she was even doing here. She wasn’t going to find imp tracks, after all.
Imps meant outworld mages. And outworld mages meant trouble, most likely. And, if she remembered her original timeline correctly, imps didn’t even exist in this time. Not quite yet. Which meant that they’d come back in time. More time-travelers. With imps. Or a particular imp.
Quickfingers. And where you find Quickfingers, you will find Jasmine Tashae.
She hit the ignition switch and the bike roared to life, rumbling between her legs as she carefully pulled the helmet back over her head. She hated wearing the damned things and it wasn’t as though she actually needed one for protection, but they had that stinking helmet law to worry about. She wasn’t interested in having yet another song and dance with the police. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and then, when she opened them again, stared out at the world with a completely different set of receptors. Under the leaden gray skies, magesight actually brightened the world around her more than she’d expected.
She rotated herself around almost 360 degrees, looking for any sign of magic in operation or some hint of a spell not yet cast. If Jaz was here, she’d be visible to another mage for quite some distance, if only because of the spells she’d have orbiting her. But this method of detection was limited by line of sight. It wasn’t going to work. At least not like this.
She glanced up. Maybe…
She killed the engine again, slammed down the kickstand and slid off the motorcycle. She hung the helmet on the handlebars, slapped a minor ward in place to protect it against theft and strode purposefully toward the Needle’s lobby.
She made it about ten feet before something struck her from above, hard enough to throw her to the pavement, scraping the hell out of her hands and ripping her jeans at the knees.
She twisted onto her back, hand scrabbling for the weapon secreted in a hidden dimension pocket between her upper arm and her ribcage. The snarling face of Khaos filled her vision as he bent down over her, reaching for her with fingers like twisted claws.
She kicked him in the chest, hurling him up and away from her. His breath exploded from him in a burst of fetid air and he soared upward several feet, glaring down at her with pure murder in his eyes. She pulled the weapon from its pocket and squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession, stitching a row from his navel to his throat.
They didn’t seem to penetrate, but they obviously hurt. He roared in shock and pain and withdrew farther into the sky, circling with a raptor’s intensity some hundred feet above her. This son of a bitch is going to be hard to stop, she realized. Unless…
She felt like an idiot. As powerful as he might be, there was no way he could handle what she could throw at him. She went to magesight, stabbing her free hand into one of the spells in her ‘web, feeling the pressure as its knotted threads wound themselves around her fingers and wrist.
This was the most lethal of her offensive spells, a seven-strand monstrosity she’d spent almost an hour putting together. She called it the Undertaker.
She slung her arm back, then up, splaying her fingers and willing the spell to seek a target. The target. She could see it as it unfolded, lancing upward at the figure circling high above her. Then it came to her, the roar of the first thread as it caught flame, filling the leaden sky with a blazing smear of light, followed by a blast of crackling lightning and the accompanying explosion of thunder. One by one, the effects hammered at Khaos, until the last one, catching him as he was falling, snatched him out of the air and buried him a mile beneath the city.
She rolled back over and pushed herself to her feet, wincing as her bloodied hands pressed against the pavement. The whole battle had lasted less than ten seconds, not quite enough time for even her ability to heal to catch up with her abraded flesh.
She spat on the asphalt. “Survive that, motherfucker,” she hissed at the ruined flesh thousands of feet below. Fat chance. Even if he had survived the barrage of power she’d thrown at him, there was no way he could dig his way back to the surface before he suffocated. He was a meta, not an immortal.
No. Now he was a charred corpse.
She turned around and limped toward her bike, unable to suppress a bitter smile of satisfaction as she slid her pistol back into its invisible holster. But her satisfaction was short-lived. She needed to get out of here. If the cops arrived before she could get away, things would go awry very quickly, because she wasn’t about to surrender to them a second time.
She threw her leg over the motorcycle, hit the starter, shoved the helmet onto her head, and shot out into traffic with barely a backward glance. At least she’d have some good news to tell the kid.
Khaos was dead. Ding dong.
***
Their little team had the resources to produce any sort of documentation they needed, definitely a boon in their line of work. Kitsune frowned as he tugged experimentally at the tie around his neck—or, rather, the symsuit appendage that looked like a tie—with his left hand as he reached out and took the extended wallet from Chikitar. “Congratulations,” the procyon said with a mischievous gleam in his eye. “You are now Agent Samuel Fox of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Kitsune glanced down at the ID and the face of the earnest young man staring back at him. “By the Fates—do I really look like that?”
He was quite handsome, with crisp blue eyes spaced evenly above a small, pug nose, high cheekbones, a broad jaw, and a jutting, dimpled chin. Short, well-groomed rusty hair finished the ensemble. So this was what he would look like had he been born human rather than a hybrid. He filed the thought away, annoyed at himself for thinking it in the first place.
“Yeah, you really look like that,” Morrigan replied in an exasperated tone. “Don’t try to be cute,” she added with a smirk. “Just get in, get the info and get the hell out. If they get any idea you’re not what you seem to be, all hell is gonna break loose.”
He cocked his head and shot her a glare. “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Morrigan.”
She didn’t seem to find the comment in the least bit amusing. She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Don’t get cocky, Kitsune. That’s the last thing we need.”
He sighed. She was right. He needed to keep his wits about him. Feeling infallible was no way to start something like this. He was as fallible as anyone and he damn well knew it. He could bullshit with the best of them, and had one hell of a backup team in place this time, but anything could go wrong at any time and he’d be stupid to forget it. The stakes were remarkably high this time around, higher than they’d ever been. At least, that’s what he told himself. In a way it was quite true, after all. For the residents of this Earth, it was as vital as it got. If they failed in this mission, they’d all die in a war that never had to happen.
That was the point of all of this, wasn’t it? “ Let’s get this over with.”
***
Nyx laughed as she turned off the news. “A red-haired woman apparently in a gun battle with a flying meta,” she mused aloud. “Hah! It’s a wonder Morrigan was able to survive as a professional assassin for so long, if that’s her idea of flying under the radar.”
“That’s not what’s concerning me at the moment,” Jaz growled, pouring herself another cup of coffee at the hotel room’s breakfast bar. She dumped in a considerable amount of sugar, tore open a pack of dry creamer and swirled it all into a muddy mixture far stronger, and sweeter, than Nyx could tolerate. “I’m more interested in what our two companions have been up to.”
Nyx shook her head. “That’s what we get for not keeping closer tabs on them. The good news is that won’t even raise a blip on the bad guys’ radar screen.”
“The bad news being that Morrigan and Co aren’t going to be nearly as clueless. They’ll recognize it as an imp’s work and they’re going to wonder where the hell imps are coming from.”
“Shit. You’re right. Which will—“
“—lead Morrigan right to us, sooner or later.” Jaz shrugged. “I don’t suppose we can pretend we’re not here on ArchAngel’s business.”
One black eyebrow rose and Nyx fired off one of her patented sardonic half-grins. “So…what… should we tell her we were just slumming?”
Jaz snickered, but shook her head. “I don’t think so. Morrigan’s twenty-eight thousand years old. Lying to someone that old is pretty damn pointless. We’ll have no choice but to come clean.”
“Fine. But we’ll wait for her to find us, I think.”
Jaz nodded. “No reason to be pushy.”
They both had a good laugh at that one.
“Oh, yeah,” gasped Nyx finally. “No one has ever referred to either one of us as pushy.”
“In the meantime,” Jaz sighed, wiping a laugh-wrung tear from the corner of her eye, “we need to have a little talk with our little friends.”
***
Special Agent Jack Frost shut the file folder and set it carefully on the desk in front of him. He was an anachronism. He knew it. He preferred reading hard copies to computer text, and all of his files were printed out so he could leaf through them one at a time rather than tapping a scroll bar.
Something about this latest report from the SPD nagged at him, as if he should be correlating it with something else—something important. Witnesses reported a battle between a lone, red-haired woman and a flying freak that included both gunplay and some serious elemental forces brought into play. It was surprising that no one else had been hurt in the interchange and no damage inflicted on any of the surrounding structures or the vehicles in the parking lot. They had retrieved a handful of shells and three seriously mangled slugs, however. Far too mangled for ballistics to make anything of them.
He had grown to hate these flashes of intuition he’d been having lately—they seemed very freakish.
Deep down he feared he’d somehow contracted the meta-virus and it was even now rewriting him, turning him into something alien. Sometimes he knew things he couldn’t have known, more powerful than a hunch.
Like now. Like he knew that this battle was somehow connected with that earlier one. Like he knew this redheaded woman would be one of the most dangerous people he’d ever pursued. He might regret it, but he’d eventually catch her. He was certain of it. As certain of anything he’d ever been in his life.
He stood slowly, then stretched. He wouldn’t catch anyone just sitting here. Time to let his hunches do some walking out there in the world. If he was going to be cursed with them, at least he could make them worth having.
He hated freaks—the idea that he might be becoming one made him want to puke. But that could wait until he found the redheaded bitch. Whoever she was.
***
Kitsune stopped outside the councilman’s door, took a deep breath, and marched in without knocking. He flashed his badge at the secretary, who called her boss. Within five minutes he was inside, speaking to District Attorney Ron Sharp. Before coming down here, he’d been briefed in full about the people and personalities involved here. Sharp was well-connected, a party loyalist with a lot of friends in D.C. If anyone knew what was behind the anti-meta legislation, it would be D.A. Sharp.
Kitsune settled into the chair opposite Seattle’s top prosecutor, tossing his badge on the desk in front of him. “We need to talk.”
The urbane African-American gentleman glanced at the identification, then lifted his gaze to meet Kitsune’s. “About what?” he asked.
The hybrid fox wasn’t all that good at guessing human ages, but he would’ve placed this man in his early fifties, his black hair already ceding to white around the temples. The deep lines etched around his mouth spoke of a man who smiled frequently, but there was hardness to his eyes that told Kitsune that the two of them would probably disagree as to what things were worth smiling about in the first place.
“The anti-meta law. It’s of interest to some of my superiors how you’re planning on enforcing it. Or do you think you can take down metas with ordinary cops?”
Sharp’s gaze narrowed and he regarded Kitsune in silence for some seconds before replying. “The people who need to know already know,” he said, over-enunciating each word as if he thought the fox might be some kind of idiot.
Kitsune smiled. It was not a friendly smile. “That may be true, but my superiors here are concerned that we will be forced to pick up the pieces when your people drop the ball.”
“You already have an anti-meta task force in play. I assume they have proven techniques for getting the job done. We will be taking our cues from them.”
“They fail as often as they succeed. The life expectancy of even our best task force people is measured in months, not years.” He didn’t know this to be true, but he suspected it was. “My superiors think you jumped the gun on this and that we’re all going to pay the price for it.”
Sharp slammed his hand down on the polished mahogany surface of his spotless desk with a sound like a gunshot.
Kitsune didn’t even flinch. He just met the man’s gaze with cold intensity and waited.
“Your superiors should be talking to their superiors,” Sharp said through a clenched jaw, clearly angry. “The whole thing came from D.C. and it isn’t their place to be questioning it.”
Kitsune reached across the desk and retrieved his badge. “Maybe not. That’s not my call. All I know is that they’re worried, and with good reason. This could go to shit very fast. I’m not sure the bureaucrats in D.C.—the politicos—know what kind of meat-grinder they’re throwing the rest of us into by foisting some cockamamie plan on us.”
“Are you suggesting that General Alan Kane is merely a bureaucrat?” Sharp looked almost scandalized by the suggestion. “He’s the one who drew up the operational plan. This was formulated by the best minds in the Pentagon, and implemented at the express orders of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Seattle is intended to be a test case for a similar law being discussed in committee on the Hill right now. These people do know what they’re doing.”
“I’m sure they do.” Kitsune tucked the wallet containing his badge into his internal jacket pocket and stood up. “I appreciate the information,” he said. “The data coming through channels has been spotty, at best. To know this is coming from the highest sources makes me, at least, feel a lot better about it. I’ll convey that to my superiors when I give them the details.”
“You do that, Agent Fox. And be sure that I’ll be letting my feelings known to the Bureau itself about the failure of its internal communications on this matter.”
Kitsune nodded, resisting the urge to smile. “You do that, sir. Have a nice day.”
Sharp watched him walk out, looking hardly mollified. Kitsune nodded to the secretary as he passed, then didn’t allow even a smile to slip through his facade until he reached the street some minutes later.
Morrigan had been right. This whole thing went a lot higher than local politics. This law was the first shot in the war they’d been sent here to prevent. And the fact that it had already been implemented did not bode well for their chances of success.
Valiant pulled up as he stepped to the curb. He climbed into the passenger side and glanced over at her, all the other thoughts he’d been having lately swept out of the way by what he’d just learned. At first he’d thought maybe Morrigan’s plan to take out the villains one by one might have made a difference. Now he wasn’t so sure.
In all actuality, he wasn’t sure anything could prevent the war at this point. And that scared the shit out of him. If they didn’t stop the war, they’d have to survive it. And, from what Morrigan had told them, nobody survived it.
He pushed his face into his hands and moaned aloud. They were so screwed.
Chapter Eight: Taming the Demon
Bryon descended the stairs that evening to find a war council already in session, the members of the team spread out around the living room while Morrigan paced angrily in front of the fireplace like a jungle cat on the verge of attack.
“This is not unexpected,” he heard Chikitar say as Bryon slipped, silent and unobserved, beneath the high archway dividing the living room from the foyer. “I don’t see how it changes anything.”
“That the Pentagon is involved?” Morrigan asked incredulously. “Are you kidding me? It changes everything.”
Bryon surmised that something big had happened while he slumbered, but he felt a burning pressure building in his chest and knew he couldn’t concentrate on putting any of this in perspective until he’d fed that hunger. He’d pushed himself farther than he’d ever managed before, but the pressure had grown past the point he could easily ignore it. For the last several nights it had been a distant, nagging ache. But now it was a bonfire in his soul. He’d either have to feed tonight, or, at the very latest, tomorrow night. If he didn’t, the beast within would take control, and innocents could suffer. Any source of food might become fair game.
The faces staring back at Morrigan were grim.
Did she say the Pentagon? He was having problems concentrating. The whole room stank of sweat and blood and fear.
Valiant’s head snapped around, her eyes fixating on him. Her shoulders hunched just slightly and he knew then that she detected something different about him. He’d gone to bed a man and awakened as a predator. The predator within her sensed it and rose into her eyes, where it stared out at him for a long minute before submerging once again.
He needed to feed. There was no artificial blood available here. He felt like a fool for not realizing the dangers earlier. He couldn’t allow the beast to rise any further than it already had. He couldn’t afford—they couldn’t afford—for him to lose control.
Morrigan turned, saw him standing in the doorway, and frowned. “Bryon. Come sit down and help us figure out what to do next.”
He laughed. It turned into a bitter, biting sound rather than any expression of humor or joy. “You picked a bad time to start asking my opinion, Morrigan,” he murmured, shaking his head. “My answers right now wouldn’t be ones you’d want to hear.”
She took a step toward him and he stepped back, unable to resist the urge. His inner self fought against feral desire, and, for the moment, his humanity won. He felt like a starving man dropped in front of a buffet and told that he couldn’t eat anything he saw.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked a piping voice.
He shuddered, turning a baleful gaze upon the boy, Casey. The Thirst struck him in the chest like a hammer. His alien cells, the very things that made him what he was, needed nourishment. And, like any predator, he found himself seeking the weakest in the herd.
“I can’t…I can’t do this!” He spun and bolted from the room.
He didn’t see Morrigan spin and rake Chikitar and Midellis with her gaze. “Can you two come up with a way to produce artificial blood?”
They blinked at her, then glanced at one another. “Maybe…” said Midellis.
“I think so…” said Chikitar. “But it might take a few days.”
“Does he look like he has a few days?” she snapped.
Neither agent replied and she turned away in disgust, more annoyed with herself than anything. Why didn’t we think of this? She’d allowed herself to forget what he was. Not the good parts, like his enhanced strength, speed, and stamina, or the neutral parts, like the fact he wasn’t an early riser, but the worst part. He was a predator. He fed on blood. On Starhaven, or somewhere where he could reach Starhaven or Earth Prime, it wasn’t an issue. Artificial blood, full of all the nutrients a growing vampire needed to thrive, was readily available.
But here? She let out a bitter laugh that echoed the one that had issued from his throat only moments before. What were they going to do, raid a Red Cross office?
“There’s another option,” Valiant said softly, nearly too low for even Morrigan to catch.
“What do you mean?”
“We can feed him.”
“We…as in who?” Kitsune asked pointedly. “Would you trust him to drive his fangs into your flesh in the state he’s in right now?”
“He couldn’t,” the lycanthrope reminded him with a slow smile. “Not into my flesh, at least.”
“Braggart,” the fox grunted. “So what are you saying?”
“There’s one of us who can afford to take the risk who can easily survive the vampire’s thirst without risking her life.” She raised her gaze to Morrigan and held it there.
“Shit,” the immortal said. She was right. The oversight was her fault, and it was her obligation to make sure the vampire didn’t hurt anyone else to slake his need. “Can he even metabolize my blood?”
“How do you think Renee feeds?” Chikitar asked her incredulously. “She doesn’t drink from mortals. She only feeds from Loki.”
“Rumor has it that Loki’s blood has made her more powerful than she would have otherwise been,” commented Midellis with a shrug. “But, of course, that’s just rumor. Take from it what you will.”
“Fine. I’ll take care of this. In the meantime, I want you all to start experimenting with your symsuits.”
“What? Now?”
She flashed a feral grin in Kitsune’s direction. “Yes, now. We’ll continue the war council when I get back. At least this will give you all something to do while I’m gone.”
She didn’t wait for arguments, spinning on a heel and striding out of the room.
Bryon sat in his room, arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth on his bed, trying to block out the scent of the blood of those gathered downstairs. It permeated everything, the smell of the stuff of life painting itself throughout the whole house, as if someone had run through, drenching it with arterial spray. It was illusory, of course. Or delusion. Something other than real, at least.
He didn’t know how much longer he could take it.
He scented her before she knocked on the door. He could hear her heart beating, just slightly faster than it usually did. Her blood smelled to him like ambrosia, like some substance sent down by the gods to tempt him. To torment him.
“Go away!”
“No.” She tried to turn the knob and found it locked. That didn’t hold her long. With a groan of protesting metal, the lock snapped. She pushed the door open and stepped into the room. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
He lifted his eyes and managed a wry chuckle. “Hardly the time for that, wouldn’t you say?”
This provoked a weary grin. “Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not exactly what I had in mind, though I wouldn’t complain if it worked out that way.”
“Slut.” He half-laughed the word, taking the insult out of it.
“Yeah. What of it?”
“What do you want, Morrigan?”
“You need blood. Coincidentally, I happen to have blood. You can’t kill me, or even seriously hurt me. You can’t turn me into what you are. I’m offering you what you need.”
“Why?”
“Because it was my job to cover all the bases, to make sure we had everything we needed. Everything we all needed. I screwed up and you’re suffering for it.”
“I could always go hunting.”
“Absolutely not. You’re on the brink of losing your reason, Bryon. We can’t have you roaming the streets looking for prey. And how would you tell the difference between an innocent and someone you could slay without remorse? You’re no telepath.”
He shook his head. “No. As far as I can tell, I have no real vampiric power at all. Not telepathy, not Raven’s ability to be invisible. I can barely hypnotize mortals with my gaze. Face it, as a vampire, I’m a flop.”
She shrugged. “I don’t happen to think so. Besides, if you drink from me, it might well be a moot point. Some people believe that a vampire who drinks from an immortal gains strength and power.”
“Really?” For the first time, something other than despair animated his face.
“Really.”
She gestured and a long crystal dagger appeared in her hand. She walked slowly to the bed and laid the edge of the blade against her wrist. “Will this do?”
“Anything,” he gasped, unable to tear his eyes away as she drew the blade across her wrist in one smooth motion. Blood—intoxicating, sensual, brilliant blood—poured from the wound as she held it out to him.
He took her arm as gently as he could, but that was the last thing he did while still in control of himself. The next thing he knew he was lifting his mouth from her wrist, feeling the burning ache of the Thirst receding into memory.
Her eyes met his and he felt something quite unexpected, something that fell on him like a punch to the chest. As much as he tried to deny it, he did love this woman. As annoyed as he became with her near constant harassment, he’d have felt lost without her. She was his anchor in the alien world of Starhaven, and now here in this universe.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and sighed. “Thank you.”
She leaned down and kissed his forehead, surprising him yet again. “You’re welcome. You ready to come back down and join the others?”
“Yes. I think I am.”
“Good. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’re running out of time.”
***
“We’re going to have to split up,” Morrigan told them. “We’re going to need a team operating on the East Coast and a team operating here.”
None of them looked particularly comfortable with this announcement. “How’s that going to work?” asked Santos. “And what is it supposed to accomplish?”
“Before I get into that, I have to ask. Did any of you get any glimmer of what your syms can do?”
Santos blinked and broke into a grin. “Well, I guess you could say that.” He held out his hand and a blue spark grew there, flowing horizontally from his open palm like liquid across a flat surface. An instant later he held a cold steel sword in his grasp. “Apparently I can manifest weapons. Any weapon I know how to use, I can create.”
“Any weapon?”
The sword vanished as if it never was, and, as they all watched, a short, stocky sub-machine gun of particularly lethal appearance took its place. “As long as I know how it works, I can bring it into existence.”
“That’s…handy.” Particularly considering what you’re going to be doing, she added mentally. “Anyone else?”
The others shook their heads. “Not yet,” Kitsune said. “But at least now we have some idea of how it works. We just have to think of something and try it.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea.” Morrigan took a deep breath. “Bryon, Chikitar, and Casey are staying here with me, but the rest of you are heading for D.C. Valiant knows who the movers and shakers are. You’re going to help Midellis go in and adjust some attitudes. By force if necessary. Santos—you’re backup. Between you and Valiant, you should be able to take care of nearly anything or anyone you run into. Kitsune—your job is to locate and set up any villains on that side of the country. If you guys don’t think you can take ‘em out yourselves, just give me a call, let me know where they are, and I’ll take the mage road and do it myself.
“If you can manage to infiltrate the Pentagon, great. Track down the people responsible for this anti-meta plan and do whatever it takes to take them out of the equation. Scramble their brains, change their minds, or kill them. I don’t really care how you do it. In the meantime, Bryon and I are going to start taking out West Coast villains. And, yeah, by ‘taking out’ I mean killing. By the time I’m done, there won’t be a meta-villain west of the Mississippi.” She grinned at their shocked expressions. “We’re not playing a kid’s game here, folks. If we don’t put a stop to this shit, millions of people are going to die. Millions of innocent people. I don’t know about the rest of you, but it doesn’t bother my conscience even a little bit that a few guilty people might have to die to save all those other lives. I’m funny that way.”
“Not much in the way of finesse to this plan of yours, Morrigan,” observed Valiant thoughtfully. “But sometimes the direct method is the best method. Assuming Midellis is up to the challenge; I think we can handle the Washington cats without having to kill anyone.”
“I’m up to anything,” said the elf. Morrigan knew that killing would be the last thing he’d want to do, being a physician and all, but she also knew that his particular skill set gave him the ability to re-map the minds of other people. If that’s what it took to stop the politicians and military minds in D.C. from turning their guns on the meta population, that’s what they’d do.
“Good to hear. Okay, people. You have everything you need, financially-speaking. I’ve also arranged for some documentation linking you with a growing IT firm specializing in first generation Artificial Intelligence robotics.”
“What?” Santos’s eyes grew wide as he stared at her. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. I arranged to buy out a company called Divergent Theories just a few days ago. Chikitar checked it out for me. In disguise, of course. According to what he learned, they are on the verge of creating true Artificial Intelligences. So your cover in Washington is that of lobbyists for Divergent Theories, with the goal of arranging legislation that’s friendly to the company’s long-term interests. Can’t get much farther than that from meta-human concerns, wouldn’t you say? Regardless, it should give you some access you wouldn’t ordinarily have had.”
“I’m impressed,” Valiant muttered, shaking her head. “I didn’t think you did subtle.”
“I’m a woman of many layers,” Morrigan said, not in the least bit offended. It was true that she wasn’t exactly known for her subtlety. That made it all the easier for her to surprise people when revealing she was capable of working around a problem rather than plowing through it.
Plowing through it was more Jaz’s style, most of the time, she mused. The thought reminded her about the imps and the fact that she was pretty sure at least one of the two women were here, if not both of them. Their presence here stank of one of ArchAngel’s redundancy plans. If she herself wasn’t known for subtlety, ArchAngel could be considered the poster child for undercover mechanizations and intrigue. If he breathed, he’d breathe subterfuge.
She’d been annoyed at first, thinking that his sending them in indicated he didn’t trust her, but, on further reflection, she realized that they might prove to be useful—assuming she could track them down. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to manage that.
“I’ve already arranged a house for you guys in one of the D.C. suburbs,” she told them. She reached into a pocket and hauled out a 3x5 index card on which she’d written the address. “I’m sure you can find it easily enough.
“Kitsune, I created an amulet of seeming for you. This should allow you to blend in without any trouble. Remember, Midellis, if there’s any trouble, we’re just a single step away on the mage road. Don’t let anything compromise our overall mission. If you get in over your heads, get the hell out. Understood?”
They all nodded.
Within twenty minutes they were gone, leaving the house to her, Bryon, Chikitar, and Casey. The kid aside, this felt more like a manageable team. The house was starting to feel really crowded and she’d been growing tired of stumbling over everyone all the time. She felt a little weird keeping a child in the house, considering what they might be up against, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do with him. It wasn’t as if she could ship him off to Child Services or something.
After the others had left, she called a meeting of those who remained. It didn’t take long for Bryon, Chikitar, and Casey to make their way back to the living room. Casey came in with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich clutched in one hand. She nearly said something about it, noting a smear of blackberry jam on his wrist, but changed her mind when Chikitar entered and threw himself on the couch carrying a large bowl of popcorn.
Why bother? she asked herself. Since no answer was forthcoming, she shrugged it off and turned her attention to Bryon as he entered behind the others. He looked distracted, but at least he didn’t seem as though he were on the brink of losing his mind. Now maybe they could get something done.
“I think it’s time you came clean with us, Casey,” Morrigan said suddenly.
The boy glanced up, his eyes going wide with something that looked a lot like panic. “About what?” he asked, around the last bite of his sandwich.
“I think she’s wondering about your meta abilities.” Chikitar shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth and chewed noisily. Fragments of popcorn fell all over the couch as he ate.
Morrigan rolled her eyes and sighed. “Do you have to eat like that?”
“Have you seen the way my mouth is constructed?” he asked her. “I don’t have a choice.”
As much as she would have liked to, she couldn’t really argue with that. “Fine.” She met Casey’s hesitant gaze. “Tell.”
***
“I’ll bet she knows we’re here,” Nyx said, sliding open the balcony door and stepping out into the night. “No doubt the imps gave us away.”
Jaz scowled. “Most likely. You want to find her, don’t you?” She walked to the door and stood there, feeling the cool night air brush across her naked skin like a ghostly lover.
The smaller woman shrugged. “We might as well. There’s no reason for us to stay away now.”
They’d initially agreed to wait for Morrigan to come to them, but the episode in the Seattle Center parking lot on the news made it pretty clear that they weren’t going to have that bit of breathing space after all. Things were heating up and there was no telling how molten they’d get in the next few days. The cops would be after her, and there was a good chance the local meta heroes would be as well.
She’d need the backup. “I’ll call Quickfingers. I’m sure he could locate her in a minute.”
Nyx nodded and came back inside. “Okay.” She looked Jaz over and grinned. “You going to stay like that all night?” she asked.
“I was thinking about it. Why, you complaining?”
“Hardly. Think we can wait half an hour before calling Q in?”
“Oh, I think that would be all right.”
“Good. I was thinking a quick game of rummy might be nice.”
“Oh, so is that what they’re calling it nowadays?”
“Only if you don’t have a deck of cards.”
“I left it in my other pants.”
“Then maybe we’ll have to come up with something else to do.”
***
On her now-customary perch on the roof, Morrigan sat and considered what the boy had finally, reluctantly, revealed to the rest of them. He was a metapsi, a high-level telepath, and, he admitted, able to read them all as if they were a collection of books rather than human beings.
Telepaths of that stature were among the most deceptively powerful of all metapsis. They couldn’t throw cars around with their minds, as could Raven’s wife Val, but that simply made it possible for others to underestimate their potential. Val had made some use of her small telempathic gifts, but she hadn’t been a full fledged telepath like the boy was.
Even Morrigan found the notion slightly unsettling. She didn’t like the idea of a prepubescent child wandering around in her skull, of all places. It wasn’t a pretty place for her to live in, much less a place for a young man’s sightseeing tour.
She lifted her gaze as a shadow flitted across the lawn at the very edge of the light cast by the back porch lamp. She pushed herself to her feet and watched as another shade followed the first. She knew instinctively that it meant trouble, though she didn’t know exactly what kind yet. She’d been around long enough to recognize bad things coming.
She turned to return to the dormer window only to find Bryon climbing out to join her. “We need to talk,” he said, so softly that only an immortal or preternatural could hear him at that distance.
“I agree,” she said. “But not now.” She turned and pointed toward the figures making their way across the lawn. Counting the first two, she’d spotted four so far, though she might have missed a few while looking at Bryon.
He frowned and walked to the edge of the roof. “Who is that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”
They jumped down together, striding across the lawn toward the invaders.
“Be careful,” Morrigan murmured to Bryon, who gave her an annoyed look in response.
“I’m in no more danger than you are,” he snapped back at her.
She rolled her eyes, which, of course, he couldn’t see. That was nonsense and he damn well should have known it. Immortals could survive things vampires could not. That’s what made them immortals.
She shouldn’t have been surprised when Shadowkin stepped out of the umbras cast by the surrounding trees. Being masked, his expression was unreadable, but something about his stance told her that he wasn’t here on a social call. The fact he wasn’t alone lent weight to that assumption as well. She smothered a grimace, knowing this could get very ugly, very fast.
“Shadowkin. What are you doing here?” Bryon asked, sounding as surprised as she was.
“We’ve come to talk about your plan,” he replied, turning his gaze to Morrigan rather than to the vampire. “We can’t let you just start murdering people, no matter what they’ve done.”
Ah, crap. “This isn’t going to help matters.” Morrigan spoke through clenched teeth, drilling the meta-hero with a baleful gaze. “As far as the government’s concerned, you’re all a bunch of criminals.”
“Allowing you to kill people isn’t going to improve our standing either,” he replied lightly. A mutter of agreement came from the woods behind him and one of the biggest humans Morrigan had ever seen stepped out of the shadows and into the subtle light.
He must have been nearly nine feet tall, black as polished ebony, classically handsome, and powerfully built. His costume was understated, simply a black leotard and a cowl-like mask that didn’t quite hide his eyes, broad cheekbones, and jutting chin. I guess when you’re nine feet tall, keeping a secret identity is pretty much a moot point. “Thou shalt not kill,” he rumbled.
Morrigan was hard-pressed not to snicker. “Buddy, you have no idea how useless that tactic is with me. I remember when the people who wrote that book were a tribe of primitive desert dwellers who’d worship anything that stood still long enough.”
The big man stiffened, eyes flaring, huge hands balling into fists nearly as large as her head.
She stood her ground, lifting her chin to meet his gaze. “Don’t even think it, big guy. You wouldn’t like what happened next.”
Others began to drift out of the copse behind them. A strikingly tattooed woman with a thick head of black and red streaked hair and a row of three piercings under her bottom lip stared at her out of dark eyes that seemed to miss nothing.
Beside her stood a whip-thin, ferrety man of about fifty, his black hair trimmed with white at the temples. Like the big man, they wore nothing but plain black leotards and basic headgear that wouldn’t have done much to mask their identities.
“Friends of yours?” she asked Shadowkin.
“Comrades in arms, you might say.”
“I wouldn’t,” she replied irritably. “It’s a stupid, oft-misused phrase. Again, what are you doing here? How, exactly, are you planning to stop us from carrying out our battle plan?”
“In any way necessary.” Shadowkin’s tone was grim as he met her gaze, as if he knew some of them might not survive the encounter.
She sighed. “You can’t stop us. You could bring an army of metas and it wouldn’t do you any good.”
Bryon shot her a look, as if to say “are you kidding? We’re tough—not invulnerable!”
She ignored his glance and kept her gaze squarely on Shadowkin. He looked a tad uncomfortable, but made no move to back down.
“We’ll just have to see about that,” the big meta rumbled. Then, much to Morrigan’s surprise, he reached out to grab her. She slid aside, using the edge of her forearm to lever his arm past her, then stabbed him in the nerve cluster behind his elbow with the bunched fingertips of her right hand.
It was like popping a steel girder. She hopped back, sucking in a breath through her teeth and shaking her stinging hand. “Let me guess…invulnerable.”
The giant shrugged. “Close enough.”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
She went to magesight, caught a passing strand, and flipped it at him, willing it to flex and stiffen as it struck. It caught him square in the chest, lifted him off the ground, and sent him hurtling some fifty feet into the woods. They all heard the crashing of branches and a distinct “crack” as he struck a tree somewhere out of sight.
The tattooed woman took a deep breath and opened her mouth. Morrigan crow-hopped forward, pivoted, and slammed the edge of her foot into her gut. She folded, the air exploding from her lungs as she collapsed.
Shadowkin shot forward, but before he could reach her, Bryon swept past in a blur, snatched him from his feet, and casually tossed him aside. He hit the ground hard and lay still.
“I was wondering if you were going to do something, or just stand there and watch.”
He glared at her in response. “I should have just stood by and let him pummel you,” he replied irritably. “You really don’t know what tact is, do you?”
“I know what it is,” she answered back. “I just don’t think it’s particularly useful.”
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Why’d you kick the woman?”
“I didn’t like the way she was breathing,” Morrigan replied airily. “So I decided to do something about it.”
Truth be told, she wasn’t quite sure why she’d kicked the woman, other than a vague feeling that her power had something to do with her voice. She wasn’t even sure where that particular intuition had originated, but, as usual, she’d found herself responding to it before it had even risen to the level of conscious thought.
She pointed down at the woman as she crouched there, still wheezing. “If you even look like you’re about to open your mouth, I’m going to rip your fucking head off.”
The silver-haired man stood back, observing all of this with undisguised interest, but hardly seeming as if he wanted to get involved. Not Morrigan’s idea of an ally, for certain.
Bryon sighed. “Fates, Morrigan, do you have to be so brutal?”
She shot him a dark look. “Whatever it takes, Bryon.”
“That should be your motto,” he grumbled.
They were going to have to sit down and have a talk, she decided. He could be such a prissy bastard sometimes.
Some distance away, Shadowkin was carefully climbing to his feet, cradling one of his arms and wincing. “I think you broke my arm,” he told Bryon.
“Sorry.” The vampire shrugged. The worst thing about it, he actually sounded as if he meant it.
Goofy bastard.
A great rustle and sound of branches breaking from the woods heralded the return of the big man. Morrigan lifted her gaze just in time to see him tear his way through a tangle of blackberry bushes and storm toward them. “You’d better call off your dog, Shadow. Next time I’m not going to go so easy on him.”
His glare came at her like a laser beam.
She held his gaze and smiled grimly.
“Fine,” he said, and limped over to stand in the giant’s path. For a second, it looked as though the big man would go around him and attack her anyway, but something the dark hero said got through to him. He fired off a burning glare of his own, but did nothing more.
“I don’t care if you like what we’re doing or not,” Morrigan said coldly. “I’m not expecting you to help. But I damn sure expect you to stay out of the fucking way.”
“I’d listen to her,” came a voice, its grimness belied by the way it cracked mid-sentence. From the house came Casey, walking barefoot across the wet lawn with a dark gaze aimed at the meta-heroes. “She’s made up her mind and she isn’t going to waver. Morrigan keeps her promises.”
“Who the hell are you?” The big man snarled down at him.
Casey didn’t blink. He folded his arms over his narrow chest and set his feet solidly as he gazed back up at him. “I’m the kid who knows all your secrets, Mr. O’Rourke.” He capped it off with a sweet smile. “Or should I call you Iron Tower?”
The huge hero’s face darkened slightly and he gave his comrade an unhappy sidelong glance. “What are we doing here, Shadowkin?”
“We’re here to try to talk her out of this insane course of action,” the smaller meta replied, leveling a long, searching look at Morrigan.
“Good luck,” muttered Bryon, earning him the evil eye from his boss.
“So far I haven’t heard you come up with a better plan, Shadowkin. Or did you just plan to stand around until they came to pack you all off to detention camps?” Morrigan turned her attention back to Shadowkin, finishing the question with a feral smile that made him shift uncomfortably where he stood.
“They couldn’t keep me in a camp.” Iron Tower shook his head with a derisive snort.
“No. I’m sure they’d just kill you.” She let out a growling sigh. “You guys just don’t get it, do you?” She shot a look at the woman, who was slowly rising to her feet but quite pointedly keeping her mouth shut. Smart lady. Good for her. “This stupid anti-meta law is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s going to get worse from here. They’re doing a trial run here in Seattle, but their ultimate goal is to make it national.”
“And how is murdering the meta-villains going to change that?”
“Are you really that stupid? The only reason the people will go for it at all is because they’re afraid of the villains in particular. People like Khaos scare the crap out of them, with good reason. When you guys get into a battle and rip up whole city blocks in the process, people get hurt and people lose money. The insurance companies are defaulting on policies that aren’t specifically including a meta-damage rider.”
The woman was nodding at that, Morrigan noticed. Good. She’d finally said something that was getting through to one of them, at least. “If we work to eliminate the villains, they’ll have less ammo to get the resolution passed through Congress.”
Shadowkin looked no happier about it. They’d done this dance before and she hadn’t been able to convince him. That’s why he’d returned with his companions. Unfortunately for him, it looked as though they were a little more susceptible to reason on the matter than he’d been.
She could sense his growing aggravation and considered the best way to defuse it before things got bad again. She didn’t want to hurt any of the heroes if she could help it, but she couldn’t let him sabotage her plan. It was the only one she had. Despite her decision to send the others to D.C. to put pressure on the lawmakers, she had no faith in its success. It was a contingency plan, nothing else, and probably more dependant on their elimination of the villains as a threat to national security than it might seem.
“Let’s go inside and talk,” she said softly, passing her gaze across the four heroes in turn. “Maybe we can reach some sort of accord.” We’d damn well better.
Chapter Nine: Leverage
Bryon was anything but happy. Morrigan’s fierce determination to start killing the meta-villains one at a time had come dangerously close to alienating an important ally and had almost plunged them into a battle they couldn’t afford. He still wasn’t sure she was right about this being the only way to do what needed to be done—to prevent the war before it began. The woman could be downright impossible to reason with. It was either her way or a quick, painful death.
He sighed and leaned closer to the fireplace, enjoying the sensation of warmth licking against his cool, pale skin for a long moment before turning his gaze back to the small crowd assembled in the living room.
The two more vocal metas—who were called Iron Tower and Destiny, of all things—stared at Chikitar in slack-jawed astonishment as he plopped down on the plush gray recliner, kicked his feet up, and regarded them in curious silence.
Morrigan wove some magic and a three-dimensional scale map of the United States materialized in the air some three feet above the floor. “We’ve got a team in D.C. now, trying to work this from the other direction—to influence the lawmakers directly. I’m not sure how well that’s going to work, but it’s worth a shot. All I ever wanted from you, Shadowkin, was the location and identities of the worst villains in the country. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“It’s that ‘take care of’ that concerns me,” Shadowkin replied with a shake of his shadowy head. “You’re talking about cold-blooded murder.”
“Nothing cold-blooded about it, strictly speaking. How many of them, if they could be caught and tried, would have earned a death penalty? I figure we’ll just avoid the legal handicaps involved. And save the state some money in the process.”
The meta hero made an inarticulate grunt of disgust and moved to the window, where he stared out at the enveloping night.
Bryon suppressed a twinge of sympathy for the man. In a matter of weeks his whole universe had been turned upside down, mostly thanks to Morrigan herself. She could have that effect on people—the Fates knew she’d had that effect on him. So sure of herself, so confident in her decisions, she was more a force of nature than a human being. He’d partaken of that force himself when he’d drank from her. He’d never felt so strong, so in control of himself. But he wondered how much of that was illusion.
One of the side-effects of the process had been a connection forged between the two of them, a psychic link that plunged each of them into the depths of the other’s psyche. He’d almost expected to find some level of doubt at her core, but, if it lived there, he did not find it. Morrigan believed in herself to a level he’d never seen in anyone else. She harbored no doubts at all, about herself or her plan of action.
If any question resided in the redoubt of her mind, it was whether she’d ever win Bryon’s heart. Much to his surprise, it was his heart she was after, not just his body. Whether it was simply the challenge of it, or the fact that she’d had something of a revelation about being alone for eternity, he could not say. But her feelings were deeper than he’d suspected. And he remained uncertain what to do about them.
He wasn’t even sure how he felt about her himself. He certainly liked her, though she intimidated him more than a little. And she was absolutely and utterly gorgeous. Gorgeous, hell. She’s hot. He’d have to be blind not to have noticed. Feeding from her had been a seriously sensual experience, nearly enough to break through his resistance. But getting too deep into her was, in his opinion, a recipe for disaster. He preferred to avoid disaster whenever possible.
“I can help you with that,” said the tattooed woman, Destiny. “Identifying and locating the meta-villains, I mean.”
Bryon couldn’t see Shadowkin’s eyes, but he had a feeling that, behind the veil of shadow, they were pinched in anger as he stared at the woman. He remained silent, however, though he must have felt betrayed by her willingness to help in an endeavor that went against everything he himself believed in.
What he didn’t realize was that the world was no longer the way he thought it was, if indeed it ever had been. Shadowkin struck Bryon as dangerously naïve, even more naïve than he himself had been when he’d first met Raven and Val, and through them, Morrigan. And that’s saying something.
“I’d appreciate all the help you can give us,” Morrigan said to her. “Destiny’s your name?”
The woman nodded, rubbing her stomach with a rueful grin. “One hell of a kick you’ve got, lady.” She turned a baleful expression on Shadowkin. “He didn’t exactly come clean with us about who you were and what you were up to. I think he was afraid of what we’d have to say about it if we knew the truth.”
The silver-haired man, who had yet to speak to any of them, met Bryon’s gaze and nodded once. Could the man even speak? He was starting to wonder. Then, as if in answer to his unspoken question, the man turned to Shadowkin, his fingers flashing in some sort of sign language. He couldn’t speak.
“What’s he saying?” Bryon asked.
“That’s he’s pissed off about it too,” answered Destiny. “He’s as sick of the meta villains getting away with their shit all the time as I am. I’m fuckin’ sick of it. The cops can’t stop them. Even if we manage to catch them, the government can’t hold ‘em. All these stupid laws are going to do is give them more power to run amuck. If they won’t let us stop them, who the hell else is going to do it?”
“Now that is the pertinent question in all of this, isn’t it?” asked Chikitar, offering up a feral grin. “If not you, then who?”
Morrigan’s PCD chose that exact moment to emit a loud chirp. Bryon saw her glance at it and tap the “answer” button.
Valiant’s voice cut through the sudden silence. “You need to get out of the house!”
They all exchanged puzzled glances.
“Why?” Morrigan asked.
“There’s a special federal task force on its way there right now and they’re loaded for troll.”
Morrigan snorted. “Sounds like you’re making some progress there, then. Have you been able to make any connections with any of the legislators?”
“Never mind that,” Valiant hissed. “They’re moving on the house now. If they catch you there…” Her voice trailed off. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”
“No. Christ, Valiant, they’re normal humans. They couldn’t hurt me on their best day.”
“What about the others? What about the kid?”
“If and when they arrive, I’ll send Casey and Chikitar out of here so Bryon and I can deal with them. We’ve got some extra hands here as well, so we’ll put them to work too.”
Valiant let out a choked cry of exasperation and abruptly disconnected the call.
Morrigan glanced up to find everyone staring at her with an assortment of expressions. “What?”
“So, now we’re taking on the feds?” Bryon shook his head slowly. “I’m really not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Oh, who cares? I’m not going to let anyone get hurt, but they’ll think twice about messing with me again.”
“That figures,” Chikitar grunted. “It’s all about you, isn’t it, Morrigan? You’re damn near impossible to kill, so you’re willing to put the rest of us in danger so you can show off your magical skills. The arrogance of you immortals would be fucking unbelievable if it weren’t so blatant.”
She stared back at him, quite taken aback by the venom in his tone. “What are you talking about?”
The procyon closed his eyes and took a long breath. When he opened them again, his gaze met hers with as much confidence as she’d seen any mortal being display in similar circumstances. Whatever the raccoon’s failings, lack of nerve certainly wasn’t one of them. “It’s not always about you, Morrigan. There’s a whole team here, and what you decide affects all of us. Sure, you might be able to disable this strike force without anyone getting hurt—this time. But these people—” his arm swept out to encompass everyone else in the room, “—also have to deal with the repercussions of it. Getting beat by you isn’t going to make them back off, you realize? It’s going to piss them off and make them work just that much harder to take down whatever metas they can find. And you won’t be there to defend them every single time.”
“These are normals, Chikitar. They’re going to be at a disadvantage from the jump.”
“You think they don’t know that? They may be normals, like you say, but they’re humans. No species in the history of the metaverse but for the Cen have as much talent for creating new ways to fuck up other people. If they’re coming after metas, it’s because they believe they can balance the scales somehow. And I’d be willing to bet they have a few toys that could hurt even you. Something to think about, at least.”
He sat back, curled his legs beneath him, and quite deliberately tugged his tail out from the couch’s seat cushions.
Morrigan stared at him, momentarily speechless. She found herself wondering, quite against her will, whether he had a valid point. To her disgust, she had to admit he did. Am I really that arrogant?
She didn’t like the answer that bubbled up from her subconscious. A certain amount of arrogance came with the territory. Twenty-five thousand years in existence, particularly with the power of life and death over others, could easily cause a person to develop some serious ego issues. Is that why Bryon barely seems to want to give me the time of day? This wasn’t a comfortable line of questioning for her. She’d never been particularly good at introspection, and hadn’t really missed it. The fact was that a walking, talking raccoon had just dropped her into a stew of all the things she’d never wanted to consider about herself.
Was her pride putting all these people in danger, honestly?
Oh, shit.
She blew out a long breath and nodded. “Okay. So we need to evacuate. Now. Bryon—you’re in charge of getting Casey out of here, making sure he stays safe. Chikitar—you need to be first out, to get as far underground as you can. We can’t risk them finding you.”
The procyon’s musculature wasn’t really built for the human expression of nodding, but he was able to incline his head slightly, the dip of his muzzle signifying his understanding and agreement.
She continued. “Shadowkin. You have a choice here. You can either walk away from us for good or sign on with us for real. The same goes for the rest of you.”
Destiny casually waved off the suggestion she might walk away while the two male metas exchanged glances. “I’m willing to stick with it,” said Iron Tower with a shrug. “Better than waiting for them to come after us and pack us away in concentration camps.”
The mute one nodded his agreement with that.
“Good enough. Shadowkin?”
In contrast to the others, he looked anything but satisfied by this turn of events. He seemed to know he was going to be dragged kicking and screaming into something of which he wanted no part. He threw up his hands. “Fine, damn you. I’m in.”
She nodded. “Good. You folks are in charge of yourselves. I’m not going to tell you what to do here. You can stay, or you can get the hell out, but when we regroup I expect you to show up on schedule.”
“When and where?” Destiny asked her. “You name the place and time and we’ll be there.”
“Tacoma. Next Saturday evening. Eight o’clock. Duke’s Chowder House on Ruston Way. Everybody got that?”
Murmurs of assent all around.
“Great. Now get the hell out of here before they show up.”
“What about you?” Casey asked, clearly concerned. He looked around at the others as if looking for someone to tell her she couldn’t stay. No one was quite that foolish.
“I’m going to stick around and find out what we’re up against,” Morrigan answered. “They can’t hold me even if they do get the drop on me and force me to surrender. I can’t afford to show too much of my hand…they don’t need to know who, or what, I am. But we damn well need to know a few things about them.”
It came as no surprise to her that none of them seemed happy about this turn of events, least of all Bryon. The vampire stood on the edge of the room, hovering in the doorway between the living room and the foyer, and caught her gaze in his own, face showing the kind of studied blankness only a vamp could achieve. Nice to know he cares enough to be angry about it.
And he was angry. She could tell that much even though his face showed nothing of what was going on inside his head. She’d just ordered him to take Casey and leave her behind. As her second, it was his job to look out for her. And now she was telling him to abandon her. She’d hear about this later, of that she had no doubt. If only the reasons behind his anger were personal ones, rather than professional ones. She despaired of ever making him love her. Or, at the very least, giving in to his lust. And she knew for a fact he lusted after her. He’d reeked of it when she’d given her blood to him.
“What are you all waiting for? Get the hell out of here!”
Like spirits winking out of the material plane, they each fled the room, leaving only Morrigan, Bryon, and Casey behind. “Well? What are you two waiting for?”
“I wanted a word with you in private,” Bryon replied. He shot a glance at Casey. “Pretend you’re not here, will you?”
The boy gave him a dubious look, but shrugged. “Whatever you say, Bryon.”
“Thanks.” He returned his gaze to Morrigan, allowing his vampiric composure to slip just a little and the depth of his anger to shine in his eyes for just a moment. “You know what your problem is, Morrigan?”
“Why do I have the feeling you’re going to tell me?” she asked with the tiniest of sighs. She didn’t want to do this here and now—they simply didn’t have the time.
“It’s always about Morrigan. It’s like the rest of us are just props—either helping you get what you want or standing in your way. There’s no middle ground. Just extras in the Morrigan show. You didn’t agree to this mission to save this world, you did it to impress ArchAngel, to show you could. You don’t want to get me in bed because you want me, you want to do it because I’m not throwing myself at you. Or catching you when you’re doing the throwing. You want to prove to me you actually care about me, Morrigan? Try trusting me to know what I’m doing. Try listening to my input now and again. You’re not always right, you know. You’re immortal, not infallible.”
He cocked his head and made a curious face, furrowing his brow and frowning. “Nice stealth technology,” he said, turning and disappearing from view. An instant later, she heard a crunching sound from the front door.
“Shit!” She grabbed a mana thread, snatched the boy off his feet, and created a transit tube to carry them away from the house. A moment later, they were standing together on a street corner just under a mile away.
She wanted to go back, to get Bryon, but she couldn’t leave Casey to do it. And there was no way she was going to take him back there. Damn him. He’d done it on purpose, she realized. What is he playing at?
He was, in a lot of ways, the most vulnerable of them. At night he was nearly as indestructible as she was, but during the day he would be defenseless. All they’d have to do would be to expose him to sunlight and that would spell the end of Bryon the vampire. It wouldn’t even have to be a deliberate act. He’d die just the same. Had he done it to prove a point? To prove that he was, in his own way, just as capable as she was? Or was there more to it than that? It wasn’t about protecting her. That was obvious enough. She had resources he couldn’t begin to match.
No, this was about securing his place on the team, making himself feel as though he had something meaningful to contribute. She’d made him into her lapdog, an extension of her will rather than an agent with something of his own to contribute to the mission.
Am I really that bad?
“Morrigan!” Casey yelled up at her, jerking her out of her thoughts.
“Huh? What?”
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Can we get something to eat?”
He was just trying to distract her. He knew what she was thinking and rightly figured it would more or less paralyze her. Bryon had thrown a wrench into her plan and now she had to come up with a way to salvage something out of it.
“And that’s why he let loose on you back at the house,” Casey told her. “You make everyone around you feel useless.”
“Get out of my head,” she admonished him. “That’s the last thing I need right now.”
“So what do you need? People jumping at your command? Minions and lackeys? Or do you need a partner? He’s right to tell you no. If he has sex with you, you won’t respect him in the morning. You barely respect him now.”
“This must be ‘let’s all lecture Morrigan’ day,” she growled. “There’s a diner up there a few blocks,” she pointed out, desperate to change the subject if only for a little while. There was no way to escape it entirely, considering her companion was a telepath and her brain was very unlikely to remain inviolate. First the raccoon, then Bryon, now a twelve-year-old kid.
“You’ve got a lot to work out, Morrigan. You need to figure out if you’re in this alone or if you’re going to be a part of the team.”
She started walking. If she stood there listening to him another minute, she’d end up strangling the smug little bastard.
Well, not really. But he was sure annoying her enough for her to fantasize about it. “Can we not do this right now?” she finally asked. “Could you stay out of my head for a minute?” she asked as he caught up to her. “I need to think and you’re distracting the hell out of me.”
He nodded, reaching up and grabbing a belt loop on her jeans to halt her forward progress. “He’s going to be okay.”
“I thought you said you were hungry. If you don’t give me a little space inside my own head, Casey, I’m going to let you starve.”
His mouth snapped shut and he let go of her jeans. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”
“Nice of you to notice.”
***
Once the interior of the house was secured, Jack Frost strolled in through the front door. Like the rest of the squad, he cradled a Directed Energy rifle in his arms, the weapon looking decidedly high-tech, particularly in comparison to the nine-millimeter riding in the shoulder rig he wore over his Kevlar vest.
“Somebody warned them, sir,” one of the techs said, holding up a hand scanner. “There’s heat readings all over the place.”
Frost nodded. “So they got out right before we got here, didn’t they?”
“It looks that way, sir.”
“Any sign of anyone still here?”
“Infrared isn’t showing anyone. The place is deserted.”
“Fine. So start tearing this place apart. I want to know everything we can about whoever lived here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once he was certain the house was secure, he slung the DE rifle over his shoulder and began poking around on his own. He opened several doors to see what was behind them, growing more disappointed by the minute. To all appearances, this house housed nothing different from any other in the area. No secret labs, experimental training equipment, or anything else that set off his freak radar.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched by someone they just couldn’t perceive. That was as unsettling a sensation as he’d ever had. Quite impossible, too, since the techs had identified every IR signature currently active in the house as belonging to a member of the squad.
He unclipped his walkie from his belt. “Jensen. Do a RF scan for me. I want to know if there are any cameras broadcasting from inside this house, and, if so, where they’re broadcasting to.”
After receiving an affirmative response, he continued poking his nose into the house’s distant corners. Fifteen minutes later word came down from the tech that there were no cameras to be found.
Another one of the techs had sat down at the PC sitting in what they’d assumed to be a library or den, only to discover that she couldn’t get past the initial screen. Without knowing more about the person who set it, she wouldn’t be able to get past the machine’s security wall.
Cursing silently, he walked into the downstairs bathroom, flicked on the light and set about answering the call of nature. He finished his business, started to zip up and suddenly found himself face-to-face with the wall, his cheek pressed hard enough against the texture that he’d be feeling it for weeks.
“Don’t try to turn around,” a voice murmured in his ear, nearly too quiet for him to hear despite the fact that it was coming from right there. “Who are you?”
There was no way Frost was just going to obey the owner of that voice. He tried to spin on him, but found he couldn’t move at all. His feet were barely touching the floor and his center of gravity had been thrown forward enough that he couldn’t find any leverage to use against his assailant. Whoever he was, he knew what he was doing.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Frost said. “My name is Jack Frost and I’m a federal agent.”
“Well, Mister Frost, my name is Bryon and this is my house you’re ransacking. You have no right to be here.”
“I assure you that all our warrants are in perfect order.”
“Don’t care,” Bryon said, cutting him off before he could continue. “You don’t belong here.”
Before he knew what was happening, Frost found himself flat on his back in the bathtub, the rifle ripped away from his back and his service pistol deftly removed from its holster beneath his left arm. He lay there, blinking up at a very young man with startlingly pale skin and almost radiant blue eyes. “You think you’re hunting ordinary freaks here, Mister—”
“That’s Special Agent Frost to you.”
“Still don’t care,” his captor grated. “I’m going to ask you some questions now, and you’re going to answer all of them to the best of your ability. Understand?”
Frost didn’t know how the man was doing it, but he couldn’t help but answer every question he asked. Classified information or not. It all poured out of him as if he were drunk off his ass, babbling state secrets to whomever would listen. He told him about the DE rifles and the rest of their anti-freak arsenal. Weapons that would give normal humans a fighting chance against the powers of the average metahuman. The DE rifles were actually the least effective of their current batch of toys. They were simply the ones that had so far performed as expected and proven themselves to be moderately useful.
Frost himself had been looking forward to trying out the new hypersonic grenade. Or one of the new “nova” grenades guaranteed to temporarily blind anyone looking in its direction when it exploded.
Once he’d been wrung dry of any piece of information his captor found salient, Frost fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Only at the very back of his mind was there a tiny, screaming terror that his crew was in grave danger and he’d awake to find them all dead.
They were all in deep shit, and it was getting deeper by the minute.
***
Bryon tossed the last body in the back of the van and made a grand production of dusting his hands off. He felt inordinately proud of himself. He’d managed to incapacitate the whole squad, squeeze the last bit of pertinent information out of ol’ Jack Frost, and salvage all their own equipment before the techs were able to get anything out of them.
He spent a few more minutes stowing the rest of their items in one of the cars in the driveway and glanced back at the house. He could smell the faint hint of smoke from the fire he’d started in the garage, and, as expected, caught sight of flames crawling across the kitchen counter. Let them try and get forensic evidence from that, he thought.
He waited a few minutes for the fire to grow into a raging conflagration, climbed into the car in which he’d stashed their equipment, and pulled slowly out of the driveway. Once he was on the road, he pulled his cell out of the pocket of his leather jacket and keyed in Morrigan’s code after putting it on “speaker”.
“It’s done,” he said, when she answered. “Where are you?”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s done’? What did you do?”
“I captured and questioned the leader of the federal task force, a man named Jack Frost. He had some very interesting things to tell me. I also grabbed all our equipment and samples of the strike team’s weapons. I thought you might be interested in them.”
“You thought right. Where are you?”
“I borrowed a car,” he replied, “and got the hell out of there.”
“Borrowed?”
“Okay. Stole. One of the agents’ cars. It’s a big black thing.” He quickly described the vehicle.
“That’s not a car, Bryon. That’s an SUV.”
Bryon shrugged. “If you say so. Oh, crap!” He turned the wheel abruptly, feeling the vehicle lurch underneath him as it careened around a small white car that had pulled out in front of him. “Hey, Morrigan? When those lights are red, what does it mean?”
“What lights?” she asked him, then he heard a swift intake of breath. “You mean the ones hanging over the intersections?”
“Yes. Those.”
“They mean stop.”
“Oh. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
“We’re at a restaurant about a mile from the house,” she told him. “You can’t miss it. Just try to get here in one piece, will you?”
“I think I’m getting the bang of this now.”
“Hang,” she corrected. “Getting the ‘hang’ of this now.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. Uh, how do you slow this thing down?”
“The brake is the smaller pedal to the left,” she told him. “The longer pedal on the right is the gas. It makes it go.”
“That I already figured out.”
“Fine. Just try to stay on the right side of the road and stop for red lights or stop signs—those are the red, octagonal signs. Don’t drive through either one or you might end up scattered all over the road.”
He followed her directions and pulled into the diner’s parking lot a few minutes later, angling the truck into a slot in back without incident. He climbed out onto the asphalt, wiping a thin layer of blood sweat from his brow. I am so never doing that again, he thought. How these people drove these dangerous machines the way they did totally mystified him. They have to be out of their heads.
Before he reached the diner door, Morrigan and Casey were coming out. The kid grinned up at him. “You’re okay!”
“Better than okay,” he told the kid, grinning back at him. “Bryon the vampire, one. Federal agents, zero.” He winked.
Casey threw his arms around Bryon’s waist and hugged him. Bryon raised his gaze to Morrigan, who could only shrug. “I’m glad you made it out all right,” Casey told him.
“Thanks, kid. Now what?” he asked Morrigan.
“We get out of town. I’ve got backup identities and a secondary base already set up. We’re going to Tacoma. I’ve already talked to Chikitar. He’s going to meet us there.”
Bryon nodded. He handed the car keys across to Morrigan. “I think we’d better get out of here before the feds start waking up.”
“You left them alive?”
He rolled his eyes skyward, toward the dark clouds skimming across the white orb of the moon riding high above them. “What do you think, Morrigan? I don’t kill casually.”
“Are you saying I do?”
“In a word, yes.”
Morrigan leaned over and pulled Casey from Bryon’s waist and propelled him gently down the ramp. “We need to get moving.” She didn’t meet Bryon’s eyes as she squeezed past him. “Where’d you park?”
“Around back,” he answered. “You can’t miss it.”
“Standard federal issue,” Morrigan grunted. “Not exactly unobtrusive.”
He followed them around the corner and wasn’t surprised when Morrigan swept her hand up and the color of the vehicle changed from black to a deep green. She walked around the back, frowning, and waved her hand at the engraved plate on the back. The numbers seemed to flow together and re-arrange themselves into an entirely different configuration. “That should keep us safe enough on the trip down to Tacoma,” she said, opening the back door and helping Casey up into the back seat. “Buckle up,” she told him.
Bryon walked around and climbed into the front passenger seat and buckled his own seat belt while watching Morrigan out of the corner of his eye. She was beautiful, he couldn’t argue that. At least on the outside. On the inside, well, he wasn’t so sure of that. If she had some sort of conscience, maybe. But, near as he could tell, she was an unrepentant killer and sometimes acted as though she expected him to be the same way.
She started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, merging effortlessly into the evening traffic. “You did good, Bryon. Even though I don’t like the idea of leaving live enemies behind you. That aside, you did damn good.”
“Why, thank you.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. Maybe you’re right.”
“About what?” Her admitting he’d done a good job had taken him by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. She wasn’t completely insensitive to how other people viewed her. How could she be? She had to live and work with other people on a daily basis and, while it served her purpose to be seen as strong and decisive as possible, a line had to be drawn somewhere. Bryon, for one, was tired of being walked over. He’d be damned if she’d get away with ignoring his input on everything.
“Maybe I push too hard, and don’t listen well enough.”
“Maybe nothing,” came Casey’s response from the back seat. “You come up with a basic plan and get annoyed if the members of your team see a need to modify it along the way. That’s not the recipe for a successful team, Morrigan. That’s a recipe for a serious disaster.”
“How’d you get so smart, Casey?” Bryon asked him, turning halfway around in his seat to look the boy in the eye. “You’ve learned something in your first twelve years of life that some people haven’t figured out after twenty-five thousand.”
“What’s that?” Morrigan asked, her voice a low growl.
“There’s no ‘I’ in team,” Casey replied.
Morrigan shook her head and changed lanes, swearing under her breath at the driver of the car she’d set out to pass. “If you can’t do the speed limit, you idiot, get the hell off the road!”
Then, thankfully, they were heading up the on-ramp onto I-5 and merging with traffic going a more reasonable speed. At least it seemed as though Morrigan felt that way about it.
“I’m not trying to run rough-shod over everyone, Bryon. Not really. I just have a hell of a lot more experience at this sort of job than any of you do. Or ever will, for that matter. I’m good at thinking on my feet—I’ve had to be. I’m not so sure about the rest of you.”
“Yet you sent the other team to D.C. In case you hadn’t realized it, that’s a hell of a lot farther away than the rest of us. Yet it feels like it’s our shoulders you’re looking over. We know what we’re doing.”
“And you’re speaking for everyone here?” she asked out of the blue.
“Pretty much.”
“I already said you were right. I’m not giving you guys enough credit. But we can’t afford to fail this time around. We fail and we’re stuck here. I don’t consider failure an option.”
“I’m not sure you ever have,” Bryon muttered. “No matter what scenario you’re looking at.” I am not going to end up another notch on her bedpost. And it’s time she realized it.
Chapter Ten: Warpath
“Don’t say a goddamn word,” snarled Jack Frost. “Not one fucking word.” He rubbed at his face and eyed his image in the rearview mirror. “Was anyone hurt?”
His second in command, Special Agent Theresa Ronn, leaned against the side of the truck and shook her head. She was used to her superior’s occasionally erratic attitudes and didn’t bother to point out that she couldn’t answer questions if she wasn’t allowed to say a word. “Doesn’t look like it. I found everybody else crammed into the back of the surveillance van, out cold. I called it in and the EMTs are looking them over as we speak.”
Frost himself had woken up in the bathtub lying in the middle of the back yard, the dancing flames of the burning house playing against his eyelids. He’d levered himself up and out, found his weapon missing and used his cell phone to call 9-1-1.
He craned his neck and peered out at the house, which, despite the best efforts of the local fire department, was little more than a pile of smoking ash with a few blackened timbers leaning here and there.
“I really thought we had them this time,” said Ronn. “I’m just wondering how they managed to subdue all of you so quickly.”
“Me too,” grunted Frost. “I’d say there would have to have been quite a few of them here to pull it off, but I could’ve sworn the house was empty when we arrived.”
“There’s more bad news,” she said. “One of the SUVs is gone, along with a full set of operational gear.”
“Operational gear” was code for the unit’s special weapons, like the Directed Energy rifles and the baffle grenades. “Put out an APB.”
“Already did. No hits yet.”
“Don’t we have them lo-jacked?” he asked, frowning.
“Of course. But it’s been disabled.”
“Damn. Is it me, or are these people several steps ahead of us?”
“Most of the time, yeah. Freaks have an advantage—we already knew that. The whole reason behind our existence is to eliminate as much of that advantage as possible.”
“And it’s working so well, isn’t it?” He flashed her an uncharacteristic grin. He never smiled, but it seemed Theresa was particularly good at breaking through the shell of ice that surrounded him. Sometimes, in unguarded moments, he wondered what it might be like had he not been her boss, but he quickly reminded himself how ludicrous that was to even consider. He was her boss and agency guidelines made any romantic involvement completely out of the question. It could cost both of them their jobs should they slip in that direction.
A series of loud shouts drew their attention. Theresa leaped out of the way as Frost boiled from inside the truck, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Together they sprinted around the remnants of the house and into the front yard.
“Drop to your knees and put your hands behind your heads!” yelled Agent Graham, his weapon aimed at a pair of women standing midpoint on the lawn. A couple of the local cops stood a few feet away, their pistols also aimed at the intruders.
The first thing that struck Frost about them was that they seemed totally unconcerned by the weapons pointed in their direction. They stood there in the midst of it all, chatting with one another as if they were completely alone somewhere far away from the gunmetal and charred remains of someone’s home.
They also weren’t obeying Graham’s instructions.
The two officers holstered their weapons and moved on them as if planning to make them comply by force if necessary. As the first cop’s hand descended on the shoulder of the taller of the two women—Frost couldn’t help but notice how strikingly beautiful she was—he nearly cried out a warning. He didn’t know why, but he was suddenly certain something bad was about to happen.
The large, round-faced cop grabbed the woman’s shoulder firmly. She turned slightly, lifting her arm and wrapping long fingers around the officer’s wrist. As if dancing with him, she spun away, dragging him along with her as she went. A second later, he was airborne, floating across the grass to crash back down to Earth several feet from where he started. Then, amazingly enough, she went back to her conversation with her companion.
Graham and the other cop didn’t seem to know what to do. Swearing to himself, Frost crossed to the forensic van, popped open the door and pulled out one of the DE rifles. As he turned away, weapon in hand, he was startled to find the younger, Hispanic-looking woman standing beside him.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said, snatching the gun from his grasp and knocking him back into the van with a casual wave of her other hand. “We’ve got some questions for you.”
He bounced off the van and fired a straight right into her jaw. That was his intention, anyway. To his surprise, she slapped the punch aside and rammed him back into the van, one hand wrapped around his throat.
“You’re kidding me, right?” she snarled, face now inches from his own. “Just sit back and play along and I won’t have to hurt you.”
He tried to break her grasp with a release maneuver he’d learned years before, but striking at her wrist was a lot like trying to break a steel pipe with his bare hands. She barely seemed to notice, though the impact drove her fingers deeper into his windpipe. He kicked out, slamming the edge of his foot into her knee. He might as well have kicked a concrete post. She whipped her arm sideways, slamming him into the open door.
Once the stars had faded, he looked up at her face and nearly smiled. Theresa was there, her handgun held up to the side of the woman’s head. “Why don’t you just let go and step away,” she asked sweetly.
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself,” the woman replied in an equally sweet tone. “If you don’t get that gun away from me, you’re going to spend the next ten minutes screaming your way into your grave.”
Theresa didn’t look particularly impressed by the threat. At this point, Frost certainly was. Theresa didn’t have this woman’s fingers wrapped around her throat. She hadn’t tried to break her grasp or blow out her knee. She was definitely some kind of freak, and not a low-powered one, either. And what about her friend?
The boom of a nine-millimeter firing caused Theresa to flinch and that was just enough to give the woman the chance to react. So quickly Frost’s eyes couldn’t track the movement, she had Theresa on her knees next to him, arm wrenched up behind her head. The worst part? Near as he could tell, she hadn’t bothered to loosen her grip on his throat while she did it.
He lifted his gaze over the woman’s shoulder and spotted the other one, the taller one, carrying Graham by the back of his jacket in one hand and the remaining local officer in the other in much the same way. Both men looked unconscious…or dead. She tossed them in the back of the van on top of the equipment strewn within by whoever had stolen the equipment SUV in the first place and turned her dark eyes on Frost.
When she spoke, her voice was a husky contralto, the kind of voice that would make most men sit up and beg like a dog. Beauty, brawn, and a voice like that? Given a few weeks, she’d own the whole world.
He grimaced internally at his own inner voice. He was stronger than that. Better than that. He couldn’t be seduced, even mentally, by a woman like this.
“Where are the people who were living in this house?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he tried to answer. But it came out as a harsh rasp, barely recognizable as speech at all.
“Loosen your grip,” the taller woman told the shorter. “He can’t answer if he can’t talk.”
She withdrew her hand and he gulped in a few sweet breaths. “I don’t know where they went. They were gone when we got here. Well, at least we think they were gone. Someone was still here…someone powerful enough to subdue all of my agents and burn down the house.”
The two women exchanged curious glances. “You didn’t see anything?”
“No…I woke up in the bathtub in the backyard. All my agents were stuffed in this van.”
The Hispanic woman snickered. “Vamped.”
The taller, Arabic woman nodded. “Sounds like it. Bryon must’ve drunk from Morrigan. His power is increasing.”
Frost looked from one to the other, trying to make sense of their words. It almost sounded as though they were talking about…a vampire? Impossible. Metahuman freaks he could accept. He dealt with them on a daily basis. But supernatural creatures? As ridiculous as magic.
“You were lucky,” the taller woman said. “Very lucky. Bryon’s a nice guy—”
“Maybe too nice,” the other interjected.
“He should’ve just killed you all. His boss would have.”
“This Morrigan creature?”
She laughed, flashing flawless white teeth. “No, I’m not going to give any more information away. Not about them. About us—well, why not? I’m Jasmine Tashae. People call me Jaz. Or, sometimes, the Lady of Blades. This is my partner, Nyx Deathweb. We’re the other team’s backup.”
Backup? Frost frowned. That made them sound like law enforcement agents. “Who do you work for?” He had to ask, even though he didn’t really expect an answer. Maybe they were foreign agents.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She sighed. “I will tell you this, though. You’re going to have to get over your hatred of ‘freaks,’ Special-Agent-In-Charge Frost. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself instigating a war that will destroy everything you care about. The people you’re chasing are on the same side you are—more or less. They want to stop the metahuman villains from fucking this world up. They don’t need you making it harder for them. If you keep chasing them, you’re going to catch them, and one of these times it’s going to go very badly for you when you do. You were lucky this time. Bryon’s not a killer. There are those of us, however, who would not hesitate to kill you if it becomes necessary. And there isn’t a damned thing you can do to stop us.”
He believed her. He didn’t want to, but he did. Every instinct within him screamed that this woman was as dangerous a predator as any he’d ever encountered in all his years with the FBI. The two of them together…he wasn’t willing to bet they couldn’t take on a whole army and walk out in one piece.
“Let her go,” he told the smaller one—Nyx, he thought her name was.
Nyx shrugged and helped Theresa to her feet. She patted her on the shoulder and pushed her to stand next to Frost. “Jaz is telling you the truth here, Frost.”
“How do you know my name?”
“We have our resources,” she said enigmatically. “It’s not important anyway. What’s important is doing the right thing. I know you’re supposed to be hunting renegade metahumans and that the definition has recently been stretched to include any metahuman that doesn’t fall in line with the new policy handed down from the beltway. If I were you, I’d be asking myself who’s initiating this policy and what their true motivations are. You dig into that, you might find something you really didn’t want to know.”
Then, as if by magic, both women simply stepped back and vanished into thin air.
“Are you all right?” he asked Theresa once he was certain they were gone.
She nodded numbly. “Jack…what the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” he replied after a moment’s consideration, “but I’m going to find out.”
***
“At least they’re all right,” Nyx said, falling back on the bed. She commanded her sym to eliminate the boots and they vanished into the rest of it, leaving her bare toes to wiggle freely in the air.
“That Fed worries me,” Jaz replied, taking a seat in a chair a few feet away. “I remember him from our Earth. He was a bit of an idiot there, but I don’t think he is in this universe. With any luck we’ve redirected his aim a bit.”
“You think the Cen are behind this, don’t you?”
Jaz shrugged. “Certainly possible. It fits their M.O. Alienate and marginalize, then persecute those most able to give them a good fight. It could just as easily be natural human herd mentality—the Cen get a lot of mileage out of it because it’s inherent, and easily exploitable.”
Nyx sighed and tucked her hands behind her head. “So we’re back to square one. We don’t know where they are and we don’t know what they’re up to.”
“True enough. If it comes down to it, we can create a djinn or send the imps to track them down.”
“Oh, no. We are not creating a djinn,” Nyx said, sitting up abruptly. “They’re just too damn hard to control.”
“As if the imps aren’t?” Jaz laughed. “But, yeah, you have a point. The last thing this world needs is to have a djinn running amuck. We’ll send Quickfingers and Jinx to track them down again.”
“Assuming they don’t get distracted along the way.”
“Even if they do, it’ll still be faster than trying to do it ourselves.”
Nyx nodded slowly. “We’d better do it now. I have the feeling all of this is going to come to a head soon.”
“Yeah, me too.”
***
Morrigan turned the rifle over in her hands, then passed it to Chikitar. The procyon set it on the kitchen counter and dug out his tool kit from a dimension pocket. “You know what it is?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “No, but it’s clearly some sort of energy weapon rather than a projectile launcher. Once I get inside I might be able to tell you more.”
“Okay. You do that. I’ve got some shopping to do.” She glanced at the wall clock and took a deep breath. “Bryon might be up before I get back. Tell him I’ll be back as soon as I can. If he needs to, he can call me on my PCD.”
She wasn’t certain she could find what she was looking for here in town, but, even if she couldn’t, she’d be able to find something that would serve until she did. The time for discussing it or hesitating was long over. If she didn’t get the ball rolling now, she never would. She knew they were running out of time. She had to implement her plan now. The mage road Chikitar had helped set up would help, but she wasn’t willing to use magic to do the work she needed to do. For that she needed a more mundane weapon. A sniper rifle.
She’d never relied on such things, but she’d used them from time to time—at least enough to be able to choose one out of the multitude of potentially available weapons. Any decent deer hunting rifle should do the job.
She took the SUV, intending to take a detour to the waterfront to dump it. Half an hour later, she was walking away, the vehicle sinking to the bottom of the bay behind her. As she prepared to leap out, her PCD started flashing, indicating an incoming call. She answered by tapping the screen. “Morrigan.”
Valiant’s image appeared on the tiny video screen. “Hey. I guess you got my warning early enough.”
“We did. Pretty much. How are things going for you?”
“Not too bad. What did you guys do to Special Agent Frost?”
“Don’t ask me. Bryon’s the one who handled them this time around. You’d have to ask him. Why?”
“Because Frost has been asking questions through the chain of command. Weird questions—like who’s behind the push for the anti-meta legislation.”
“Really? Maybe Bryon gave him a suggestion.”
The tiny image nodded. “Maybe. It’s sending up a bit of a dust-storm here, though. That sort of thing just isn’t done within the agency. It’s especially bad when this operation is intended as a test-run for a national program and it isn’t going well.”
“Yeah. And now Frost is throwing a fit?”
“I’d say he’s thinking about it. Now he’s saying that ordinary humans won’t be able to keep metas in line, no matter how many laws they manage to pass.”
“I’ll bet that’s going over real well with his superiors. How’d you hear about this?”
“I got a job working for Senator Rydell, who’s up for Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.”
“Wow. That was fast. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I’m hoping I can make something out of it. The senator is pretty receptive—he’s one of the true progressives in Congress right now and he’s pretty outspoken about his opposition to banning use of metahuman powers, metahuman registration, or anything else that smacks of persecution. He thinks it’s a bad precedent all the way around.”
“Good for him. You’re doing well. Just keep it up. How’s everyone else?”
“Good. Kitsune’s figured out his sym and no longer needs the amulet you gave him to shift shape. His sym takes care of it now.”
She thought she caught an odd note to Valiant’s voice here, but Morrigan decided it wasn’t any of her business. Her best guess was that it was personal and not something she wanted to discuss. “Nice to know that’s working out for him. What about the others?”
“Midellis is working as an EMT, of all things. We could’ve set him up as a doctor, but he says he’d rather be on the street. Santos has got himself a slot with the D.C. police department. I think he wants to apply to the FBI.”
Morrigan pursed her lips. “I think the background we created for you all will stand up to the kind of check they’d run, but I can’t guarantee anything.”
“We’ve all passed muster so far. I think they’ll hold up.”
“It could be very bad if they don’t. But I think you’re right. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll go back through the identities and shore up anything that looks weak. But it’ll have to wait a couple of days. I’ve got something else to do.”
Valiant knew exactly what she meant. “It’s time, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s time.”
“I take it you got the map you were waiting for?”
“I’m meeting Destiny this evening,” Morrigan replied. “The map she’s putting together is supposed to include the location of their lairs and a preliminary report on their defenses. She’s getting it from some kind of hero database. As soon as I get that I should be ready to get to work.”
The lycanthrope nodded. “Just be careful.”
Morrigan didn’t bother to remind her that she had very little to worry about. Even the most powerful meta villain would be no match for the likes of her. The one who’d called himself Khaos served as a perfect example of what she could do to them if she had to. She’d be able to handle the rest of them easily enough. “I always am,” was all she said. Then she cut the connection.
***
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Chikitar glanced up from the kitchen counter and waved a hand in assent before going back to the weapon he’d dismantled across the counter.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” the vampire said, following it with a sigh. “Fine. Do you know where she went?”
“I think she was meeting with that meta-hero woman and doing a little shopping,” the procyon answered. “Other than that, no. I’m not her keeper, after all.”
“Someone needs to be,” Bryon grumbled. “For the record, I still think this is a bad idea.”
“Yeah, well…we all know how you feel about it by now, Bryon. She’s in charge and you’re just going to have to live with it.”
Bryon gave him a dark look in response. “I know. So what is that thing?”
“Not sure. I’ve never seen anything like it. But I think it fires a burst of microwaves.”
Bryon had some idea what a microwave was, but only from his time here on this world. “Why would someone create a weapon that uses microwaves? I’d think it was either extremely dangerous, or pretty much useless.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to run some tests before I can say for sure.”
At a loss for anything else to say, Bryon went with, “You do that.” As much as he admired the technological achievements of these humans and the ones he knew from Earth Prime, there remained entirely too much of it that seemed like magic to him. When you considered the technology prevalent on Starhaven, or what Chikitar himself could accomplish merging technology and magic, someone like himself had little chance of understanding any of it. He found it more than a little frustrating. At least Morrigan understood all of this. One reason she made a better boss than he would. So far, anyway.
“I think I’m going to take a walk,” Bryon said. “I need some fresh air.”
“Vampires don’t need fresh air. Vampires don’t breathe,” Chikitar pointed out absently. “But feel free regardless.”
Bryon ignored his sardonic response and stalked out the front door.
This time Morrigan hadn’t chosen a location far removed from other people, thinking, apparently, that it might be better to hide in plain sight than in the sticks. Bryon, for what it was worth, happened to agree with her on this point. It was easier to hide in a crowd.
She’d purchased a building in Tacoma’s theater district for what he assumed to be an obscene amount of money. She’d proved remarkably adept at stealing funds without attracting the notice of investigators. I suppose she’d had plenty of time to practice, he mused.
He stepped out into the cool night air, taking a deep draught of the mist he found there, and turned to scan the street. It was early in the evening and many people walked the streets, voices raised in cheerful discourse or occasionally even breaking into song. It looked as though there was some sort of celebration in the air, though he’d heard nothing about it from the others. Not really surprising. Nearly all of his companions were rather single-minded, afflicted with tunnel vision to the point of excluding anything that wasn’t of immediate concern.
Unlike them, Bryon did not have anything so pressing on his consciousness that he couldn’t pay attention to the ebb and flow of the world around them. It was time he learned something more about these humans, and their world. He walked out into the night to join the revelers.
***
“The first person on the list is Lowbrow,” Destiny said, passing across a photograph.
Morrigan lifted it and eyed the rotund man with some skepticism. “This is one of the most feared meta-villains in the world?”
“He’s formidable enough that the government hasn’t been able to bring him down. He insulates himself amidst a veritable army of his rabid followers. That is his talent…he can convince people of nearly anything, just by speaking it. People believe he’s a defender of freedom and liberty, that he’s a goddamn hero. Because he tells them he is. The truth is he’s the biggest fraud that ever lived. He enslaves the minds of those he wants, and pretends that he’s freeing them.
“Law enforcement can’t touch him—he’s insulated by too many layers of protection. There’s a whole town under his influence in Idaho. Every single law enforcement officer we’ve sent in to infiltrate has been turned. The only reason his sphere isn’t even larger is because we’ve managed to sabotage any attempt he’s made at going national. Ten years ago he tried to build a massive radio transmitter, but Iron Tower and another hero named Tangent scrubbed the tower before he knew they were there. Five years ago he tried to hack the cable system, but we were able to foil that attempt as well.
“Believe me, the man is incredibly dangerous. All he has to do is speak to someone and they become his devoted servant. We’ve only avoided him having nationwide access by the skin of our teeth.”
“Sounds like you’ve done a good job.”
“We’ve been lucky. What you’re planning on doing will free thousands and possibly save millions.”
“That’s good to know,” Morrigan replied. “It’s too bad Shadowkin doesn’t see it that way.”
“He was brought up with a different set of morals. He bought into the whole comic book ethos, thinks that it’s the only way to come to terms with what we are. I’m not so sure.”
If given the opportunity, humans can justify anything. Morrigan banished the voice as soon as it surfaced. She didn’t want to be thinking like that. It was too dangerous for her to start wondering if she was justifying things she shouldn’t. Like cold-blooded murder. She’d once taken pride in the fact that she never killed for personal reasons. She’d taken money to end the lives of other people, but believed she’d worked for the greater good. She killed people who deserved it, people who she, and others, thought needed to die.
This person, by all reports, deserved the same fate as all of those whose lives she’d ended. And she had the skills to make it happen. So why was she questioning the rightness of it now?
She reined in these thoughts, thanked Destiny and headed back toward the motorcycle she’d picked up earlier. A glance at her PCD revealed the time as just past eight-thirty. If she rode hard, she could be in Idaho before dawn even without taking the mage road to get there. The ride would clear her head, she told herself.
Or she could go back to base and wait until tomorrow. Now you’re just trying to procrastinate your way out of it. And maybe she was. This guy deserves to die, dammit. Why are you hesitating?
She knew the answer and it was bugging the hell out of her. Because Bryon doesn’t approve.
Who was he that he expected her to change who she was just to gain his acceptance? She asked herself that and didn’t have a good answer. Maybe there just isn’t a good answer to a question like that.
She mounted the motorcycle and started it up. If she didn’t head to Idaho now, she never would. She released the brake and the bike glided forward, purring between her legs as she thumbed the throttle. If she didn’t do this, she no longer knew who she was.
The sky grew dark with the threat of rain as she merged onto I-5 and headed north toward I-90.
***
Destiny watched her leave, her heart beating just a little bit faster. The thought that she’d betrayed one of the precepts of what she was felt strange to her, but the idea that Lowbrow might soon be dead made up for a lot of her trepidation. If anyone deserved to die, it was that bastard.
She turned away and started walking toward her car, parked up the hill a ways. She hadn’t wanted it where the woman could see it, just in case something had gone wrong. It was always wise to use a long spoon when one supped with a devil, as they said.
She nearly jumped out of her skin as a figure emerged out of the darkness, a lithe shadow that coalesced into the form of a rather tall woman in what looked like a martial arts gi. She stood about twenty feet in front of her, her gaze like a weight on the meta’s shoulders.
She took a deep breath in preparation for using her gift, but hesitated. The woman, though her appearance had been sudden and definitely threatening in itself, hadn’t done anything else that might be construed as hostile.
“Where did she go?” the woman asked suddenly.
“Who?” Destiny wasn’t about to start spouting off now. She knew how to keep a secret.
Though she couldn’t really make out much of the woman’s face, she felt it constrict in undisguised irritation. “I don’t have time for games, woman. Just tell me where Morrigan went and we won’t have any trouble.”
“There won’t be any trouble at all if you don’t bring it,” Destiny replied. She didn’t like being threatened.
“She probably thinks she’s protecting her,” came another voice, this one from behind her. “You’re spooking her, Jaz.”
“Then she spooks too easily.”
Destiny backed away, toward the dome itself, trying to move into a position from which she could see both of them at the same time. She should’ve expected this, that there would be those who’d try to stop Morrigan from doing what needed done.
“This is ridiculous,” the second woman said, stepping out of the shadows and revealing herself to be an attractive young lady of Hispanic descent, clad in what looked to be a skin-tight leather outfit with knee-high boots. Her black hair was pulled back away from her face and her eyes danced with humor as she regarded Destiny. “We’re not Morrigan’s enemies. We’re actually here to help her. I’m Nyx Deathweb. That’s Jasmine Tashae. We were sent by the same person as she was, to provide backup in case she needed it.”
“I thought she brought her own backup.”
“You can never have enough,” said the one called Jaz. “We’re special backup. She wasn’t told we’d be coming along behind.”
She didn’t know all that much about Morrigan, but Destiny couldn’t help but think she’d be pretty pissed off to know about this. But somehow she believed them. It was almost too unlikely to be a lie. “I still don’t know why I should tell you where she’s going. She strikes me as a person more than capable of taking care of herself.”
“This is true,” the one called Nyx said. “But even the most capable person stumbles now and again. We just want to make sure everything works out all right.”
In Destiny’s mind, nothing at this point was more important than Lowbrow going down. She couldn’t imagine the repercussions if Morrigan failed to kill him, especially if she were caught making the attempt. If he managed to turn her… “She’s gone to kill someone.”
“Now there’s a surprise,” snorted Nyx. “Who?”
Destiny laid it all out for them. Morrigan’s current target, the opposition her plan had received from Shadowkin and Iron Tower’s eventual decision to stay out of it completely. She also mentioned that she thought Morrigan was catching heat from her own team for it, though she was hazy on the details. It was more a feeling she had than anything concrete.
“Bryon,” murmured Jaz, shaking her head. “I doubt he’d be too happy about it.”
“Hasn’t Morrigan been chasing him for years?”
“Yeah. Hasn’t caught him yet, either. I’m not sure if he’s just playing hard to get because of her reputation as a party girl or if he just doesn’t want to get involved with her at all. I can see where he might object to this particular plan. He’s Raven’s get, after all.”
Nyx laughed, obviously sharing an inside joke with her companion. “And we all know how Raven is.”
“Mister Righteous.” Jaz sighed. “We’d better tag along. Where in Idaho is this guy holed up?”
Destiny told them.
“Thanks for the help,” Nyx said. She gestured and two motorcycles suddenly appeared on the asphalt in front of her.
Jaz gave an exasperated grunt and walked over to where they stood, claiming one of them by throwing her leg over it. As she settled into the seat, she turned her gaze on Destiny. “It can be pretty frustrating trying to live by someone else’s rules,” she said in a casual tone, “but you have to make sure you don’t go so far in declaiming those rules that you lose sight of those you would choose to follow yourself if you had the choice.”
With that rather cryptic statement hanging in the air, she started the motorcycle and rolled slowly toward the street. Nyx followed suit and, in a matter of a few minutes, the two women had vanished around the bend in the road.
“Now what the hell was that supposed to mean?” she asked the darkness.
She, of course, received no reply.
Chapter Eleven: Know Thyself
Bryon settled onto the bar stool and ordered a beer, even though he knew he couldn’t tolerate drinking the stuff. It was too bad, considering how much he’d liked beer when he was alive. Maybe too much, he thought with a wry grin.
Not that the sacrifice wasn’t worth it in the end.
He wasn’t here to party—at least, not in the way that most people were. He simply craved the company of people, normal people. More or less. For a little while, he wanted to forget how odd his life had become and just revel in the companionship of human beings. He hadn’t realized how lonely he’d truly felt until he’d walked in here. Surrounded by laughing people had simply illuminated the dark points inside his soul, the places that cried out for some sort of light to fill them.
He scanned the seats around him, nodding companionably to the man sitting to his right, a man who struck him, at that moment, as looking as lost and alone as he was.
The man nodded back, the haunted look in his eyes fading just a little for just a brief moment. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“I’ve been better,” Bryon replied. “You?”
“Don’t ask,” the man sighed. “I’m sure you’re not out looking to listen to some shmuck’s tale of woe.”
“Why not?” Bryon asked him. “It might be better than wallowing in my own.”
“I hear you there. I’ll tell you what—I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Bryon shrugged. “Why not? You go first.”
The man hesitated for a moment, then let out a long breath. “I screwed up. I’ve been so damn busy that I missed the signs and now it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late to save my family.” He let out a short, bitter laugh. “It’s all about the Benjamins.”
“Excuse me?”
“Money. I’ve been so obsessed with making money, with all the trappings of success, that I neglected the most important thing in the world. The people that make it all worthwhile in the end.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I was never home,” the man said. “I went from business meeting to business meeting, from presentation to presentation. Even when I was home I wasn’t really there. I was in video conference or on the phone to a client. My children were growing up without me and I didn’t even notice.”
“Well, you’ve obviously noticed now.”
“Oh, yeah. But it took my wife filing divorce papers to get through to me. I can’t even blame her. Oh, I’d like to, but I’ve lied to myself long enough.”
“We all do that.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we should stop.” He took a shot of whatever clear liquid was in the glass in front of him and shuddered violently. “So what’s your story?”
“I think I’m in love with my boss.”
“Ouch.”
“You have no idea. She’s been chasing me for the last few years and I’ve managed to stay ahead of her, but I’m tired of running. But if I let her catch me, I’m going to have to come to terms with her dark side—a side that’s pretty much the opposite of everything I was taught to respect. She’s utterly ruthless and doesn’t have a conscience. Not so you’d notice, anyway. Whatever it takes to do the job. That’s her motto.”
“So what is it about her that gets to you? She doesn’t sound very inviting to me.”
“I think there’s more to her than that. She may be ruthless, but it’s usually in the service of a good cause. Ultimately she’s trying to do the right thing…it’s just her methods that are questionable. I mean, can you justify killing a few people to save millions?”
“I assume you’re talking figuratively.”
“Sure. Why not?”
The man frowned at him, then shook his head and laughed wryly. “She sounds intriguing when you put it like that. Is she beautiful?”
“Oh, yes. She’s tall and athletic, with hair the color of fire itself. Just looking at her makes my mouth dry.”
“You’ve got it bad, friend. Does she know how you feel?”
“No. I’ve done everything I can to put barriers between us. I don’t really want her knowing how I feel until I come to terms with who she is.”
“Probably wise. But no one ever said love was wise. Maybe you should reconsider your approach. Maybe you have a better chance of changing her if you do tell her how you feel. People have done truly astounding things for love.” He chuckled ruefully. “I’ve heard it said that love is, in truth, far more corrupting than any other emotion.”
“That’s insane.”
“Is it? People will tolerate things from people they believe they love that they’d never tolerate from anyone else. People say lust is sinful, that it corrupts…but how many people would allow themselves to be abused just for the sake of sex? Not many. You never know. Maybe if you let her catch you, you’ll find that she’s more amenable to change than you ever thought she was.”
“Maybe. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Don’t spend too much time thinking about it,” his companion warned him. “These opportunities have a way of evaporating if you wait too long.” He waved the bartender over and flipped a bill onto the bar in front of her. “I think a fifty will cover both me and my friend here,” he said. “I need to get upstairs and get some sleep. Morning comes awfully early, especially after a night of drinking.”
Bryon laughed aloud at that. He remembered all too well what that felt like. “You’re staying here?”
“Best hotel in town,” the man replied. “If you can’t go home, you might as well live it up a little. Hope everything works out for you.” He slid off the bar stool and tottered carefully toward the door. “Remember what I said,” he shot over his shoulder. “Don’t wait too long.”
Bryon watched him leave, then turned back to the bartender. “Keep the change,” he told her. He stood up and headed for the door himself. He had a lot to consider. He probably wouldn’t see Morrigan again until tomorrow night, so he had plenty of time left to ruminate on his decision. He only hoped the man had been right and that coming clean with her would make a difference in the end.
Only one way to find out.
As the vampire vanished into the misty night, his former companion disengaged from a shadowy corner of the hotel lobby and, after looking to make certain he wasn’t being observed, dissolved the illusion in which he’d enveloped himself.
Chikitar grabbed a passing thread and tossed one end a few blocks to their new headquarters, traversing the distance between them in one easy step. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was the sight of a lovesick vampire moping around. Maybe now the stupid bloodsucker would make up his flaming mind.
Or, if nothing else, get it out of his system once and for all.
One could only hope.
***
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” The young State Patrol officer eyed Morrigan with incredulity as he stood beside her bike on the hard-packed snow and ice of Snoqualmie Pass. The pass had been blasted with a serious snowstorm only a few days before and even cars and trucks wearing chains were having to struggle across the mountains. The fact that this apparently crazy woman was attempting to traverse it on a motorcycle at this time of year left a light of disbelief in his gunmetal gray eyes.
She brushed fingers through her long red hair and smiled sweetly at him. “I’ve got business in Idaho.”
His gaze narrowed. “I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my life. Not only are you riding a motorcycle across the pass in the dead of winter, you’re not even wearing a helmet. Are you suicidal? If you are, I can think of quicker and less uncomfortable ways to off yourself.”
“So could I,” she shot back. “And, no, I’m not suicidal. Besides, it’s early March. Hardly the dead of winter.”
“You should be freezing.” Then, abruptly, she saw as light began to dawn on him. “Holy shit. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“One of whom?” she replied with affected innocence. Better he thought her a meta than suspect she might be something else entirely.
He shook his head, not taking the bait. “Either way, it’s not illegal to ride a motorcycle over the pass any time of year. I guess the legislature never thought anyone would be crazy enough to try. I will, however, have to ticket you for riding without a helmet.” He considered for a minute. “Let me see your license, will you?”
She passed it over, having expected this request.
“Morgan Celt?” He pronounced the “C” with a soft “S” sound.
“Celt,” she corrected, using the hard “K” sound instead. “It’s Celt.”
He nodded. “I’ll be right back,” he said and took three steps back towards his SUV.
They had no warning. A bolt of superheated plasma struck the pavement between them, showering them with droplets of boiling water and sending up a plume of steam nearly thirty feet into the air.
The cop hit the ground hard and scrambled back toward his truck. Morrigan slung her leg over the bike and stared up at the sky, not particularly surprised to see a human shape in street clothes—jeans and a red tee shirt—hovering fifty feet or so above them. Khaos? How the hell is he still alive? She’d obviously misjudged his power and now, because of it, another innocent life hung in the balance.
“Where’s the boy?” the villain called down. “I want my son back, you bitch!”
“He’s not your son,” she yelled back. “You fucking psycho!”
She bolted up the road, hoping to draw him away from the cop. She succeeded. As far as Khaos was concerned, the cop might as well not have existed. He fired bolt after bolt after her, each one accompanied by a gout of steam. Her mind was racing, trying to think of a way to take him out. She’d hit him with her worst the last time around, and yet here he was, as dangerous as ever. She only hoped that he’d been too pissed at her to hunt down any other metas along the way. He was deadly enough without having absorbed anyone else’s powers.
He couldn’t keep up this pace forever, she thought. Eventually he had to run out of plasma bolts. He had to be getting the energy from somewhere. In the meantime, however, she had to concentrate on not getting hit by one of the damned things. She had the feeling that even she would take serious damage from one of these bolts. Good thing his aim is pretty much shit.
The next one grazed her left arm and sent her flying, slamming with jarring force into a pile of boulders beside the road. She scrabbled up, diving away from the next one and tumbling disjointedly to her knees a few yard away.
If he didn’t run out of plasma bolts soon, one of them was going to hit her straight on. Her left side already felt as though it was on fire, all the nerves shrieking in protest at what had been done to them.
She could, of course, hit him with another one of the combinations she’d struck him down with the last time. Not a good idea, she thought. If he survived that time, he’d survive another. This time I’ve got to put him down for good.
If he didn’t put her down first.
She snatched the spell from her spell web, reaching into its heart and tearing loose the last segment of it, the one that would transport him into the ground. She glanced up, seeing him readying another bolt, and hurled the spell at him.
She narrowly avoided the answering bolt, but avoid it she did. As she ducked away from the plume of steam, she felt the spell strike, a lethal cocktail of multiple offensive effects hitting one after another. If nothing else, it would bring him down to where she could get her hands on him. This time she wasn’t about to trust the gravedigger spell to get rid of him.
He screamed, a horrendous sound that seemed to echo forever. While he was suffering under the impacts, she grabbed another thread, willed it into a tether and cast it up at him. It entangled him at the exact same moment the last blow fell and she gave a powerful tug on her end.
He shot toward her, still shrieking, and slammed into the pavement at her feet. “You are not getting your hands on Casey,” she snarled, dropping to her knees on top of him and hammering at his face with her fist. “Not for even a second.” Each word was punctuated by a blow.
She must have rained dozens of punches down on him before she realized it probably wasn’t doing any serious damage. He might not have been invulnerable, but he was notoriously sturdy. Even such blows from an immortal were unlikely to be incapacitating for more than a few minutes. She needed to find a more permanent solution.
The thread she’d used to bring him down was still wrapped around his body, holding him in place, its energy barely spent. She grabbed the free end once again, spending a few precious seconds trying to catch hold of it, lashing as it was like the tail of an angry cat.
He had to feel what she was doing, channeling her rage into the length of mana strand wrapped around his body. He stared up at her, eyes suddenly wide as saucers. “No,” he gasped. “Please no.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
The thread contracted, its edges instantly sharp as razor wire. Khaos was suddenly sliced into multiple chunks of bloody flesh, his body rent into a hundred pieces by the force of the thread’s contraction.
The strand dissipated and she stood there, panting, as the mangled corpse twitched on the cold, wet ground in front of her. Steam rose from it as the warm blood poured across the compacted ice and snow, then scattered, blown asunder by the swift wind that flew through the pass.
She looked down at the butchered corpse and felt nothing but relief. This time he would not rise again, she told herself, but, to be certain, she pulled down another thread and burnt the pieces into charcoal. “You will kill no one else,” she told what was left.
“Who was that?” The officer’s voice drifted to her and she started. She released the strand she was holding and watched it vanish into the ether before turning to face him.
“He called himself Khaos,” she replied. “He was a bad, bad man.”
The cop nodded. “I’ve heard of him. They say he’s a killer.”
“He was. One of the worst. He tracked down other metas, killed them and stole their powers.”
“Was that what he wanted from you?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not a meta. He couldn’t have stolen my abilities. He was after his stepson. The kid’s a telepath and under my protection.”
The officer digested this. “You’re not a meta? Then what are you?”
“A visitor,” she said with a sigh. “From somewhere else. The future. Or, rather, a possible future. I’m here to stop a war between the metas and the normals,” she said. “If I can. Then again, if I can’t, I’m stuck here.”
He blinked at her. The look on his face told her he wanted to doubt her, but he couldn’t. He’d seen something he couldn’t explain and it had banished his disbelief into nothingness. “You killed him,” he said, voice shaking as he looked down at the scorched remnants of the villain’s body.
“I did. Are you going to arrest me?”
He gave a skeptical snort in reply. “I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.”
He had that right, but she didn’t think it wise to point it out. “Then what will you do?”
“I’m going to get in my car and drive away,” he answered, handing her the driver’s license he’d taken from her. “As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t see a damned thing.”
And he proceeded to do exactly that.
Morrigan spent a few minutes completing her destruction of what was left of Khaos, then climbed astride her motorcycle and continued on her way.
***
The two women exchanged glances and stood in silence for a long moment after the battle was done. They’d nearly stepped in to help, but, since they’d arrived nearly at the end of it, the whole thing was over before they’d had the chance.
“She’s a lot more dangerous than I thought,” Nyx said finally. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Neither did he,” Jaz replied.
“All I can say is that I’m glad she’s on our side.”
“Is she?” Jaz asked with a sly smile.
Nyx threw her a shocked look. “Isn’t she?”
“For the most part, sure. But, in the end, Morrigan is on her own side.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Jaz looked pained at the question. “Do you think we’re in it for ourselves?”
“Well, no. But there are plenty who’d think so.”
“Unfortunately. You ready?”
“Ready.”
The two women rose into the air and followed Morrigan through the pass.
***
Jack Frost crept to the edge of the loft, peering over into the depths of the warehouse, his danger sense practically screaming in his ear. He was only glad he’d convinced Theresa not to come on this venture with him, though it had been a hard sell.
He’d spent the past few days tracking down every “K” Street informant he had. A lot of the power players in the beltway tended to discount the lowly aides and other little people who existed on the fringes there. From his years spent operating in the capitol, Frost knew several of the most likely information sources personally—young men and woman, and not-so-young men and women, who’d learned a long time ago they could barter their inside knowledge for favors from other people who wielded different kinds of power than their employers.
Like Frost, for example.
Senator Weaver, one of the most strident anti-meta and anti-gay voices on the Hill, had an aide who had an aide who just happened to not only be gay, but have a sister who was a meta. This fellow didn’t like Weaver, but he knew a multitude of reasons to continue to work in his outer orbit. Frost happened to know that the young man supplemented his income quite well by passing information to reporters from the Capitol Privateer, one of the nation’s most controversial and, in some circles, most well-respected underground newspapers.
He was a good source, which was why Frost paid him two hundred dollars for the information that had led him here tonight. No one knew why, but the senator had been seen coming to this warehouse at least once a week for the past several months.
He’d followed the good senator to the warehouse tonight and, while the man had gone in through a side door, clambered slowly and carefully up a pile of rusty equipment to reach an open window some thirty feet up the side of the building.
He’d climbed in the window and made his way along some shelving to what looked to be some abandoned offices in the loft portion of the warehouse. Ignoring the stench of urine and even more unsavory smells permeating every inch of them, he crept through to reach a catwalk that stretched from the loft across the length of the building.
Frost had been in enough warehouses in his time that he recognized how unusual the design of this one was. It shared a few things in common with most of the others he’d seen, but things like the location of the offices and this catwalk itself made him wonder a little about the intentions of those who’d planned and built it in the first place. The fencing below, the catwalk, and the location of the offices—separated from the main space by a series of fences and gates—made him think that it was intended to store people rather than goods. It gave him a very bad feeling.
He crept along the catwalk, listening for the sound of the senator’s footfalls below. To make it even easier to follow his progress, the man was actually whistling some tune. Not that Frost was familiar with that particular style of music, but it sounded a bit like a hymn.
Suddenly all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he knew without a doubt that he and the senator were no longer alone in the warehouse. Something else had arrived, and not by normal means. It was as if every cell in his body was warning him to get out, to flee as fast as he could.
“We are very disappointed in you, Charles,” boomed out a voice like that of some Hollywood concept of the voice of God.
Or Satan, Frost considered. The voice sent a shudder through him and he could only wonder how Weaver couldn’t hear the evil in it. To Frost it was like the very embodiment of evil in audible form.
“I’m sorry, Lord. How have I disappointed you?” Though Frost couldn’t see him, he imagined the man groveling at the other’s feet.
“You told us that the servants of Satan would be cast down by now, that they would be seen as the spawn of hell they are and that all hands would be turned against them. But you lied to us.”
“The godless heathens are fighting us every step of the way, Lord. We’re trying, but the Democrats are blocking us every time it comes up for a vote!”
“You are not trying hard enough. Use whatever methods you have to use to destroy their resistance. We are running out of time.”
Frost grasped the railing as the world seemed to tilt and spin around him. This was the driving force behind the fight to criminalize and marginalize the meta-humans? Bile rose in his throat and sweat broke out on his forehead as he realized what he’d been doing. However indirectly, he had been serving this creature and its insidious agenda without realizing it.
What was this thing? He carefully made his way down the catwalk, trying to catch sight of Weaver and his companion. He wanted to escape, but couldn’t bear to leave until he at least saw what the creature behind the whole affair looked like.
His phone vibrated against his hip and he jumped. I’m sure glad I turned the ringer off, he thought, heart thudding against his chest so hard he worried it might crack his sternum. He plucked it off his belt and looked at the caller ID. Theresa. Of course.
She’d have to wait.
The conversation below continued in much the same vein as it had been, with Weaver groveling and the other voice commenting disdainfully. If he had to listen to much more of it, he’d be forced to draw his weapon and shoot them both just to put them out of his misery.
The thought actually brought a silent chuckle to his lips and a rueful shake to his head. Ludicrous, of course, but amusing to consider nonetheless. If one went around shooting members of Congress just because they were annoying, there wouldn’t be many left.
He reached a point where he could see movement below and he leaned over the rail of the catwalk to get a better view. What he saw nearly made him gasp aloud.
The creature standing in front of Weaver might easily be mistaken for an angel—though, from Frost’s perspective, it was hardly angelic. Evil seemed to radiate from it in waves, an evil so palpable it almost carried with it the stench of the grave.
It was nearly twice as large as Weaver and looked from this angle to be completely naked. Its wings rustled restlessly as it stared down at the kneeling senator. Frost wasn’t able to determine whether it was male or female and wasn’t quite sure it mattered anyway. The one thing he was certain of was that this thing was not any kind of angel. If he believed in such things, he might well have decided it was a demon instead. Whatever he ended up calling it, it radiated evil.
He slipped away the direction he’d came, barely daring to breathe until he was sitting in his car outside the fence.
An hour later he was aboard a plane bound for the West Coast. If anyone knew what that creature was, it would be those who’d put him on its trail. Now all he had to do was find them.
***
Part of an assassin’s skill set has always been the ability to stay in one place without moving for a considerable length of time. Morrigan had a bit of advantage since she could put herself in a state near stasis, slowing her breathing and heart-rate to nearly nothing. She could not remain quite as still as a vampire, perhaps, but she could accomplish the next best thing.
As dawn approached, she sat nestled in an outcropping of rocks on a hill overlooking the small town Lowbrow claimed as his own, a remote ranching village in the mountains of Idaho. The hill, and the outcropping on which she sat, was just a little over a mile from the town itself, but even that shot was well within her abilities.
She’d memorized what the man looked like, and, based upon what she’d been able to discover about his routine from the web, accessed via her PCD and its wireless connection supplied by the mage road Chikitar had established, it wouldn’t be long after dawn before Lowbrow made his first circuit of the town he owned.
The longer she waited, the more her mind jumped to the possible consequences of this course of action. When he died, would his influence die with him? Would his followers revert to being who they were before he’d meddled with their minds? Or would he become a martyr and a focal point for even more trouble in the future? She wished she knew. There was no doubt in her mind that the man deserved to die. Probably at least as much as had Khaos. But she had begun to wonder if he should die by her hand at all.
You need to stop thinking this way, she chided herself. What else can you do? You’ve made promises, and people are counting on you to see this through. You can’t let some juvenile obsession with Bryon keep you from what has to be done.
But was that all it was? She didn’t want to plunge that far into her depths.
Her finger tightened on the trigger. Her crosshairs lay atop the figure of the man called Lowbrow and all she had to do was squeeze a little harder. Do it!
Her finger wouldn’t squeeze. She felt as though it were locked in place. What are you waiting for?
She couldn’t do it.
Destiny’s voice came back to her then, but it didn’t help. “We’ve been lucky. What you’re planning on doing will free thousands and possibly save millions.”
Not if she couldn’t pull the trigger, it wouldn’t.
“What’s she waiting for?” Nyx asked from their vantage point on a nearby peak. “She’s got him dead to rights.”
“She’s not going to do it,” Jaz said. “She’s been compromised.”
Nyx glanced at her and frowned. “How do you mean?”
“The vampire. She’s been chasing him for years. It’s hardly a secret that her casual attitude towards killing bothers him. Not to mention her reputation for opening her legs for anyone that catches her eye.”
Nyx snickered at that. “Did you ever sleep with her?”
Jaz shook her head. “Nope. Until I met you, I’d never had sex voluntarily.”
Nyx’s face twisted into something momentarily unrecognizable, then softened. “I’m sorry.”
Jaz shook her head. “It was a long time ago. I’m past it. Mostly.” She smiled. “Now that I’ve met you, I can’t complain.”
“You’re sweet.”
“And you’re the only one who thinks so.”
Nyx grinned back at her. “So, should we hop over and have a word with Morrigan?”
“Be a good idea. Quickfingers!” She deliberately kept her voice low, knowing a shout would echo through the mountains.
A moment later, the bright blue shape of the imp materialized beside them on the peak. “Wow. What a view!”
“We need to teleport down there to where Morrigan is,” Jaz told him. “Can you take us?”
“One at a time,” the imp replied. “Too much mass throws off my aim, and, believe me, you don’t want to appear in the middle of a mountain.”
“Fine. Take me.” She turned and gently ran her hand along Nyx’s cheek. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
When the rush of air washed over her, she nearly dropped the rifle. Instead, she stood and spun in place, bringing the weapon up. A hand with a grip like a vise closed over the barrel. “Calm down. It’s me.”
“Jaz? I was wondering when you’d show up.”
“We thought you might have realized we were here. Imps aren’t exactly subtle, are they?” She released the barrel and stepped back.
“Hardly. But what are you doing here?”
“ArchAngel sent us in as backup. We didn’t exactly think you needed it, but now we’re starting to wonder.”
Morrigan closed her eyes and wavered a little where she stood. “I couldn’t do it. The son of a bitch deserves to die, but I couldn’t pull the trigger.”
“You’ve lost your nerve, Morrigan. But it’s not your fault. Give me your list. Nyx and I will take care of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“We won’t have any problem pulling the trigger,” the other woman replied. “You need to go back and deal with the rest of your crew. I think I get what you were trying to do here and it’s a good idea, for the most part. But the other side of it is getting D.C. to come around to a different way of thinking in the aftermath. Let us handle this end of it and you take care of the rest. That sound okay to you?”
Morrigan nodded. “I guess so. I’m sure not doing any good here. Be careful of this guy, though. Apparently he can influence the way someone thinks just by talking to them. I don’t know if we would be susceptible, but I’m willing to bet Nyx would be.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, Jaz.”
The Lady of Blades clapped her hand on Morrigan’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “I wouldn’t feel too badly if I were you. Love changes a person. That’s what it does. That’s what it’s meant to do.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it does mean you have to learn to live with it. Get out of here. Take the mage road back.”
“You know about that?”
“You think either of us would miss that kind of magical engineering, Morrigan?” Jaz laughed. “Remember who my best friend is. I’ve been around that stuff since I was a kid. Not my cup of tea, but I do work for Magitech from time to time.”
Morrigan nodded. “I guess I’d forgotten. Well, good luck to you and Nyx. I’d appreciate it if you kept me informed of your progress.”
“We’ll do that. Now go. Don’t worry about your motorcycle. We’ll send it back to you when we’re done with this job.”
Morrigan nodded once and opened up a transit tube onto the mage road. “Thanks, Jaz.” With that, she took the single step that carried her back to base and the extraordinary man she hoped was waiting for her.
Chapter Twelve: Retribution and Romance
Marcus Coltrane, more commonly known as Lowbrow, hit the floor with a loud thud, the air exploding from his lungs in a rush of putrescent gas. He lay there like a beached whale, heaving and trying to suck oxygen into lungs temporarily shocked into uselessness.
A booted foot came down on his forearm, the wedge of a three-inch heel baring down on his flesh and drawing a kind of quavering moan from his lips. Something cold and radiating an odd purple light traced its way down the side of his face as he struggled to draw breath.
“They say you’re a very dangerous man,” said a woman’s voice originating from a black shape towering over him. “They say that when you speak people can’t help but listen. No, don’t say anything. You utter a single word and I’ll cut the tongue right out of your mouth. Just nod if you understand me.”
Lowbrow’s head thrashed up and down as fear like he hadn’t felt in years tore at his breast, a feral dog chewing at his insides.
“The only reason you’re still alive,” said the woman, “is that the last thing we need is to make a martyr of you. You are nothing more than scum, a traitor to the whole human race, and you deserve no acclaim at all once you’re gone. If I had my way I’d erase all memory of your existence entirely.”
Lowbrow had wondered on more than one occasion what would happen to his followers should he die. Would his influence remain or would they return to being what they were before they heard his voice whispering inside their skulls? He’d always wanted to know the answer to that, but figured it didn’t really matter. It was merely intellectual curiosity that prompted him to ask himself the question. Once he had shuffled off this mortal coil, the question would be answered, but he wouldn’t be around to appreciate it.
“No, I’m afraid you’re going to meet with an untimely accident. It will be sad and your followers will mourn your passing, but no one will ever suspect it was anything but a foolish mistake on your part. Say goodbye, Mister Lowbrow. We hardly knew you.”
He tried to scream then, yet no sound emerged but a rusty squeak like a door hinge needing a touch of oil.
***
“Notorious meta-criminal Marcus Charles Coltrane, also known as Lowbrow, was found dead in his bathtub this morning, apparently the victim of a heart attack.”
Morrigan smiled to herself and reached for the remote control as someone started hammering on the front door. “What the hell?” She cast a viewing tube across the loft and through the front window, bending it just so in order to get a glimpse at who was at the door.
“I’ll get it!” cried Casey.
“Wait!” she called back to him, but she heard the door opening before she could get there herself and stop him.
She wasn’t surprised at that point when Special Agent Jack Frost swept into the room and caught sight of her halfway to the door herself.
“You!”
“Ah, crap.” She dialed for an offensive spell, but, to her surprise, he didn’t reach for his weapon. He held up a placating hand. “Wait.”
“Wait?”
“Yeah, wait. I don’t want you to kill me before I can tell you what I learned.”
She blinked at that. “What you learned?” Oh, yeah. This conversation is going well. I sound like a particularly dense parrot. “What are you talking about?”
“Is your friend around? You know, the handsome guy with the goatee?”
“Bryon? He’s…sleeping.”
“Well, wake him up. He’s going to want to hear this.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. He’s a particularly heavy sleeper.”
“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon. What’s he doing in bed?”
“He’s a night person.”
“Huh. So who’s the kid?”
Morrigan found herself completely nonplussed. She’d known Frost in two universes now, and this was the most animated she’d ever seen him. A light lived in his gaze she’d never witnessed before and his mouth had a wry twist that spoke of a sense of humor she’d never suspected he had. “He’s a foster,” she said simply.
“Okay.” He shrugged. Then his gaze narrowed and he stared at her intently. “Would it surprise you if I told you that the anti-meta legislation is being pushed by a creature that looks an awful lot like an angel?”
She felt the blood rush from her face and she cursed her involuntary response.
“I thought not. I spied on a meeting between Senator Weaver, who’s a big proponent of anything of that nature, and a creature like the one I described. Weaver seems convinced that it’s an angel, but the creature stank of evil.”
Frost was also far more sensitive than she’d given him credit for. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she’d suspect him of being a meta himself. Of course, she had no reason to “know better” in the first place.
She let out a sigh. “No, it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s called a valkyrie and it’s a servant of a particularly nasty alien race that has obviously set its sights on this world.”
He snorted. “A few days ago I would’ve said you were crazy trying to get me to believe that, but what I saw last night…” He shivered. “I don’t think he’s the only one involved with these creatures.”
“Probably not. They’re nothing if not thorough. They play on religious sentiment and use it to manipulate people into investing in some pretty dangerous agendas. Dangerous for the human race, that is.”
He passed her a shrewd look. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You and your friend are just another kind of alien, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
One thing she could say about Frost—he didn’t miss much. “Are you saying you’re not aliens?”
“From your perspective, I suppose we are. We’re from an alternate version of Earth. Those aliens nearly destroyed our whole civilization. We fought them off, but it took too many years and too many lives to accomplish.”
“Damn. I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be if we don’t find a way to shut them down.”
“Go to the media,” said Casey.
Frost shook his head. “They’ll never believe us. And, even if we could prove it—like by taking video of the creature—too many people would react to what they thought it was rather than what it actually is.”
“Then we’ll just have to cheat,” came Chikitar’s voice from the doorway into the back of the loft.
Frost’s hand dove for his gun this time, but stopped about halfway. “Holy shit.”
Morrigan could sense the procyon’s amusement at this. “Not the last time I checked.”
Frost shot a glance at Morrigan. “Is he one of the hybrids the president was rambling about a few years ago?”
“No,” Chikitar sighed. “I’m not. I actually am an alien—Procyon Lotar Sapiens, at your service.” He bowed gracefully. “My name is Chikitar. I work for Morrigan.”
Frost blinked, assimilated this information and nodded slowly. “Okay. So what do you mean by cheat?”
“We take video, but we change the way people perceive the valkyrie. Make it more…demonic in appearance. Don’t legends state that they can look angelic if they want to?”
Frost nodded. “Sure. They are fallen angels, after all. Or so the story goes. But how are you going to change its appearance?”
Chikitar’s answering grin was feral. “Magic, Mister FBI man. We use magic.”
***
Bryon became aware of a lot of people in the apartment, talking and laughing. One of the voices surprised him. He hadn’t expected Morrigan to return so quickly. She had several people on her hit list and there was no way she could have eliminated them all so quickly. Not even Morrigan was that efficient.
Another voice that surprised him was that of the FBI man, Jack Frost. It was of particular interest that the voice was full of warmth and life rather than suspicion and recrimination. What the hell is going on out there?
He rose, tossing aside the bedclothes and striding across the room to the armoire, where he pulled out a pair of chinos and a tee-shirt, which he quickly donned. He went commando, but, then again, that was nothing new for him. He’d never quite grown accustomed to this world’s fondness for the restrictive things they called underwear.
He eased the door open and padded into the hall, his footsteps as silent as a ghost’s. He strolled into the living room and found a party. Morrigan lay on a leather chaise lounge, long fingers wrapped around a ruby red drink in a large, clear glass.
The Fed, Frost, sat on a loveseat across the room next to a pretty brunette woman Bryon didn’t know, dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt with a half-empty beer tucked between his legs. He was the first to spot the vampire and lifted the beer in greeting.
While on Starhaven, Bryon had been introduced to the children’s story, Alice in Wonderland. For a moment, he knew exactly how Alice had felt when she went down the rabbit hole. He’d slipped into his vampiric sleep in one universe and awakened in another, far different one.
Morrigan set her drink on the table beside her chair and practically slithered to her feet. He watched her approach, eyes widening, realizing that he’d never seen her quite so…relaxed. She’d made a few abortive attempts to seduce him in the past, but he’d never seen her move with such boneless grace, almost vampiric in its smoothness.
He swallowed involuntarily. “What are you doing here?” he asked her, trying to think of something—anything—to say until he managed to regain his composure, something that was proving to be more difficult than he expected.
“I live here,” she replied, grinning slyly.
He shot her a sour look. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. I didn’t do it. I didn’t shoot Lowbrow. I didn’t go after any of them. I came back here instead.”
“Why?”
She grimaced. “Why ask why?”
“Because I want to know?”
This elicited a laugh from the audience he’d almost forgotten. For a brief moment, he felt as though he and Morrigan were the only people in the world. That, as far as he was concerned, might not be a good thing.
“I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill in cold blood. Not anymore.” Her eyes narrowed and she poked him in the chest with a forefinger. “And it’s your fault.”
“My fault? How do you figure?”
“You were opposed to this plan from the beginning—you didn’t want me to kill them. So I didn’t.”
“You didn’t kill them because I didn’t want you to?”
“Pretty much.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. A dozen possible responses surfaced, but not one of them made it past his internal editor. He refused to babble at her in reply. The fact was it made his heart sing to hear it. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that in front of all these strangers. So change the subject. “What’s Frost doing here?”
“He’s joined up. You apparently sent him looking for the motive behind the war against the metas being fought on Capitol Hill. He didn’t like the answers he found.”
Bryon glanced over at him and nodded. “Glad you listened to me.”
“So am I.”
“There’s a valkyrie involved,” Morrigan told him.
Bryon winced. “That’s not good. Who’s the woman?”
“Do you always talk about people as if they’re not sitting right there?” the woman asked him, clearly annoyed.
“At times.” It was rude, he realized, and probably something he would never have thought of doing when he’d been mortal. “Sorry.”
She nodded, only slightly mollified. “Name’s Theresa Ronn. I’m Jack’s partner.”
More than that, unless I miss my guess. “So you’re a Fed too, then?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” she asked, looking over at Frost as if wondering if Bryon was some kind of idiot.
“Just checking,” he growled. He’d heard of natural personality conflicts, but he’d never experienced one before. The woman didn’t like him for some inexplicable reason and she wasn’t loath to show it. Wonder what she’d think if she knew what I was. Setting that aside for a moment, he turned back to Morrigan. “So…I thought killing all those meta-villains was a vital part of your plan.”
“Oh, they’ll die all right. I’m just not the one doing it.” She actually sounded relieved by the admission. “Jaz and Nyx are here.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say to that. Jaz and Nyx together gave him a serious case of the chills. And he was a vampire—a creature that other people feared. Yet somehow, these two women made him felt more like prey than predator. “So where do we go from here?”
“We’re going after the valkyrie.”
If the mention of Nyx and Jaz had sent a chill down his spine, the notion of tackling a valkyrie froze the blood in his veins. The last time they’d dealt with one, only Valerie Winn’s telekinetic power had given them the upper hand. Valkyries were naturally resistant to magic, though not immune, and healed from common injuries as quickly as a vampire or immortal. Some of them were even psionic or evinced the same kinds of powers manifested by some immortals. On his homeworld, he’d discovered, some of them had even started to use magic. These valkyries, from what he’d been told, were no longer working for the Cen. Their actual agenda, however, remained a mystery.
Only a fool or lunatic would be eager to face one of those monsters. And he was neither. He wouldn’t have thought Morrigan to be that insane, but he couldn’t miss the feverish light lurking behind her eyes. She’d given up cold-blooded murder and replaced it with something else—something perhaps even more disturbing. Now she thought she had something to prove.
“Are you crazy?” he asked her. “You know how tough those things are.”
“I do. But I wasn’t planning on going toe-to-toe with the damn thing by myself. We’ve got something a bit more…devious in mind.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know how they operate. They use peoples’ religious beliefs against them—against us all. The fact that they look like the common perception of angels isn’t a coincidence, after all. The Cen knew exactly what they were doing when they designed them that way.”
“Yeah…so?”
“This one is manipulating at least one member of Congress, maybe more, in order to force anti-meta legislation through. They’re playing on religious sentiment to put themselves on the side of God and the metas on the side of Satan.”
Bryon actually knew very little about this “Christianity” of this world and its probable timelines, but from what little he did know, this would be a particularly successful tactic. From what he understood, they’d tried to do something similar on Earth Prime and had even succeeded to some extent. Enough that when the real war began, the East Coast of the United States had been left completely vulnerable.
“So this person believes that the valkyrie is a messenger from God? I don’t see what we can do to change that.”
“Oh, we probably can’t. But I want to tape one of his little meetings. Except we’re going to deliberately alter the camera’s perception of the valkyrie so it looks more demonic than angelic. We can’t do it in the camera itself—the last thing we want is to give them any reason to treat it like some sort of special effect.”
Frost nodded. “We’re going to have to change the valkyrie’s appearance for real.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” said Chikitar from the doorway into the kitchen. He was carrying a tray of finger sandwiches, while in his wake came Casey, toting another tray piled high with chips and dips. “But I’ve got a couple of ideas that might work.”
“I don’t think Senator Weaver’s the only one it’s got on its hook,” said Frost, accepting a handful of the tiny sandwiches and a saucer-sized paper plate on which to set them. His partner did the same.
“We know where the meetings are taking place,” Frost said, “and I have a few connections with the underground media that will help us place cameras in the warehouse to get it all on tape.”
“Valiant, Midellis, Santos, and Kitsune are already aboard. Valiant’s going to bring her boss to the location to witness it all for himself, Midellis is going to be standing by in case we need any emergency medical care, Santos is going to be helping with our senator’s security detail, and Kitsune—well, he’s going to be involved somehow.”
“Sounds like you’ve got this all worked out.” Frost stuck one of the sandwiches in his mouth and eyed Morrigan curiously.
The immortal nodded. “Mostly. We’ll probably have to wait a week—”
Theresa shook her head. “Unless Weaver isn’t the only politician the valkyrie has drawn into its web. That seems more likely a scenario to me. If there are more involved, it could be holding meetings there every night of the week for all we know.” Frost didn’t seem at all contrite about interrupting. He tossed the last bite of his first little sandwich in his mouth and chewed contentedly. “It doesn’t really make all that much difference to us. We’ll set up and wait if we have to, though, of course, I’m sure our people won’t want to sit around doing nothing for a week.”
“I’m sure.”
“Will you all be okay for a little while?” Morrigan asked them. “I need to talk to Bryon alone for a little while.”
Bryon felt the pressure of their gazes and resisted the urge to fidget. He was a vampire, dammit. He should have more control than that. While he was still thinking about it, she grabbed him by the hand and dragged him back toward the room he’d claimed as his own.
She shut the door behind them and they stood in the near darkness for a long moment before she spoke. “You’ve changed me, Bryon. I swore I wasn’t going to let that happen, but—” she shrugged, “—well, we all know how that turned out.”
“I’m glad it did,” he answered softly. “I’m glad you came back, Morrigan. There was something I wanted to tell you, but figured I wouldn’t get the chance for a while. I’ve fallen in love with you. I didn’t want to. I tried to fight it, to pretend it wasn’t happening, but I did. I really had no right to try to change who you are. It wasn’t fair to you and it wasn’t fair to me. It wasn’t fair to anyone who works for us either.”
She reached up and gently ran her fingers through his hair. “Sometimes it’s necessary to be ruthless, but I can’t think of a single reason I need to remain a cold-blooded killer. On the way to Idaho I got hit by someone I thought I’d killed. Please don’t say anything to Casey about it, but Khaos wasn’t dead. He is now, but apparently burying him a mile underground wasn’t enough to do him in.”
“Tough son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah. This time I cut him into tiny pieces and torched him. All that’s left now is charcoal.”
He snorted and shook his head. “You know, Morrigan, we may be the only couple whose sweet nothings include talk about dissecting and incinerating the bad guys.”
“Are we a couple now?” she asked a bit hesitantly.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? Are we a couple now?” He’d never actually seen her look so nervous, he thought, and realized he could learn to appreciate her showing a vulnerable side for a change. It might well be that he was the only person who’d ever been able to bring it out of her in the first place. He wondered for the briefest of moments whether she’d had a relationship back when she’d still been a mortal. He knew she’d been a killer, but had she been at least that much an ordinary human being as well? He might never know. It wasn’t something he wanted to come straight out and ask.
She stepped into him, eye to eye. “I prefer sweet somethings to sweet nothings. Just so you know.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“We shouldn’t keep them waiting long,” she said, pulling him to her and gently biting at his chin. “Wouldn’t be very polite.”
“Who said I was worried about being polite?” He sank his fingers in her hair and tilted her mouth up to meet his. Then he did everything in his power to swallow her whole.
Several minutes later she broke the kiss, stepping back and taking a deep breath. “Val was right. Kissing a vampire is quite an experience.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Shall we join the others or do you want to continue where we left off?” His head told him they needed to rejoin the party, if only to continue discussing their immediate options with regard to handling the valkyrie, but his other head had other ideas. At the moment he was having problems choosing between the two, so he felt obliged to give her the choice.
It was a decision neither of them ended up having to make. Her PCD trilled at exactly that moment. She answered it with a small frown. “Valiant. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got big trouble, Morrigan. You’re not going to get the chance to expose the valkyrie after all.”
“Why not?”
“Because it and five of its fellows just took both houses of Congress hostage. They’re demanding they pass the anti-meta legislation immediately.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I wish I was. But, no. There are six valkyries in Washington and they’ve pretty much taken charge of Capitol Hill. What’s worse, they used magic to do it.”
The look on Morrigan’s face was one Bryon never wanted to see again, a mixture of fear, pain, and wrath. “We’re on our way.”
***
The whole tone of the meeting had changed considerably. Before they’d received the news from D.C., they thought they were finally getting ahead of the situation, but now it was clear that the valkyries were still fully in charge. Morrigan had called in Shadowkin and his friends, thinking that some meta input would not only be helpful, but possibly necessary. They needed to know what was going on, one way or another. Destiny seemed surprised to see her, but Morrigan wasted no time taking her aside and explaining the change of plans.
“The two who are on the assassination detail now are even better than I am,” she told her. “Don’t worry about that.”
Destiny didn’t seem too concerned. “I’ll take your word for it. Now what’s going on again? You weren’t very clear over the phone.”
“It wasn’t something I wanted to broadcast too loudly over an insecure channel. If people had any idea what was going on, there’d be widespread panic. None of us want that.”
“Well, I’m assuming you called us in for a reason. What’s so damned important?”
“I’ll tell you all at the same time,” she told her, which she then proceeded to do.
She’d already given the basic rundown to Frost and his partner as well as the members of her own team on the premises. When the metas heard what was going on, the scene threatened to erupt in chaos on the spot.
“What are we standing around here for?” Iron Tower asked, sounding outraged. “We should be on our way there now. We have to stop them.”
“It’s going to take time, no matter what. Even if they do manage to force both Houses to pass the legislation, there are protocols that still have to be observed,” Frost pointed out. “And the president could still veto it.”
Shadowkin shook his head. “The President isn’t exactly a friend to the metas. I’m not so sure he would veto it.”
“It’s even possible he’s involved, that he’s being manipulated by the valkyrie just like Senator Weaver is,” Morrigan observed.
“If that’s the case, why doesn’t he just do it by issuing an Executive Order? It’s certainly within his power.” Shadowkin paced the length of the living room, radiating tension with just a touch of despair. He acted as though he thought the battle might already be lost.
As far as Morrigan was concerned, it had barely begun.
“I don’t know,” Frost replied, shaking his head. “Maybe he thinks it would be political suicide. Or maybe he thinks it would result in direct reprisals against himself by the metas. Who knows how that man thinks?”
“Certainly not us,” Theresa put in. “We’ve never met him.”
“But you know people who have.” Morrigan waved a dismissive hand. “Entirely beside the point. We need to figure out how to take down these valkyries. How much do you think the crisis team in place understands about what’s going on?”
Frost shot her a disgusted look. “How the hell would we know? In case you missed it, we’re all the way across the country, completely out of the loop. For all we know, we’ve been fired. We’ve gone off reservation, after all. Instead of hunting metas, I’ve been conducting surveillance on a U.S. Senator. My superiors are bound to think that’s a bit strange. And they’re bound to be a bit pissed off about it.”
“So have they contacted you about it yet?”
“No. And I’m surprised they haven’t.” He shrugged. “Things have been getting weirder and weirder with the FBI lately. It’s almost as though there are different factions fighting for control. It’s not the first time, but I think this is the worst it’s ever been.”
“Interesting, but hardly relevant.” Chikitar clicked on the television and tuned in to one of the twenty-four hour cable news channels. “Rather than standing here trying to guess what they think is going on, let’s see what the media has to say about it.”
Much to their surprise, the media had nothing to say about it. In fact, they seemed to be focused almost exclusively on the death of a fourth meta-criminal, a creature known only as The Harpy. She’d been found hanging from the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge, her neck apparently broken by the fall.
“The Harpy was a bad woman,” said one of the commentators, “but we can’t have these metas taking the law into their own hands by eliminating their own.”
“Agreed,” said the other. “It makes you wonder if this whole thing started with the accidental death of Lowbrow in Idaho yesterday.”
“I understand that some people are saying it’s a rather interesting coincidence and it might not be a coincidence at all.”
Frost growled low in his throat and reached out as if he were going to snatch the remote from the procyon’s hand.
Chikitar grinned and took a step back. “Sorry. I meant to tune in to a real cable news channel.” He flipped through the stations until another news desk and another anchor appeared on the screen. This one was a woman, vaguely Asian in appearance, who delivered a series of headlines in a crisp, no-nonsense tone.
She touched on the death of The Harpy, but didn’t linger on it. Then she straightened, blinking rapidly for a few seconds. “This just in. According to reliable witnesses, something is going on at the Capitol at this very moment. Both Houses of Congress were scheduled to recess late this afternoon, but it appears they’re burning the midnight oil, so to speak, trying to hash out some differences regarding proposed metahuman registration legislation.”
“Metahuman registration legislation, my ass!” snapped Destiny. “Why don’t they call it what it is—a license to persecute us!”
“They don’t know about what’s really going on, do they?” Bryon asked.
Morrigan scowled and moved closer to the television. “Either that, or they’re being prevented from giving us the real details.”
“Is it just me or are they looking more and more like automatons?” Iron Tower asked in an exasperated tone. “These days they all look like they were built in a factory somewhere.”
Destiny snorted. “Maybe they should hire me to read the news,” she said. “At least I look like a real person.”
Frost looked her up and down and snorted. “You look as alien as the damned valkyrie,” he told her. “Not that it’s necessarily a bad look for you.”
She shot him an icy glare and would have said something in response, but Morrigan forestalled it with an upraised hand. “Okay. Enough of this shit. The media isn’t going to be any help here. We need to get to D.C. and fast. We’re going to have to bring everyone there through the mage road. We don’t have any choice.”
“The mage road?” Theresa frowned. “What is that?” She clearly didn’t like the sound of it.
She’ll get over it. The last thing Morrigan felt like doing was giving a lengthy explanation of something she barely understood herself. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Chikitar to do it for her. They’d be here for hours if she did. Never ask an engineer for a simple explanation. What they thought was simple could tie the brain of an ordinary person into knots. “We don’t have time for explanations,” she said. “You’re just going to have to trust us. You up to this, Chikitar?”
The procyon switched off the TV and tossed the remote aside. “Sure. Why not?”
“What about Casey?” Bryon asked. “He’s asleep upstairs, isn’t he?”
“With all this going on down here? I doubt it. Go get him. He’s going to have to come along. We’re not leaving anyone behind.”
“I’m right here,” said Casey, stepping into the room from where he’d been lurking. He was fully dressed and had a backpack slung across one shoulder.
Morrigan had known he was there and was frankly a bit surprised Bryon hadn’t sensed him too. What good are vampiric senses if you don’t pay any attention to them? “Bry—you’ve got babysitting detail. You keep him safe, okay?”
“Aren’t you going to need my help with the valkyries?”
“I sure the hell hope not,” she answered. “Someone needs to watch out for the kid, and you’re the best bet. You’re stronger and faster than the rest of us—even me—and you’re a completely unknown quantity to any of the law enforcement personnel we’re likely to run across. That works to our advantage.”
“I’m hoping they come down on our side of this,” Frost said, looking a little puzzled. “Our badges will go a long way toward making that happen.”
“Keep hoping,” she said. “Fact is that most LEOs—that’s Law Enforcement Officers, for those of you who don’t know—tend to be pretty damned conservative and really don’t like things they don’t understand. They’re going to be jumpy, and unless we can give them quick, convincing answers, they’re not likely to listen to any of us. And I don’t know about you, Frost, but I wouldn’t exactly be in a hurry to tell them that Congress has been hijacked by a bunch of alien assholes.”
Bryon had leveled a flat, snake-like gaze at her and she knew right then they were going to have a problem. “Not that I mind looking out for the kid,” he said between clenched teeth, “but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you use it an excuse for keeping me out of danger.”
Was that what I was doing? she asked herself, and realized belatedly that she was doing precisely that. Shit. Talk about undermining someone’s morale.
“Which one of you knows D.C. the best?” Chikitar asked the two FBI agents, drawing their attention away from the storm everyone could clearly see amassing on the horizon.
They glanced at one another. “We probably both know it equally well. Why?”
“I need someplace to drop us that’s fairly close to the Capitol building but will be secluded enough that our arrival won’t be noticed.”
Theresa shot a look at Frost, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. “What does he mean, ‘drop us’?”
“I’m not sure,” he told her, “but I think it involves magic.”
“Magic,” she repeated. “I’d say there’s no such thing, but…” She let her voice trail off as if realizing how absurd that would sound considering everything else that was going on. “What do you need from us?”
“I need a location. Just somewhere you’ve been that fits our needs.”
So she gave him one.
He fired a glance at Bryon and Morrigan, who were now standing nose to nose, glaring at one another. “Okay, everyone. I’m going to do this transit myself and leave the two lovebirds behind to hash this out between them. We won’t make a move until they get there, but we need to be gone now.”
Morrigan was entirely too occupied to see him open the transit portal, but turned her gaze away from Bryon’s long enough to watch the last two vanish into the blankness. “We need to go,” she told him, turning as if to follow.
He grabbed her shoulder hard enough to sting. “Not yet we don’t. We need to finish this now.”
Chapter Thirteen: Life is a Battlefield
“We don’t have time for this now,” Morrigan snarled, trying to pull away. He was stronger than she realized. A lot stronger.
“It shouldn’t take too long for you to admit you were wrong,” Bryon replied, though he did let go of her shoulder.
She had been wrong, but sure as hell wasn’t about to admit it just like that. Besides, how wrong was it to try to protect the man you loved? I’ll be damned if I’m going to apologize for that. “Maybe you’re just the one I trust the most to watch over Casey.”
“Maybe I am. And maybe that hasn’t really anything to do with it.”
She felt herself flush and hated it. “Don’t flatter yourself, vampire. I decide what job each person on my team is best suited for based on my own judgment. And I think you’d do better at guarding the boy than anyone else. Besides, you don’t have any experience against valkyries.”
“As if any of us do? How many have you faced?”
“That’s not the point. Every one of us except Frost and his girlfriend have faced opponents with greater than human abilities in the past. You’ve fought a bunch of normals with swords and magic that could barely touch you. That’s hardly the same thing.”
She regretted it as soon as she said it, but she couldn’t take it back.
“So now I need coddled? That’s bullshit, Morrigan. What good is all this power I have if I have to watch you go into battle against creatures that could possibly kill you? Any of the others could look out for Casey as well as I could and you know it. Hell, we could have left him here and he would’ve probably been safe enough. You could’ve sent Kitsune back to babysit. It’s not as though he’s up to fighting a fucking valkyrie either.”
He’s right about that, dammit. “They’re waiting for us.”
“Yes, they are. And the sooner you admit you were trying to protect me and agree not to do that again, we can leave.”
I’m pretty sure this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, she thought. Romances between a superior and an employee were supposed to give the boss more control over the situation, not the other way around. Of course, it’s not as though we work in an office somewhere, now is it? “Fine!” she spat. “I was wrong. I was just trying to keep you out of danger. Is that so bad?”
“It is if someone else takes the heat on my behalf,” he said. “Damn, Morrigan, you’d have to be crazy to force me out of the fight. I can take more punishment than most of the others, I’m resistant to magic—particularly convenient if they’re using magic like Valiant says they are—and I am just as determined to see this through as you are. Giving me the task of looking after Casey is just plain insulting. It belittles me, it belittles you and sure as hell doesn’t do him any favors either.”
When he’s right, he’s right. And he’s been right entirely too often lately. “Okay. I’m sorry. Can we get going now?”
“Are you going to include me in the battle plan now?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “Like you said, it would be stupid to ignore what you could contribute. I’ll send Kitsune back with Casey. Or Destiny. Or someone else.”
“Speaking of Destiny,” he said, as if realizing something. “Where’s her partner?”
That was a good question. She’d have to ask her when they got to D.C. If she remembered. “Do you really think it’s that important right now?”
He shook his head. “No. But it did make me wonder.”
“Wonder on your own time,” she shot back. “We’ve got work to do.”
***
“Special Agent Jack Frost, FBI. What the hell is going on here?” He strode up to the barricades as if he expected them to melt away of their own accord as he waved his badge at them.
The armored cop behind the barricade glanced at Frost’s ID and shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on, sir. Just here to keep the vultures away.” He glanced past Frost at the retinue in his wake and frowned. “Who are all these people?”
“They’re with me,” Frost answered. “I’ll vouch for them.”
“I don’t know…” the young officer began, but Frost cut him off.
“Listen, kid. I know you’re just doing your job, but so am I. I need these people with me. They have important information for my superiors and yours.”
“Information, eh?” The kid thought about it, then nodded. “If you vouch for them, I guess it’s all right.”
They squeezed past him and jogged up the Capitol steps to the summit where a bunch of men and women in suits congregated like a flock of confused penguins. One of them, a silver-haired gentleman of about fifty wearing an expensive pair of horn-rimmed glasses, spotted Frost and scowled. “Frost! What the hell are you doing here? Are there metas involved in this?”
“I doubt it, sir,” Frost replied. “Especially considering the hostage takers are demanding that they pass the Metahuman Registration Act.”
“What? How do you know that?” asked another of those assembled, a dark-haired woman Morrigan vaguely recognized. Of course, the current mayor of D.C., Felicia something-or-another. Valiant would know. And where was Valiant? She’d looked around for her, but hadn’t seen her anywhere.
“We got a call from someone. Haven’t you heard anything from inside?”
“No. And we can’t get inside. All the entrances are sealed tight. We can’t even break a window to get in.”
“That’s weird,” Frost said, though his tone said he wasn’t particularly surprised by this news. It wouldn’t have been a very effective tactic if they hadn’t completely sealed the building, after all.
“Who are these people?” the silver-haired man asked.
“I’m sorry, sir. This is Morrigan. She’s a bit of an expert on the hostage takers. The fellow behind her is Bryon. He’s an associate of hers. The rest of them work for her in one capacity or another. Morrigan, Bryon, this is Charles DeBurgh, Director of the FBI. With him is Felicia Watts, Mayor of D.C., Benjamin Falstaff, of the Secret Service, and General Franklin Tyler. I assume the rest of these people are members of their staffs.”
She’d missed the uniform on her first scan. “Pleased to meet you, sirs, ma’am.” See, I can be polite when I need to be. It still made her feel like a complete dork to address people like that. She’d been one of the elite for far too long, she realized. Sometimes power and position could be a kind of weakness.
“Who did you say she was again?” the general asked Frost. “I don’t believe I caught a last name.”
The general was a slim black man in his late fifties, his dark eyes both thoughtful and canny. He’d been the only one to catch how Frost had tried to gloss over their identities. They wouldn’t be able to fool him for very long, even assuming they succeeded in the first place.
“Morrigan Celt,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m an expert on cult activities. This is my associate, Bryon Beard.”
“Cult activities?” The FBI director frowned at her. “Are you telling us this is the work of a cult?”
She nodded. “We think it might be.”
One of the unidentified aides clicked shut his cell phone. “The National Guard is on its way.”
“It’s about time,” growled General Tyler. “What was the hold up?”
“Some jurisdictional dispute,” the man answered. “It really didn’t make any sense to me.”
A jurisdictional dispute or interference by people working for the valkyries. As matters stood, neither would have surprised her much.
“I want to know how a cult managed to seal the Capitol building so completely,” interrupted the mayor.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, ma’am.”
“You’d be surprised what I might believe,” the woman shot back. “So far I haven’t heard a single explanation that made a damned lick of sense.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. “This isn’t an ordinary cult,” she told them. “We have reason to believe they may have infiltrated various government offices, and have access to experimental equipment.”
“Experimental equipment?” DeBurgh echoed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m more curious about the ‘infiltration,’” murmured Tyler. “What are you saying?”
“We know that Senator Weaver has been meeting with members of this cult,” Frost told him. “They are rabidly anti-metahuman and have apparently tried to elicit his aid in getting the bill through the Senate.”
“Senator Weaver? Are you kidding? How in the hell did they manage that?” DeBurgh was apparently familiar enough with the senator, either by reputation or through personal experience, to be very skeptical of the charge. “He’s a dedicated Christian man, not someone likely to be taken in by a cult.”
“Christian cults are often the most dangerous,” Morrigan pointed out. “There have been a lot of cult leaders who portrayed themselves as a new messiah. Since this bunch has access to some pretty spectacular gimmicks, they can be very convincing if they want to be.”
“What kind of gimmicks are we talking about here?” the mayor wanted to know.
This was where it got tricky. She had to come up with a way to put this that didn’t make her sound like a nutcase. “They have the means to make themselves look like angels.”
“Like angels? What, with wings, harps and all of that?” DeBurgh nearly laughed aloud. “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m not joking. I don’t know how they do it, but they can be very convincing. Some of my engineer friends think they use some sort of prosthetic enhancement, a lot like the animatronic devices used in Hollywood. Only more advanced.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Let’s hear her out,” said Falstaff. “I’m not sure this is quite as crazy as it sounds.”
Deburgh slanted a puzzled look in his direction. “You can’t possibly be buying into this nonsense.”
“It may not be nonsense, though I have to admit I’m a bit skeptical about the animatronic thing myself. A few of my agents have recently reported sighting creatures that sound a lot like what she’s describing. They’ve reported attempted contact with several members of Congress, every last one of them known to be particularly devout Christian men and women.”
“What? And we’re just now hearing about this?” Deburgh looked scandalized.
“Be serious, Ben. What was I supposed to say—my agents were seeing angels?”
“Maybe they are angels,” General Tyler mused.
“They’re not,” said Morrigan. “I guarantee that much, at least. Maybe they’re not humans wearing prosthetics, but I’m damn sure they’re not angels.”
“If they’re not people wearing animatronic gear and aren’t angels, what they hell could they be?”
Frost exchanged a long glance with Theresa, then sighed. “Aliens, sir.”
“Aliens?” Deburgh goggled. “What? Have you lost your mind? Are you trying to tell me that aliens that look like angels are trying to manipulate our legislature into passing a law to restrict the use of metahuman powers? Why in the hell would they want to…?” His voice trailed off, his face suddenly taking on a thoughtful cast.
His wasn’t the only one. Both Tyler and Falstaff seemed to be following his chain of thought exactly.
Were they actually getting it? Morrigan wasn’t ready to make any bets to that effect, but their sudden silence was a good sign.
“It makes an insane kind of sense,” Tyler said, finally. “If aliens were thinking about invading Earth, they might well be more worried about the unpredictable abilities of our metahuman citizens than our technology.”
Deburgh was shaking his head. “I don’t know. It still sounds insane, like something out of a bad sci-fi movie.”
Falstaff snorted. “I don’t remember a single sci-fi movie where the aliens pretended to be angels and took Congress hostage.”
“You know what I mean.”
Falstaff shook his head and turned a curious gaze on Morrigan. “Tell me, young lady. Do you think they’re aliens?”
I know they’re aliens, she wanted to say. But she didn’t think that would be a good tack to take at the moment. “I think they’re dangerous, whatever they are. I think they’ve been playing our more devout senators and representatives for fools, and we could all end up paying the price for it.”
“Okay, so assuming what you’re saying is true. What do we do about it? We can’t get into the building.”
“We can get in,” Morrigan said. I hope. If they’re using magic, they may have warded against transit in or out. Then again, she was hoping it hadn’t occurred to them. There weren’t any native mages on this world and it was possible the valkyries didn’t realize that any outworlders besides themselves were even here.
“How?” Tyler didn’t sound so much incredulous as simply very curious.
“With all due respect, sir, that’s a trade secret.”
He wasn’t sure how to take that. “And what trade would that be?”
“Stopping shit like this, sir.” She gave him a respectful nod and retreated halfway down the stairs, drawing her team into a huddle. “We need to get inside. I’m going to try a transit.”
“Wait.” Bryon held up a hand. “I think I may be able to get in without your transit. They won’t be expecting it at all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know that vampire legends talk about them being able to turn into mist and such? I think I might be able to do that.”
“And you’re just mentioning it now?”
“It wasn’t important until now.”
She wanted to argue the point, but couldn’t see how it would do any good. “Fine. Go ahead and try. But be careful. If you’re not back out in five minutes, we’re going in after you.”
“That looks like a big building, easily as large as one of the governor’s palaces on my world. It might take me more than five minutes to get anywhere.”
“Ten minutes, then. I’m serious.”
“I know you are.” He reached out and stroked the side of her face. “I’ll be fine. The valkyries won’t be expecting anything like me.”
Morrigan took a deep breath, saying nothing. Let’s hope not. If they are, we’re all screwed.
Bryon turned and trotted up the steps, skirting the clump of suits at the summit, and headed for the massive door. As he approached it, she could swear she could see him growing more transparent, less solid with each step. Then, like vapor drawn through a straw, he was abruptly sucked out of sight.
The onlookers gasped in concert. Morrigan smothered a grin and ascended the steps once again. “We are not without our resources,” she said, ignoring the wild and speculative looks fired at her.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get metas involved in this,” said DeBurgh, pretty much solidifying her opinion of him as an ass-covering, human-sized version of male genitalia without the balls.
“He’s not a meta,” she said, offering her best smile. “He’s a vampire.”
***
He entered the rotunda like a spirit, more gas than substance, and drifted up to listen to the voices echoing from both chambers of Congress. The tone was confrontational, the words like bitter knives, and he smiled to himself to hear the pure rage shining through. The valkyries weren’t getting the easy victory they’d expected. There were too many members of each House that weren’t buying into their appearance, for whatever reason. Angelic they might look, but it was only a small majority, if even that, that believed forces of spiritual power would manifest physically to influence secular matters.
One of the things he understood about the valkyries as a group was that, like their creators, they tended to underestimate ordinary humans—a mistake if he’d ever known one. Once an ordinary human himself, Bryon was quite aware of how determined and resilient they could be in a crisis situation.
Valkyries saw everything in terms of overt power. It was one of their weaknesses, and one he had every intention of exploiting. As soon as he figured out how.
He wasn’t surprised to find a pile of weapons lying within a small alcove off the rotunda, apparently placed there once they’d been liberated from the ceremonial Marine Corps guards by the valkyries. He grinned and re-materialized, picking up one of the long, curved sabers and sliding it partway from its scabbard. Though ceremonial, it seemed a serviceable weapon nonetheless.
Good. Unlike the firearms, a sword was a weapon with which he had more than a passing familiarity. He could use this weapon. Now to decide how to best make use of it.
Since his clothing had dematerialized with him and returned when he did, he took the chance he could do the same with the saber and found to his delight that he could. He had a glimmering of a plan, and if successful, he’d make the valkyries contribute to their own defeat. A plan worthy of Raven himself, he determined, feeling a twinge of something—maybe guilt, maybe something else—as he reflected on comparing himself to his vampiric progenitor. Pride, perhaps?
Like a tiny cloud of smoke, long banned from the interior of the great halls of power, he drifted through the doorway and toward one of the valkyries standing guard only a few yards from the door. Now the logistics of what he planned struck him and he found himself wishing he’d thought to bare the blade before dematerializing. He’d have to trust in his speed here, he realized. He’d been a better-than-fair swordsman back when he was mortal—he could only assume his skill had been raised to a whole new order of competency by his new status as one of the undead.
From what he knew of valkyries, the weapon wouldn’t be able to kill one of them, but it could hurt them. Maybe driven by the arm of a vampire who knew what he was doing, it could hurt one severely. If nothing else, it would anger it and that would serve his purposes well enough.
The valkyrie closest to the door stood with its massive back pressed against a marble column that rose from floor to vaulted ceiling high above. Bryon swirled around the column a few times, then dropped down into the alcove behind it, solidifying even as he touched ground.
He whipped around the column, the saber scything back, biting through the creature’s abdomen and cleaving it in half. Blood fell like a crimson waterfall, gushing around his legs. He switched grips and, pivoting his hips, drove the tip of the blade up and through the soft flesh behind the valkyrie’s chin.
He whirled, sending the blade spinning over the head of the seated senators, plunging deep into the chest of another of the valkyries.
Then he turned and ran as only a vampire could as the third valkyrie in the chamber let loose with one of its trademark screams. As expected, as he reached the main door, two of the three from the opposite chamber, the House chamber, and the one remaining in the Senate chamber, charged out of their respective doors.
He backed up against the main door, feeling its weight and solidity against his back. He couldn’t see them gathering magic, but he could feel a strange humming buzz in the air and saw the air around them waver.
He dematerialized as something brushed through him, something pushing incredible force. The door disintegrated, spraying the landing with shards of stone, metal, and wood. As the door blew free, Morrigan came through the cloud of dust and debris. She gestured, great, sweeping motions with her arms. The air itself suddenly seemed afire, swimming with massive sheets of molten light.
Two valkyries went down under the initial onslaught, engulfed in flames. The third, rushing around to get an angle on the door, raising its arms as if to throw something at her through the doorway, was clipped from behind as a burly human figure dove at its leg.
Morrigan came through, stepped aside, and Iron Tower charged across the threshold, a parking meter of all things clenched in his monstrous fists. As the downed valkyrie started to rise, he brought the makeshift mace around in an ascending arc and caught it on the side of the head.
Most preternaturals—‘thropes, vamps, or immortals—didn’t deal too well with head trauma. Where an immortal’s body had brain cells spread throughout the body, allowing them to survive nearly anything, their primary brain still lay within their skulls, perfectly susceptible to damage. Valkyries were a race of immortals created by the Cen and vulnerable to the same kinds of thing as any immortal. The trick was dealing with them before they managed to heal from the wounds inflicted on them.
Morrigan strode through beneath the rotunda’s dome and the air around her crackled with jagged bolts of something resembling lightning, but a brilliant blue-white that filled the chamber with an icy cold like the wind that rises off the arctic snow.
Glancing over as he materialized, Bryon realized that the figure that had struck down the valkyrie from behind was none other than Rebecca Valiant herself. The woman lifted her head, caught his gaze and nodded once.
Then the chamber was flooded with a number of people, half of them members of the team, the other half armed and armored troops trying to secure the area. This was not a good mix. It wasn’t until Morrigan pinned a large group to one of the walls with a shining net of something that they seemed to realize that she wasn’t going to stand down and that her team had every intention of remaining in charge until the threat was neutralized.
And it was far from being neutralized.
The two burned valkyries were already climbing back to their feet, sloughing off blackened skin as they rose. “Hit ‘em again!” Tower yelled, rushing at them from the side.
“Stay back!” she yelled at him, but of course it was too late. The valkyries released whatever invisible energy that lay coiled in their hand and it flailed outward, looking for the briefest second like supple ice, nearly transparent with darker cracks and fissures running through it.
It hit him like a hammer, driving him into the floor like a spike. A shriek like a missile coming down sliced through the huge chamber and seemed to punch straight into one of the two valkyries. It flew back, catching a column with its shoulder and tearing a huge chunk away.
Morrigan threw out an arm, stopping Destiny’s headlong charge and released something else from her fingers. A visible wave seemed to flow between her and one valkyrie standing tall. Then, in the blink of an eye, the creature stood in the midst of a whirling vortex cut through with ribbons of black fire. Before their eyes the valkyrie simple flew apart, blood and flesh vanishing into empty air.
Morrigan seemed to waver, but, as Bryon floated up behind her, she straightened, turning a smoking gaze on the one still stunned from Destiny’s forceful shriek. She reached into the empty air, her hands and arms vanishing nearly to the elbow, but returning holding a massive, two-handed sword seemingly crafted out of a single, flawless ruby. She launched herself at the valkyrie, which pushed itself off to meet her.
Bryon took a few steps in that direction, expecting a huge, explosive clash, but their contact was almost anti-climactic. Morrigan ducked beneath the creature’s wild swing and rose, the radiant crystalline weapon describing a perfect arc before plunging straight into its chest.
She tore it from its sternum and was already turning, seeming to skate across the floor to the last of those in the rotunda, the one still laid out by Iron Tower’s blow. Morrigan had no doubt that Tower had paid for his courage with his life. The blow that had felled him was one no mortal could have survived.
And the valkyrie responsible hadn’t lived long enough to enjoy its victory.
She strode past it, the blade descending once and cleaving its skull in twain as she passed, running toward the Senate chambers.
Bryon sprinted in her wake. “There’s two in there. I hurt them, but—”
He broke off, leaped up and snatched a man from the air as he flew overhead, pulling him into his arms and dropping lightly to the floor.
“Now you’re throwing people?” Morrigan raged, rushing across the threshold into the Senate chambers with the sword held smoldering over her head.
“Hold!” came the earthshaking voice of one of the valkyries. “You take one more step and we will start killing!”
“I don’t think so!” Morrigan shouted in reply. “Because I won’t let you.”
She took one more step and vanished, appearing several feet above a valkyrie’s head. Its companion opened its mouth to shout a warning, but instead of words, found the boots of a vampire filling its mouth as Bryon torpedoed into it.
It went down, crashing onto its back as the vampire executed a neat somersault in mid-air and alighted on his feet again. He turned his head and found a ruby missile flying toward him, which he plucked out of the air and brought down in a sweeping slash that neatly bisected the prone valkyrie.
“There’s one left in the House,” they heard Valiant yell, and, heaving a tired sigh almost in unison, turned to race back out into the rotunda, ignoring the cries of dismay, anger and shock from the senators left behind them.
A massive explosion shook the whole building and they rushed into the House chamber amidst a shower of masonry from above. The valkyrie had busted a hole in the ceiling and was fleeing the scene! Bryon willed himself upward, crashing through behind the escaping faux angel.
It wasn’t until he was soaring out of the hole behind the valkyrie that he realized that he was flying. He’d simply decided to follow it and he had. Then, even more surprising in some ways, he looked around to discover he wasn’t alone. Not only was Morrigan there, but so were Valiant and a red-haired man he didn’t recognize at first but belatedly recognized as Kitsune in human shape.
He wasn’t flying—he was being carried by Valiant, who had sprouted huge wings that reminded him of those of a butterfly. They were huge, rounded, and rainbow-hued, like sunlight through a waterfall. That must have something to do with the sym she was given. Last time I checked, ‘thropes didn’t usually grow big butterfly wings.
Morrigan grinned over at Bryon, astounded that he’d manifested two separate vampiric powers in a single day. My blood did that. It placed him fairly high up on the vampire power chart now—perhaps not as high as Raven or Rio or anywhere near as high as Renee Fontaine, but it made him a formidable vampire all the same. A worthy ally.
Not that he already wasn’t, she thought hurriedly, as if to placate some inner voice that might rise to defend him.
The sound of helicopters, and the distant roar of jets reached her, and she spun in place as she tried to spot the choppers. Then she returned her gaze to following the path of the ascending valkyrie, just in time to watch a hole open in the sky in front of it and it to slip away from them.
Oh, no you don’t, she thought, snagging a thread and thrusting it through the hole in an endeavor that reminded her inexplicably, for a moment, of coitus. Shaking her head in disgust at herself, she opened the near end, the one she tossed away from her hand, and followed the valkyrie’s path. As long as they could pinpoint where she’d flown through, the rest of them should be able to follow.
And she tumbled out above a familiar skyline—there was Saint Joseph Hospital not half a mile ahead of her. They’ve been watching us, she realized. How else would it know to come here of all places?
Cries from behind her told her that the rest of the crew—at least those that could fly—had followed her through the transit and across the mage road back to the city where they’d started this particular adventure. In front of her not fifty yards she spotted the valkyrie, its broad white wings carrying it up toward the roof of the hospital. This could get very bad, very quick.
It hadn’t seen exactly what had happened to its companions. Maybe it would be foolish enough to let her within striking range with the ruby sword. She was just thankful she’d thought to bring it. At first it seemed like a fairly useless artifact to carry on a mission such as this one, but without it she would’ve never been able to eliminate the five valkyrie she had. Crystal weapons destroyed the communication between the cells in an immortal’s body. It was the ultimate weapon to use against any of them.
And if this valkyrie didn’t realize she had such a weapon it would be a great advantage. She followed as swiftly as she could, driving the windsprite carrying her to greater speeds. It landed on the hospital roof with three running steps, then turned to face her.
As the valkyrie readied a spell, Morrigan snagged a strand, whip-cracked the other end down to a point above its head and flung herself through the aperture of the tube, emerging but a few yards above its head. To her shock, however, it was ready for her, snatching her out of the air by her ankle and swinging her into the rooftop beneath its feet. The crystal sword, only partially out of its dimension pocket, slipped out of her grasp and fell back into its subspace hole.
She writhed onto her back, thrusting with her foot into its knee even as it stepped forward to change its grip on her. The knee cracked and she kicked backward, landing on the middle of her back and thrusting upward with both feet into its descending face.
It recovered fast, but, then again, it would. The trick to fighting these creatures, she knew, was to keep on them, to give them very little chance to react. They tended to be linear thinkers—they made very few intuitive jumps. A good thing, as far as she was concerned.
She kicked back onto her feet and moved forward, trying to get inside its guard. It straight-armed her in the chest with an open hand and reached into its own dimension pocket. She caught herself before going off the edge of the roof, but by the time she did, she was staring down the barrel of a min-charge energy cannon, the kind ordinarily mounted on a skimmer or fighter craft.
It went off with a roar like a jet’s afterburners and a bolt of supercharged particles rushed at her at just under the speed of light. She had no chance to get out of the way. The best she could do was turn slightly, so the bolt struck her obliquely. It threw her sideways, over the corner of the roof. She plunged over the edge, biting back a scream. The windsprite would catch her before she fell too far.
Except it didn’t. That’s when she made the realization that the energy of the cannon had somehow canceled out the ‘sprite. Unprecedented, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility. Energy was energy, after all.
She’d fallen no more than a couple of stories when her descent was halted as powerful arms wrapped around her. “I’ve got you,” whispered Bryon in her ear as they shot upward. They breached the height of the rooftop just as the valkyrie was bending over the edge. Morrigan’s upraised fist caught it under the chin. It staggered backward and she felt herself drop as Bryon released his grip.
She followed the valkyrie as it stumbled backward, connecting with one blow after another, keeping the creature off-balance. In a swirl of mist, the ghostly form of Bryon enveloped its face and allowed her to get a couple of extra shots in.
A straight kick up between its legs doubled it over—genitals or not, it wasn’t a pleasant place to be struck for any biped. Morrigan reached back into her own dimension pocket, snatching the sword and swinging for the bleachers.
It was enough. The weapon tore through its side, under its bottom rib and through its midsection all the way to the spine. The creature’s broad, blue eyes stared at her in something that looked like shock as it fell in a gush of blood to the graveled rooftop. Another sweep sent the blood flying from the blade before it vanished back into its dimension pocket.
She glanced over her shoulder, realizing that the others hadn’t followed through the transit. They were still back in the Capitol, probably under threat from the authorities. “We need to get back to D.C.”
Bryon nodded. “They’re going to want explanations.”
“They’re not going to like them,” she replied. “Not at all.”
Chapter Fourteen: On the Hill
Five Days Later
Morrigan slowly pushed herself up from her seat and dragged her gaze across the raised bench and the men and women seated behind it. She cleared her throat. “My name is Morrigan. I generally use no other name. I guess I’m a bit like Cher or Bono in that regard. And in only that regard. I am what you here might call an ‘illegal alien’. But I’m not an illicit visitor from another nation—I’m from another world entirely.”
The Committee members gazed down at her with mixed expressions of disbelief and consideration. One, a silver-haired black man with intense gray eyes, leaned forward and locked gazes with her. When he spoke, his accent called up thoughts of the deep South, maybe Louisiana, unless she missed her guess. “Are you saying, young lady, that you’re a little green man in disguise?”
This elicited a quiet chuckle from the gallery. The senators, as befitted their august station, simply smothered smiles behind upraised hands or turned their heads away.
Her initial attempt to respond was aborted by his up-flung hand. “My apologies, ma’am. We have all witnessed some extraordinary things this week and I’m afraid none of us are quite at the top of our game. That joke was disrespectful and in poor taste.” It was his turn to sigh. “Please. Can you tell us what those things were, and what this was all about?”
“I can, Senator. We call them valkyries. They are agents of a vast inter-dimensional empire that survives and grows by consuming and destroying other civilizations. One of the ways they do this is by coming up with ways to cripple those civilizations long before they ever make their first overt moves. Your meta-humans were created in order to help stave off this invasion, but the valkyries were trying to hobble this effort before it could pay off by turning them into enemies of the state, in effect, precipitating a war that would have devastated your world.”
Silence met this statement as the senators exchanged glances. A murmur rose up in the gallery, quickly silenced by the lashing glare of the committee chair. “A lot of what you are saying is completely outlandish and difficult for this committee to swallow.”
“I realize that, Senator. But I can prove some of what I say, at least. If you’ll bear with me.”
“I suppose you’ve earned at least a little patience on our part, Miss Morrigan. Go on.”
“Somewhere around the fourteenth century, this alien race, known to us as the Cen, developed a series of very powerful viruses with which they seeded several different worlds. These viruses were designed to destroy a specific genetic trait, an ability that is actually a human birthright but has long since passed into the realm of fantasy on several of these worlds in the intervening centuries.
“I’m talking about magic. Not the kind of magic you take for granted, where sleight of hand tricks performed on a stage or in front of a television camera are used to delight and astound millions. I’m talking about the magic that allowed humans to accomplish wonders that are still miraculous by today’s standards. Magic that existed in every population on Earth until the explorers and conquerors carried the viruses to the very ends of the Earth and unleashed them upon the unsuspecting natives.
“I have abilities that could not be duplicated by any meta, or any dozen metahumans. This was one of the reasons I was able to face these valkyries the way I did. And, in fact, I was not alone in my endeavor, for I drew not only upon the resources of the team I brought with me, but on a stalwart band of metahumans who agreed to help us against this threat.”
She glanced over at the others standing in the wings. Destiny, her arm in a sling, stood between Valiant and Kitsune, the latter still wearing his human disguise. Shadowkin, for once not wrapped in his shadowy cloak, stood there in an impeccable if inexpensively tailored, double-breasted suit. Behind them stood Midellis and Santos, between them an empty hole where a much larger man might have been.
Casey, looking as lost and forlorn as she’d ever seen him, stood in front of the whole group, arms wrapped around himself in an unconsciously protective gesture.
She turned her eyes away, back to the figures behind the upraised bench. “The meta known as Iron Tower, as heroic a man as I have ever met, gave his life to defend you from the threat of the valkyries with no hope of personal gain from his sacrifice. He did it because it was the right thing to do and because this world needs defenders like him more than ever. It is in this fashion, in the death of heroes, that we remember who we are as human beings. We can be small and petty sometimes, but there are always those willing—no, driven—to rise above that and lay their lives on the line for the safety and well-being of others. Yes, there are criminals among the metas. We know how dangerous they can be. But, as you are now no doubt discovering, their threat has been greatly diminished in the past several days. Lowbrow, The Harpy, and others of their ilk have been quietly eliminated in a way that the government could never have achieved.
“That is my team’s final gift to your world, along with a chance for peace you had no reason to expect. All it will take is for you to honor the sacrifice of one of your fellows, a man who took a gift of power and accepted the responsibility that came with it. To forever deny the forces of fear and hatred any ability to persecute those of you who have been changed by the virus that was created to save you.”
She let her voice lapse and gazed in turn into each of the senators’ eyes. There was doubt and suspicion, yes, but also a growing sense of something she recognized as acceptance. They would need very little else to push them into believing. Now the question remained to her, what precisely could she do to prove her words to be true?
A sudden shimmering in the air in front of her caused an excited murmur to rise from the gallery. In less than ten seconds, the shimmering field coalesced into a tall, broad-shouldered humanoid form in what appeared to be a silver jumpsuit. From the wings armed guards rushed in, but the figure raised its hand and their movements, and only their movements, seem to slow to an almost imperceptible crawl.
ArchAngel lifted his molten gaze to the figures on the bench and spoke. “My name is Justice Breed. It was I who sent this woman and her team here to prevent a war that would have destroyed you. I am from the future. Not your future, precisely, but the future of an alternate Earth much like this one. In my day, this particular Earth lays in ruin, its human inhabitants all either dead or reduced to a culture barely above that of a Stone Age civilization. I found this intolerable and broke the rules that limit my kind in order to bring about a different ending for you.
“How this ends now is up to you. You are not out of danger, but as long as you realize how close you came to utter destruction and work to prevent it from happening from here on out, you will survive. Take this gift in the spirit in which it has been given. Make a chance for you, your children and your grandchildren.”
He gestured again, and the weapons the guards were carrying turned into bouquets of flowers. He offered up a wry grin to the seated senators. “I recommend that you make use of your power to create something specifically designed to monitor and deal with meta-normal threats in the future. Allow their powers to work for you—”
“We have a proposal for that,” chimed in Valiant’s voice, cutting ArchAngel off mid-sentence. “If I may approach.”
The chair inclined his head. “You may.”
Valiant was speaking as she approached and her words boomed through the large chamber as if she were standing in front of a microphone herself. “Though we arrived with Morrigan and worked for her up until this very minute, a few of my companions and I would like to offer our services to help create this kind of agency for you. We have a very good historical model to work from.”
Up until this very minute? Morrigan thought, slightly annoyed. It would’ve been nice if they had told me they were planning this. After a moment’s reflection, she realized she should have expected it anyway.
But Valiant was continuing. “On our world, it was called the Paranormal Affairs Commission, and, unlike here, its responsibility extended not only to our metas, but also to preternatural creatures like vampires and lycanthropes—which were created by similar viruses—and those who practiced magic or exhibited strong psychic abilities. We think you should set something like it up here, on your Earth. Call it whatever you want. Staff it with metas, ordinary humans, and people like us.”
“And what are you, exactly?” asked one of the other senators, a dusky, dark-haired woman of early middle-age wearing a hawk’s gaze.
“I am a lycanthrope,” Valiant replied. “A shapeshifter.” For just a second, her face seemed to writhe and for a span of time so brief no one could have sworn it passed at all, she wore the face of a black jaguar. “Agents Santos, Kitsune, and Midellis all agree with me. We will stay until you don’t need our help anymore.”
She turned an apologetic gaze to Morrigan, who shrugged it off with a frown. She’d have words with them about this, but now was hardly the time.
“Well, I sure the hell ain’t staying,” came a voice from the back of the room where the doors were, and she turned to see Chikitar, in his natural shape, wearing nothing but an empty weapons harness and the knee-length kilt he’d agreed to wear as a reluctant concession to human modesty.
Beside him was Bryon, his blond hair uncharacteristically tousled, his gaze bearing down on her like twin cobalt searchlights. For a brief second, all she could see was him, and she felt her heart beat a little stronger just knowing he was in the room. This meeting had taken longer than she had expected if he was here with them now. She risked a glance down at her PCD and realized it was nearly seven thirty in the evening. Where did the time go? she wondered. They’d convened at three o’clock, so it wasn’t as though she’d lost several hours, but it didn’t seem as if four and a half hours had passed.
The procyon’s appearance elicited as much discussion as one might have expected, a loud murmur he completely ignored as he made his way down the center aisle to stand next to Morrigan, the vampire padding silently by his side. “I came here to do a job and now that it’s done, I’ll be damned by all the forces that be if I’ll stay one minute more than I have to. I want to get home and eat my own kind of food. Though,” he added, with a sly wink at the shocked senators, “I have to say I do like pizza.”
“This,” Morrigan said by way of explanation, “is Chikitar. He’s a real alien—though, as you can see, not a little green man nor a bug-eyed monster. He’s a member of a species we call Procyon Lotar Sapiens. His kind descended from raccoons.”
“I can’t speak for you monkeys,” Chikitar growled in a voice just loud enough to be heard by everyone, “but we like to think we ascended from our ancestors.”
Morrigan heard him talking, but her attention was drawn completely to the figure of Bryon on the other side of the squat, furry, ring-tailed figure of the procyon. She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “I appreciate your loyalty,” she said, “but could you do me a favor and move over a little so Bryon can slip in here next to me?”
Chikitar gave her an appraising look and flashed his sharp teeth at her. “Well, it’s about time you two got that over with. You gonna do it here on the floor or are you going to wait until you find a real bed first?”
She stifled a burst of laughter and raised her gaze to Bryon, who sighed dramatically. “Procyons,” he said to the panel. “They have no sense of propriety at all.”
“And our sense of property is pretty damned shaky too,” the procyon said in a tone that sounded entirely too much like that of Groucho Marx.
Morrigan closed her eyes and took a deep breath, opening them an instant later as she felt a light touch, cooler than that of an ordinary human, travel up her arm and a smooth hand slide between her arm and her breast to nestle there, fingers neatly circling her biceps.
It seemed as though Chikitar’s appearance was that last bit of evidence they needed, for the chair suddenly banged his gavel against the bench. “This meeting is hereby adjourned, to be resumed at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. We will announce our decision then.”
***
As it was, it took another week for them to hash out all the details. The committee had been granted the authority to make a final decision on the matter, but they weren’t going to hurry themselves about it. There were a thousand little things to take care of and, after a couple more days of answering an assortment of increasingly odd and irrelevant questions, Morrigan was edging closer and closer to the point of exploding on them.
Only the fact that she was able to spend the nights with Bryon was holding her together. The first night they didn’t waste any time talking, far more interested in exploring sides of one another they’d never before had the chance to see, much less smell, taste, and touch. He was a far more inventive lover than she would have imagined. Inventive, imaginative, and intuitive. He knew when to be gentle and when gentle wouldn’t work. The sharing of her blood with him became, in itself, an extremely erotic act.
But, as the novelty wore off, they fell into a pattern of sharing with one another the parts of themselves they’d never revealed to anyone else, wrapped around one another like two serpents twining, their respective touches soft and sure on each other’s bodies as they lay there, temporarily spent.
During the daylight hours while Bryon slept, Morrigan became an unofficial tour guide for ArchAngel, who’d never had the opportunity to see the historical East Coast before it had been destroyed on Earth Prime or at least rendered more or less uninhabited and razed by the material hungry hybrid armies of the Cen.
It was on one of these trips, as they were standing together on the roof of the Empire State Building in New York City, that ArchAngel turned to her and said, quite unexpectedly, “You do realize that you should dissolve Bryon’s association with your agency now, don’t you?”
Taken aback, she turned and stared at him to see if he was kidding. His face, though prone to oddities of expression because of his android configuration, was clearly expressing something like sadness and regret.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why should I do that?”
“Because he should be free to answer to you as a lover and a friend and not as an employee. It’s not fair to him to have that sort of pressure put upon him.”
“What pressure? What are you talking about?” And what would you know about it anyway? she wanted to add, but didn’t.
“For those centuries I wandered, nothing but energy, a formless observer, I was able to witness and consider many things about the relationships between men and women. In nearly every case where they are equally strong, the woman has the upper hand. It seems to be built into our—your—DNA for the male to make concessions to provide for the woman’s happiness. It doesn’t always work this way, but in those cases there are usually other factors at play. As your second in command at the KOA, part of his job is to make sure all your decisions are well-considered. It’s not fair to him to force him to balance his need to make you happy with his duty to watch out for the well-being of your agency at the same time.”
“Why should they be in conflict?”
He just stared at her until she dropped her gaze. Of course they would be, on occasion. It was inevitable. She might be immortal, but she wasn’t perfect. She could make mistakes and ArchAngel was right. One of the jobs of the second hat was to catch those mistakes before they ballooned into huge problems.
“So what are you recommending?”
“There’s a new agency starting up, one made up almost entirely of vampires. Its mission will be to police the vampire community on Starhaven and throughout the known worlds. I’m sure you’ve heard rumors of the growing influence of the Clans on Earth and, to a certain extent, even in certain parts of Starhaven.”
She had. “Whose agency will this be?”
“There’s a vampire from Earth Prime named Rio. She’s partnered with Stormchild. She’s a brilliant woman—a scientist and a vampire. Brilliant and extremely powerful. Her vampiric gifts are among the most powerful we’ve ever seen, even counting Renee.”
“You want Bryon to go to work for her?” Morrigan had heard of Rio, though they’d never met. A truly formidable creature, from what she understood.
“That’s what I recommend. Well, you asked.”
“I did, didn’t I? Fine. I’ll have to talk to him about it, of course, but I won’t fight it if he wants to join this other agency.”
“Glad to hear it. I hope you realize that I, too, will need to speak to him about it.”
She nodded with a touch of irritation. “Do what you have to, ArchAngel.”
“Oh, I will. Make no mistake about that.”
The mock seriousness in his tone brought a harsh laugh to her lips. “You can be a real pain sometimes, you know that?”
“Seems like I’ve heard it a time or two. Okay. That’s enough of New York. What’s next?”
***
Three days later, just after dusk, Bryon found himself standing with the others back in the Senate Committee room. The senators were already in their positions when the group sauntered in with ArchAngel and Morrigan in the lead.
The big guy had taken Bryon aside upon returning from his East Coast tour with Morrigan and outlined his concerns with Bryon continuing to work as Morrigan’s second at the same time he was involved with her on a personal level.
Bryon started out a little annoyed at the interference, but what ArchAngel said made too much sense for him to stay that way. He had to admit that it gave him a certain thrill to think he would be following in his progenitor’s footsteps. Some vampires needed someone to keep them in line. He had no problem imagining he could be of use in that capacity. Especially since few vamps had a regular supply of immortal blood to “supercharge” them, as ArchAngel said. This way I get the best of both worlds.
He almost couldn’t believe that Morrigan had backed away from killing all those meta-criminals just because he didn’t approve. He’d thought her fascination with him was a passing infatuation, but now it seemed like he’d misjudged her and underestimated the effect he’d had on her. He still found himself wondering at odd moments how that could have come about. He wasn’t anything special, other than being undead. He wasn’t arrogant enough to assume he was.
Just accept it, said a little voice inside his head. There is such a thing as over-thinking things.
So lost within his own thoughts was he that he started at the sound of the chair’s gavel striking the bench.
Senator Latham’s face was somber, his gray eyes giving nothing away as he peered down at them. The sound of the door opening behind them turned their heads and Bryon wasn’t surprised to see Special Agents Frost and Ronn making their way down the aisle.
“You’re late,” the senator boomed disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry, Senator, but we had some final business to finish with the FBI. And like with most bureaucracies, it ended up taking longer than expected.”
“I imagine it did. We have reached our decision. We hereby establish the formation of the Paranormal Affairs Agency under the nominal guidance of the Department of Justice. Its primary responsibility will be to police the metahuman community, but also to expedite communication between said community and the general public. In addition, the PAA will also be responsible for monitoring any further signs of interference by these ‘Cen’ of which we’ve heard so much.
“We hereby appoint former Special Agent Jack Frost of the FBI to the post of Director of Paranormal Affairs. The Deputy Directorship, at least for the foreseeable future, will go to Rebecca Valiant, who will remain in this post until either this committee or she herself decides it is time to dissolve this affiliation.”
Bryon couldn’t help but wonder if his manner of speech was deliberately stilted to lend it an air of formality. Personally, he found it aggravating, but he could see how some people might enjoy it. All he wanted was this to be over, so they could go home.
Home. He had to laugh slightly at the thought. He hadn’t realized he’d begun to see Starhaven as home, but the transition had been a slow, incremental one. There were so many things that made the place more comfortable even than a world like the one on which he’d been born. There existed no day or night there—no sun to drive a vampire into unwilling sleep. In many ways, it was like a paradise for his kind.
“In addition, we have decided to arrange for a state funeral for the hero of what we are now calling The Battle of Capitol Hill. The metahuman named Iron Tower will be given the accolades he has earned. We will leave any more details to the director to work out,” said the chair, and the gavel again struck the top of the bench. “This meeting is adjourned.”
***
They weren’t quite able to leave yet, Morrigan discovered to her disgust. There were a thousand details to hash out, like how much contact the new PAA would have with the outworld agencies such as the Knights Of Anarchy. Morrigan didn’t like leaving a job half-finished and deserting her agents to help set up this system here would have been doing just that. They were still her agents, even though it felt a bit like a defection.
Probably because they hadn’t approached her about it before making the decision. Well, they’re interworld agents, all right, she thought with a wry internal chuckle. Going off-reservation is what they do best.
She’d always been slightly amused to witness this happening to the other agency heads, but now she knew what it felt like. Agents were independent all too often, making decisions without the approval of their superiors. They were trained that way, though, because in the field there were often no opportunities to check back with headquarters. Sometimes improvisation was the name of the game.
She cornered Valiant and Kitsune one afternoon in the prospective offices of the PAA, a single floor in a Washington D.C. building devoted to the Department of Justice. They were picking out office space. It didn’t surprise her that Valiant was not only demanding to have a corner office, but wanted at least one of the twelfth floor windows to actually open. With her symsuit and its bright faerie wings of energy, she might well want the ability to leap from an open window and travel swiftly to any point in the city. It made sense. Rebecca Valiant would make a good second-in-command for the new agency, she realized. Tough, smart, and oh-so determined.
She didn’t miss the barely-hidden exchanges between Kitsune and Valiant either. As weird as it seemed to her, the two had made an interpersonal connection—maybe even a romantic one. A were-jaguar and a hybrid fox? It sounded ludicrous, but beneath the surface, their mutual sentience might well be enough for romance. The fact they were different species had less to do with it than all the things they had in common.
“I’m sorry we didn’t say anything to you first,” were the first words out of Valiant’s mouth as Morrigan strode into the room. “We weren’t really sure until the last minute, and then it seemed too late to ask for permission.”
“Not to mention it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,” Morrigan replied, shaking her head. “I will admit I was a little put-out at first, but I realized it was a natural extension of the work we did here. We can’t walk away without being sure this all comes together.”
“Exactly!” Valiant exclaimed with a glance at Kitsune who was, of course, still wearing his human guise.
The red-haired man—the fox in disguise—shrugged and grinned back at her. Morrigan couldn’t miss the twinkle in his eye, the very twinkle that spoke of feelings not well hidden. The fox was in love with Valiant and, judging by the glance she gave him in return, she harbored similar feelings for him.
Well, it’s a good thing neither of them are in charge of this little shindig or else ArchAngel would be explaining how inappropriate it all is. She tried to suppress the sudden rush of bitterness at the thought, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Now that she and Bryon had got past the things that had separated them, the top dog was telling her that she couldn’t go on the way she’d intended, running her agency with her love by her side. Part of her, the catty side, thought the hidden reason for his interference might be because he’d been denied any chance of romance at all.
Unfair, perhaps, but she couldn’t help it. His argument had made sense, but it didn’t mean she was happy about it.
“You realize that we’re going to have to stick around for Jack and Theresa’s wedding, right?”
Morrigan blinked at her. “Wedding?”
“Yes. Jack and Theresa are getting married. This Saturday. They’ve invited us all.”
Another wedding. She repressed a shiver. She was no fan of the whole ceremony, with all its “love, honor, and obey” crap. Not to mention the nonsense religious nattering. Why can’t they just jump over a broomstick or something and be done with it? “This Saturday? I hope it’s an evening ceremony.”
“Jack thought of that,” Valiant said, with a quick smile. “He didn’t want to have the wedding without Bryon being able to attend. You know, he actually asked if Bryon would have any problem with holy ground?”
Morrigan snorted at that. “Of course. Superstition runs rampant here.” She hadn’t meant it to come out so snide, but she really couldn’t help it. She found all the religion and superstition aggravating at best. Of course, she was one of a race that had manipulated the religions of Earth for millennia before the modern age had set in and made it all seem so pointless. Course, she thought, people have the right to believe any damn stupid thing they want to. “Wonderful. Can’t wait.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“Only when I don’t care if someone believes me or not.” With a wink and a nod, she pulled down a thread and transformed it into a transit tube. “See you at the wedding.”
***
She trotted up the long sidewalk and knocked softly on the door. It swung open of its own accord and she stepped across the threshold.
“We’re in the kitchen,” came Jaz’s voice. She strolled down the hallway, peering through a few of the doorways as she passed. One of them was a library, filled to bursting with shelf upon shelf of books. The next was a large, gray-and-white marble tiled bathroom, its centerpiece a huge indoor Jacuzzi. Nice.
She strode off the light blue carpet onto the blue-and-white marbled tiles of the kitchen and found Jaz and Nyx standing side by side behind a large butcher’s block covered with an assortment of fresh vegetables. In her right hand, Jaz held a large cleaver, poised over an already-bisected head of cabbage. “We were wondering when you’d arrive.”
“Whose house was this?” Morrigan asked.
The two women exchanged glances. “A minor meta-villain with delusions of grandeur.” Jaz set the cleaver down on the block and walked around it. “No, we didn’t kill him. He’s currently undergoing our own version of ‘Outward Bound’.”
Morrigan frowned. “And what the hell does that mean?”
“Back in our universe, there was a program where they introduced ‘at risk’—” she made little air quotes with her fingers, “—kids to the ‘Great Outdoors’. We dumped him in the Yukon with a compass, a big knife and a lighter.”
“What’s his power?”
“He can dematerialize,” Nyx answered, picking up a carrot and snapping off the stalk. “Walks through walls and shit like that. Nothing that’ll do him a lot of good out there, though it’ll probably prevent him from becoming a kodiak’s breakfast.”
“And what precisely do you intend this to accomplish?”
“If nothing else, it might give him a sense of his own mortality.” Nyx shrugged. “Besides, it gets him out of our hair and gives us a house to use in the meantime. Nice kitchen, don’t you think?”
Morrigan, who typically considered cooking to be the kind of chore she’d most like to avoid, could only shrug. “We’re probably leaving Saturday, after Jack Frost’s wedding. Will you two be coming back with us?”
Jaz shook her head and held out a radish in the palm of her hand. “Want one? Our criminal grew it himself.”
“No thanks.”
Jaz popped the radish in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “We’re going to stick around for a little while, lend your agents a hand getting things in order. Especially considering more valkyries might show up.”
Morrigan nodded. “I appreciate it. You won’t have any trouble getting home?”
Jaz shook her head. “Nope. We can handle it.”
“Well, great. I wanted to stop by and thank you two for all the help. It really made a difference.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Ever,” added Nyx.
They grinned at her.
“So where’s your imp?”
“I really couldn’t tell you,” Jaz answered. “But I’m sure we’ll all probably know soon enough. The one thing an imp does very well is attract attention.”
“Particularly those two,” Nyx muttered.
“Those two? You’ve got more than one?”
“We’ve both got one now. They’re hanging out together. Double the fun.”
“Double the trouble.” Nyx glanced out the kitchen window. “Getting close to dusk. Your boy-toy should be waking up soon. Maybe you should rush back to greet him when he climbs out of his coffin.”
“He doesn’t sleep in a coffin,” Morrigan said a bit testily. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Now why would we do that?” Jaz asked.
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nyx put in. “You’re even welcome to stay for dinner. We’re doing a stir-fry.”
“I’d love to, but you’re right. I should be there when Bryon wakes up. Be seeing you.” She jumped out.
“Think she bought it?”
“Absolutely not. I just think she decided she didn’t care enough to push it.”
“Always said she was smart like that.”
“Yeah. So has it woke up yet?”
“Nope. Still sleeping like a big, winged, sexless baby. What the hell did you dose it with, anyway?”
“Some kind of elephant tranquilizer, I think. Seems to work pretty damn well.”
“Yes indeed. Are you sure the chains are strong enough?”
“I’m sure.”
“Great. So why don’t you start on the meat and I’ll finish with the veggies?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
***
After the wedding, ArchAngel insisted on attending the reception though Bryon was sure he knew it would drive Morrigan crazy. She wanted to get home in the worst way now, for no particular reason he could determine. Maybe it was just that she was the type to need one chapter to end decisively before moving on to the next one.
Or maybe this sort of stuff just bored the hell out of her.
Either way, by the time ArchAngel was ready to go, they’d bade their farewells to everyone—she’d spent a few minutes in pretty intense discourse with Santos and Midellis, he noted—and they’d managed to pull Chikitar away from the buffet table, Bryon felt almost as impatient as Morrigan had been.
“Keep in mind,” ArchAngel said, “that there will be a significant gap in time between the time you left and the time we return. For one, it would make it too obvious that we were time traveling if we arrived too soon after your departure, but, more importantly, I don’t particularly want to cross paths with myself.”
Morrigan gave him the hairy eyeball. “Let’s just go home, okay?”
“As you wish.”
Chapter Fifteen: Starhaven Again
ArchAngel strolled down the long, broad corridor, not so deep in thought he couldn’t greet those he passed with a friendly smile or an upraised hand. But when you got right down to it, those gestures were performed on auto-pilot. He was worried.
When he’d returned to find that the long absent immortal, Gabriel, had shown up on Starhaven and requested an audience with him, ArchAngel was fairly certain that, had he been a human, he would’ve felt an icy claw in the pit of his stomach. His father had spoken only rarely of Gabriel, though he had received the impression that he didn’t trust him much.
He knew that Loki, on the other hand, despised the man. He wasn’t sure why, but he recalled a story he’d been told once about Loki physically going after him and having to be restrained by a couple of the other immortals. That was so unlike Loki it had stuck in his memory even after all these years.
He’d managed to avoid it for the first few days after his return, but he knew he couldn’t keep it up forever. Gabriel had already taken to harassing his staff and that wasn’t something ArchAngel appreciated. He was tempted to make an object lesson of him, but realized how petty that would be. He just needed to face it head-on.
He did have to wonder, however, why Gabriel was after a meeting with him in particular, rather than the High Court as a whole. There was something about that fact that made ArchAngel a little nervous, and he didn’t like the feeling at all.
He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice at first when Morrigan and Bryon fell in beside him. It took Morrigan’s voice to bring him out of his musings, and even then she had to repeat herself before he came around to her presence. “Are you okay, Justice?”
“Just considering,” he replied, not really wanting to get into specifics.
He should’ve known better. “Is it the Gabriel thing?”
“How do you even know about that?” he asked her. “It was supposed to be a secret.”
“A secret? On Starhaven? You’re kidding, right? I think I heard it from Raven, though it might have been Val.” She pretended to consider it, though he knew full well she remembered exactly from whom she’d heard it. “Speaking of,” she added in a not-very-convincing, semi-conspiratorial whisper, “how did you manage to help her and Raven conceive, anyway?”
“None of your business.”
As if that would have any effect on her. “What if Bryon and I—”
Bryon shot her such a look ArchAngel nearly ducked to get out of the way. The vampire apparently cared very little for that line of thought. ArchAngel couldn’t blame him. Morrigan struck him as about as maternal as a buzz-saw.
“I’m not a fucking fertility clinic,” ArchAngel growled. “Don’t make me regret doing this for them, Morrigan. If you do, I’ll give you something to regret. Am I clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good. So does the rumor mill actually have anything to say about why Gabriel wants to see me or is it just pointless speculation?”
Morrigan clearly wasn’t thrilled with his tone and was wrestling with a knee-jerk response in much the same vein. The practice at self-control will be good for her, he thought with a grin.
“I seriously doubt the rumor mill has a leg up on the great Justice Breed right now,” she said, eyes flashing with irritation. “If you want to know why Gabriel wants to see you, stop being a big chicken-shit and ask him yourself.”
And then again… Self-control was hardly Morrigan’s strong suit. “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said dryly. “Now, if there’s nothing else…” Or, in other words…don’t go away mad. Just go away.
“Athena’s sniffing around. I think she suspects we did a time-travel job.”
He sighed. “What makes you say that?”
“She’s been asking about the time pyramids—the old TAU time travel vehicles. They’ve been locked up, but she sent someone down to inspect them to make sure no one’s used them. Tells me she’s on the right track, even though she’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“Yeah. I’ll handle Athena. Just play at ignorance and don’t answer any questions.”
“Like I would.” Her eyes narrowed as if considering the implications of “playing ignorant,” wondering if it had been a subtle dig.
He could get used to this, he decided. This new Morrigan was far more easy to throw off balance than he ever expected her to be. In some ways, love hadn’t been good for her. It’s a good thing I’m not more inclined to take advantage of it.
Morrigan wasn’t that large a pain in his ass, when he got right down to it. That dubious honor fell to Athena, who’d become such a rules lawyer that half the time he wanted to strangle her. Not that it would do the slightest bit of good—her being immortal and all. But it was still a rather soothing mental image nonetheless.
Now Gabriel might actually eclipse her, if he didn’t miss his bet. Ah, hell. I’m just going to have to get this over with. “Have any idea where I might find Gabriel?”
“Try the Lounge.”
That made sense.
“What’s the big deal about this Gabriel fellow anyway?” asked Bryon, glancing between them with a frown. “I get that he’s an immortal, but…”
“For the last couple thousand years on Earth Prime, he’s managed to become one of the most significant religious figures in history. Hell, maybe longer. We think he may have played the part of Moses and know damn well he played the parts of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.”
Of course, these names meant nothing to Bryon.
“I’ll explain it all to him,” Morrigan said. “You go find him. And just remember. If it gets rough, we’ll back you up.”
“How rough could it get?” ArchAngel asked her. “What’s he going to do, start a fight? He doesn’t have any worshippers here.”
“Just letting you know. We’ve got your back.”
“It’s appreciated. Really.” He sent his glance toward the end of the hall to where the teleport disk was located. Of course there was a line. Figures. Not that he couldn’t bypass the line easily enough, but he didn’t like throwing his weight around like that. It smacked of the kind of power play he’d been taught by both his parents to loathe. His father, arguably one of the most powerful men on Earth Prime even today, would’ve despised such a move.
And now I’m suddenly in a rush to find Gabriel? He could wait in line and enjoy it, at least this once. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“See ya,” Morrigan drawled, cocking a half-smile. “Wouldn’t want to be ya.”
“That was old when I was young,” he shot back.
“Yeah…but I meant it literally.” She grinned back at him, then both of them turned and walked away.
It took him half an hour to track down the elusive Gabriel, who hadn’t actually been anywhere near the Lounge. He’d been in the bazaar and ArchAngel had only been able to trace him through word of mouth. The guy traveled quick. He caught up with him in one of the bazaar restaurants that made their name catering to some of the more exotic tastes of the universe, stuff you wouldn’t find on Earth Prime or on any one of its closer derivatives.
He wasn’t exactly sure what he looked like, not really expecting the man to be wearing the long hair and beard that had become like his trademark. He wasn’t disappointed. This Gabriel was clean-shaven, with only moderately long, curly black hair hanging around his shoulders. He glanced up, skewering ArchAngel with his dark gaze as he pushed his plate aside and thumbed the side of his hawkish nose.
Gabriel looked the part of a wild-eyed desert tribesman, even dressed as he was in a comfortable modern suit, sans tie as most of them were these days. Again, a symptom of ArchAngel’s father’s influence on Earth. Deryk Shea loathed the practice of wearing ties. “It’s like wearing your own leash,” his father had said. More than once, if he recalled correctly.
“ArchAngel, I presume. Or should I call you Justice?” Gabriel stood and motioned toward the chair opposite him, offering a small, respectful bow.
“I’ll answer to either.” He nodded at a server as he arrived to carry away the remains of Gabriel’s meal, then accepted the proffered seat. “I understand you wanted to see me?”
“I did indeed. I understand you have a great deal of influence here and wanted to approach you before bringing my servants unannounced.”
“Your servants? Am I missing something here?”
“Perhaps. My human servants have been arriving for the past several days. However, they are not the ones that give me reason to contact you. I have others, and, according to rumors that have surfaced, I believe there are those here who may have issue with them being here.”
ArchAngel didn’t like the way the man was dancing around what he was trying to say. It set off warning bells and he knew immediately he was going to regret asking the question, but it had to be asked anyway. “What are these nonhuman servants of yours, then?”
“I believe you call them valkyries.”
ArchAngel felt the edge of the table crumbling within his grasp as he pulled himself to his feet and stared down at the still-seated Gabriel. “I think that would be a very bad idea,” he grated. “Most of the residents here have a very good reason to be suspicious of valkyries and I seriously doubt your sponsorship of their presence is going to work in their favor either.”
Gabriel pressed a hand to his chest. “That wounds me deeply. What have I ever done to deserve the scorn so heaped upon me by the immortal community?”
ArchAngel cocked his head and stared at him in numb disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? Your mechanizations on Earth played right into the hands of the Cen, and now you want to bring immortal creatures specifically created by the Cen here to Starhaven?”
“These valkyries have repudiated their creators. They work for me, not the Cen.”
“Forgive me if that doesn’t fill me with confidence. We don’t know what your game is either. It’s not like you lifted a finger during the War while millions were dying to defend Earth. For all we know, you sold out to the Cen a long time ago.”
For a second he thought maybe he’d actually angered the man, but Gabriel rose and made a show of brushing off the front of his suit before lifting his head and staring straight into ArchAngel’s eyes. “I want you to remember this conversation, ArchAngel,” he murmured softly. “I gave you the opportunity to deal fairly with me and mine and you spat in my face. That is a mistake you may come to regret.”
“That sounds remarkably like a threat, Gabriel.” ArchAngel leaned forward, eyes boring into the other immortal’s. “And threatening me is a terribly bad idea.”
“A threat? Oh, heaven forbid. Please, take it as an observation. What could I possibly do against the mighty ArchAngel and the combined forces of the interworld agencies?”
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Gabriel, but I think you should leave now. Get off Starhaven and, if you know what’s good for you, don’t come back any time soon. If I see you here again, you just might learn a whole new level to the meaning of the word ‘regret’.”
“Now who threatens whom?” Gabriel straightened his jacket, feigning unconcern. “Beware the sin of pride, young Justice. It might well be your downfall.”
“You’re not leaving nearly fast enough,” ArchAngel growled, growing angrier by the second. “I suggest you start running.”
Something in his eyes must’ve echoed that, because Gabriel spun on his heel and marched out of the tent, merging with the crowd and effectively disappearing almost instantly.
ArchAngel tapped into his communication array and dialed up the headquarters for the Phoenix Guard. “This is ArchAngel. I want an escort assigned to the immortal Gabriel for the duration of his stay here on Starhaven, which better be damned short at this point. He’s currently in the bazaar. I’ve manifested a tag on him so he can be more easily located.”
“Understood, ArchAngel. We’ll put our best agent on it.”
“You do that. I think he’s up to no good. Don’t give him the chance to prove me right.”
***
“You are the last person I would’ve thought would be arguing in his favor, Athena.” ArchAngel leaned back and crossed his arms as he regarded her stonily. “He’s the kind of rogue element you despise.”
The Amazonian immortal leaned forward and returned his stare. “All I’m saying is that maybe we’d have been better off if he’d been here where we could keep an eye on him.”
“Keep an eye on him? We don’t know a fraction of what goes on here as it is, Athena. It’s difficult enough managing everything we already have on our plate. Had I agreed to his presence, we would have had to create an agency specifically to watch his people. I can’t speak for everyone here—”
“Why stop now?” she muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear.
He continued without a pause. “—but I, for one, would prefer to keep that element as far away from us as possible.”
“And what element is that?” she asked.
The agency heads sitting at the table to ArchAngel’s left looked like spectators at a tennis game as they watched this debate without comment. Raven looked amused, Morrigan disgusted. Val wore a mask of indifference, but Artificer seemed as though he were on the verge of offering his own opinion. Fenris Wolf tugged on his beard thoughtfully but said nothing aloud. Scorpio, head of the mercenary agency, Havoc, was in the process of disassembling and reassembling a handgun for the fourth time, acting as though he had no stake in the conversation whatsoever.
The vampire Rio, seated next to Athena, grimaced and scooted her chair back a few inches to provide an unobstructed line of sight between the two.
Jaz slammed the palm of her hand on the table top with a sound like a rifle shot. “This could go on forever. I agree with ArchAngel. From what I remember, Gabriel brings nothing to the table but trouble and we’ve got plenty of that already.”
Fenris nodded. “Absolutely. Doesn’t anyone else think it’s a bit coincidental that Gabriel shows up talking about valkyrie allies right after Morrigan and Jaz encountered them on their latest mission? Valkyries that don’t work for the Cen?”
“My thought exactly.” ArchAngel shot Fenris a thankful glance.
“Speaking of this mission,” said Athena. “On which world did they encounter these magic-wielding valkyries this time around?”
Raven eyed her coolly. “As usual, Athena, you jump to the heart of the trivial. What does that matter? Gabriel is arguably one of the most powerful of immortals since he still has access to the God Power the rest of you no longer possess. He’s weaker here, sure, but it strikes me that he might’ve been trying to do something about that. There is a large population of citizens from the various aspects of Earth that still worship the Christ figure here. Maybe even more than on Earth Prime these days. For all we know, he wanted to start up a church.”
“Watch yourself, vampire,” Athena hissed, aiming a scorching glare in his direction. “I’ll only tolerate so much disrespect from the likes of you.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Athena. How’s that for disrespect?” Raven curled his lip in a silent snarl and turned his attention back to ArchAngel. “Like you, Justice, I remember very well that he could’ve done a lot to bring the people of Earth Prime together before the War started. He didn’t. He might not have been actively working for them, but he sure as hell wasn’t working against them. I’m with you. I’d rather he be anywhere but here.”
“The last thing I’d want,” Morrigan chimed in, “is to be stumbling over those cursed valkyries here on Starhaven. They give me the creeps.”
“Amen to that,” said Artificer. “For what it’s worth, I also agree with ArchAngel. Let Gabriel play whatever game he’s got in mind somewhere other than here.”
“Fine,” said Athena, pushing herself to her feet. “When he comes at us from a totally unexpected direction wanting revenge for your denial, just remember that I was the voice of reason here.”
“So now we’re supposed to start implementing policy based on the fear of something like that, Athena?” Scorpio asked, shaking his head in disgust. “Are you unhinged?”
She shot him a scornful look and headed for the door. “As usual, you’re all just rubber-stamping ArchAngel’s decision without even trying to see all sides of it. Let it be on your heads, then.”
The door slid aside to allow her through and slid closed behind her.
“Well, that went well,” Artificer murmured.
Jaz snickered.
“I think she prides herself on being contrary.” ArchAngel raised his gaze to Jaz. “I’m thinking someone should be tracking down Gabriel and trying to figure out what he’s really after. You want the job?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“Good. And Jaz? I realize it’s a bit of a stretch, but try to stay under his radar, will you? For once I’d like to see something you’re involved in not turn into a bloodbath.”
The smile she turned on him was cold and brittle. “That isn’t fair, Justice. I’m not that quick to resort to violence.”
“All a matter of perception, isn’t it? Fine. Just try to stay under cover. And if you’re exposed, get out. Don’t try to take it all on yourself. Just come home. Got it?”
She nodded a little sullenly. “Yeah. I got it. Should I take Nyx?”
“That’s up to you. Which, I realize, probably means you will. Just be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” she answered. “Or, if I’m not careful, I’m damned good.” She vanished from her seat.
“Nice trick,” Artificer murmured. “She didn’t even access a spell to pull that off.”
“It was her imp,” Morrigan said. “He was sitting there invisible with her the whole time.”
“How do you know?”
“Only explanation. Everyone check your shoelaces, if you’ve got any. They’re probably tied together. If there’s anything more dangerous than a bored imp, I haven’t met it yet.”
“Especially that one,” Raven growled. “Maybe we should sick him on Gabriel. He’d be begging us for relief in a matter of days.”
“Now that,”
About the Author
To learn more about Saje Williams, please visit http://www.sajewilliams.com. Send an email to Saje at sajewilliams.com or join his Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Saje! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/infinitycollective
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Sword and Shadow
Tales from the Magitech Lounge
Where can a perpetual outsider find a home when he doesn't "belong" anywhere? Welcome to the Magitech Lounge.
Tales from the Magitech Lounge
© 2007 Saje Williams
There’s no place like it on Earth. Or anywhere in the Confederacy of Human Worlds, for that matter. It’s a place where the terminally weird gather to find companionship, friendship, and redemption. Here, magic meets high technology and humanity looks at itself in the mirror of infinite possibilities. Located on a side-street not far from the legendary
Jack’s an ordinary enough fellow, a former time-traveler with a unique perspective on life. He didn’t set out to make his lounge a place of refuge for the paranormal, but that’s what it’s become. A place where rogue immortals might wander in and the person in the mirror might not be just a reflection.
Welcome to the Magitech Lounge, where being a freak isn’t only accepted, but expected.
“Tales from the Magitech Lounge,” the newest novel from the keyboard of futuristic urban fantasy author Saje Williams, is the first book in his new Infinity: Empire series.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Tales from the Magitech Lounge:
Call me Jack. Most people do.
I started out as a time traveler, but I had to give it up. Not only is it illegal, but it’s dangerous to the continuum. One cannot go around creating new universes willy-nilly, and that’s the most probable result of time travel.
I became a time traveler completely by accident, stumbling across what I assumed to be a unique device while exploring some ancient ruins in
Unlike many such devices, this particular gadget, which looked a lot like a small pyramid crafted out of blue glass, could cross both time and space with equal efficiency. It dumped me in the American West in the year 1884.
That was the first of many stops and it’s possible I’ll share them with you at a later date. But this particular story is not so much about my travels as it is about how my travels ended, and how I ended up where I am today.
The year is 2260. The place,
I’m probably lucky to be alive, considering that no one told me that time travel was illegal until I ran into a group who took it upon themselves to police the activity. I’d skipped back to a time just around the second year BC in an attempt to meet Jesus Christ.
Apparently that’s not an uncommon thing for time travelers to do, so this aforementioned agency keeps a monitor in place to watch for our arrival. I was snatched off the dusty road within minutes of setting out to find the guy.
Two people seemed to pop out of nowhere, each grasping one of my arms, and frog-marched me into an alley between two mud huts. One, a remarkably tall fellow (he must’ve been seven feet if he was an inch), shoved me against a wall as the other, a short, elfin-faced woman, went through my pockets and frisked me in a so professional a manner that I didn’t even consider making a lewd comment about it. That should tell you how freaked out I was.
“He’s clean,” she said finally, glancing up at her companion. “Where’s your time machine?” she asked me.
Shocked to my core, I saw no option but to answer honestly. I’d been running around in the thing for nearly a year by this time and hadn’t ever run across anyone like these two. I had the feeling that if I jerked them around, I’d live to regret it.
“You take care of him, I’ll go get the machine,” the woman told her partner.
The big guy nodded.
“What’s all this about?” I asked him as the woman dashed away.
“It’s about you being in big trouble,” he told me soberly. “Time travel is illegal, dangerous, and really, really stupid.”
“Okay,” I said. “When was it made illegal?”
This took him by surprise and he gave me an odd look. I noticed then that the whites of his eyes were literally silver in color, the iris an extremely pale green. I couldn’t quite tell, but there was something weird about the pupil as well.
He never did answer me, but I found out on my own later. Time travel was made illegal in 2236, years before I ever found my time machine. I’d been breaking the law the whole time and had no idea.
Yeah, I know. Ignorance is no excuse. I have discovered, however, that stupidity makes a great excuse. Sometimes.
As it turned out, he was a lycanthrope. A were-tiger, to be exact. He and the elfin woman, who was indeed an elf, were agents of an agency called Hex which had taken over monitoring time travel from another agency known as TAU.
None of this was known to me at the time, nor would it have mattered. I’d rarely been as scared as I was at this precise moment. Not even when I’d been hunted by a posse in the old west for a train robbery I hadn’t had anything to do with. All I needed to do then was make it back to my machine and escape—which was apparently no longer an option.
I wasn’t sure what the punishment would be for unauthorized time travel, or who’d decide my fate.
As it turned out, I had very little to worry about. Hex’s first mission was to eliminate the time machine and return me to my own time. Rather than facing punishment, I discovered that my adventures had impressed someone important, namely the legendary Jasmine Tashae.
Now keep in mind that the people of my time know about other universes, and are at least aware of rumors surrounding the interworld agencies. Not much, I’ll admit. And most of us don’t spend time thinking about it. The “monsters” that appeared just before the Cen War back in the early part of the twenty-first had pretty much been acclimated into our society. Vampires, lycanthropes, mages, and the various kinds of “supers” had become part of the landscape. Jasmine Tashae—known by most only as “Jaz”, or, alternately, “The Lady of Blades”,—had been a major player in that war. Her name was in the history books along with such luminaries as Deryk Shea, Nemesis Breed, and the vampire Raven.
After the Cen War, most of the old national boundaries dissolved, or new unions were formed. This precluded the eventual formation of a single world government, but not before the most intractable were assisted off the planet. They went on to colonize other star systems. Some had wanted to escape through the worldgates into other universes, but the newly formed interworld agencies didn’t want malcontents from Earth Prime flooding the metaverse. They made it abundantly clear they were willing to back up that preference with force, if need be. So with the help of Deryk Shea, now the richest man on Earth, a fleet of colony ships was constructed and launched into space, aiming for potential homelands spread out amongst the stars.
I’ll admit it. Earth is a strange place these days. But it’s still my home. I didn’t flee through time to escape this world, but to discover new ones. And discover them I did.
My rather unique method of self-education caught the interest of the near-mythical Jaz, and she approached me with an astounding offer. In the place the interworld agencies call home, on Starhaven, there exists a watering hole called the Magitech Lounge, known as a refuge for all manner of sentient beings.
As Jaz told me, Earth could use a place like that. Even with all the preternaturals, parahumans and metahumans here, it’s still a melting pot that hasn’t been stirred real well. Normal folk are fascinated by the strange and unusual, but they’re also still afraid of it and no amount of book learning will change that. They needed something a little more…immediate.
I took her offer. It wasn’t as though I had anything better to do.
Earth’s Magitech Lounge is in an old converted warehouse half a block off
From the exotic mists of Vedic mythology to the harsh and barbaric Gheddan Empire, the Law of the Sword is carried godlessly into the space age.
Book 2 of THE FIFTH PLANET
Sword Empire
© 2007 Robert Leader
The first mission to control the Third Planet has failed, and the Sword Lord of Ghedda, Raven, has been driven out of the ancient Hindu Kingdom of Karakhor and forced to return to the planet Dooma. He takes with him Maryam, princess of Karakhor, who sees him as her lover and a possible savior in the coming battle against the might of Maghalla.
They are pursued by Kananda, First Prince of Karakhor, drawn by love for his star goddess, Zela, and his determination to find the sister he believes has been taken by force.
On the Fifth Planet they are all hurled into a terrible arms race between two warring continents. A planetary cataclysm looms as Kananda and Zela undertake a desperate mission into the heart of the Sword Empire.
For Zela, it is a race against time to save her world. For Kananda, it is a matter of love and honor to find Maryam.
And both seek vengeance against the Sword Lord.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Sword Empire:
Radd was light and fast, moving quickly on the toes and balls of his feet. He came at Raven in an attacking whirlwind of blurred steel, to the accompaniment of loud cheers of encouragement from the crowd. A lesser swordsman than Raven would have died in those first few furious minutes, but Raven’s blade matched the speed of his opponent's and held Radd at sword’s length as they fought back and forth across the raised dueling ground.
Some of the cheering began to falter, and Raven smiled into Radd’s ice-cold eyes. He knew now what they had all expected. He had spent almost eight weeks in deep space and they had assumed that he would still be stiff from lack of exercise. But even in the confines of the ship he had worked daily to keep himself loose and supple, and to maintain the strength of his sword arm and wrist.
Radd bared his teeth in an answering smile, and for a split second, his pressure eased. Raven smashed forward an attack that drove the younger man backward and now the cheering all but died away.
Despite his slightness of build, Radd had the strength of coiled steel. He suddenly leaped high and whirled sideways. It was a neat trick, well practised and perfectly executed, but Raven had seen similar before. He whirled on his heel and his blade was there, defending as Radd attacked again. Raven was forced to give ground, and again there were cheers from Radd’s supporters.
Raven had the measure of his man now. Radd’s swordplay was brilliant, and he was without doubt the most dangerous opponent Raven had ever faced, but Radd had his weakness.
Raven knew that he was being pushed back to the very edge of the dueling platform. The uncertain cheers for Radd became louder, and then triumphant. Raven’s heels were inches from the edge, and he risked all on flicking his gaze to the right as though checking the fighting room that was still available. It was the second Radd had waited for— the glacial eyes hardened, and his right shoulder hunched fractionally upward.
Raven saw the tell-tale sign from the corner of his left eye. He pivoted instantly on his left heel, dropping his upper body forward to keep his balance as he sucked his belly back. Radd’s thrust lunged through suddenly empty air between Raven’s chest and his knees, the disemboweling twist did no more than scratch the golden chain mail of his cod piece.
Radd recovered too late. Raven’s blade flashed up and cut down again in a vicious back slash. The cut took Radd in the side of the neck and the force of the blow severed his head from his body. The dead man’s trunk reeled sideways, pumping blood in a bright crimson fountain, and then crashed to the floor. The detached head rolled over to the foot of the table where the Council of Twelve sat and gaped.
There was a stunned silence. Raven slowly straightened and flexed his shoulders. He looked for the chalk-white face of Maryam and gave her a reassuring smile. Then he rested the flat of his bloodied blade briefly in the palm of his free hand as his sardonic gaze passed over the remaining spectators.
Taron, Garl and Landis found their breath, filled their lungs, and gave a great mutual roar of approval.
Raven smiled back at them and waited for the applause to fade. Then his smile disappeared as he returned his full attention to the Council of Twelve.
He walked back to his former position where he had stood to address them, and casually leaned forward to spike Radd’s head, sliding the point of his blade into the severed windpipe. He held his grim trophy aloft.
“Swordmaster Radd was very good,” he said conversationally. “But he relied too much on his fancy tricks.”
He flicked the head disdainfully away, watching it roll off the edge of the platform. Then he took a pace forward, his hard gaze fixed on Doran. The old Sword Lord stared back at him without flinching, although Doran knew he was staring death in the face. The entire room was hushed, knowing that Raven now had full right to challenge Doran to the sword.
Raven’s eyes flickered to the right, to the face of Karn. He raised one eyebrow in silent question.
Karn’s face was another frozen mask. Nothing cracked, but almost imperceptibly he moved his head.
Raven was surprised. Both his eyebrows lifted, seeking confirmation.
Again Karn made the silent, negative motion of his head.
Raven returned his direct, thoughtful gaze to Doran. For some reason Karn did not want him to re-issue the sword challenge and kill his enemy.
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