There’s nothing like being in the middle of six thousand pissed-off people to make you paranoid, Erica thought grimly. The Humanists and Talents filled the green bowl of Laurel Park in two restless, hostile packs separated by a thin barrier of twitchy, grim-faced cops. On the outskirts of both groups, teams of news camera crews waited for something to blow up.
She hoped her feeling of dread was a product of everybody else’s mood. Instead of, say, a witchy precognitive warning that something ugly was about to happen.
At least Kurt and Genevieve were here. She’d spotted the two talking to Diane among the Talent counterprotesters, looking as pissed and worried as Erica felt. Though she wished Jake’s mother had stayed home, the couple would make good backup if things went to hell.
She and Gen had spent the previous day practicing drawing power from the Ferals. The guys had even discovered a technique to feed the magic slowly enough that it didn’t knock the two women on their asses. That trick might save their collective skins today.
The four of them, plus Dave, had celebrated that accomplishment with an impromptu cookout. Then Erica and Jake had returned to his place, where they’d spent another glorious night the way they had the previous two: making love.
There was something to be said for administrative leave.
Too bad it was over. Today was going to suck, though the cops had done everything possible to make sure the protest wouldn’t get out of hand.
Gable had pulled Jake and Erica aside during a planning session early that morning. “You’re my secret weapon,” he told Jake. “If things start getting out of hand, I want you to go full-out King of the Jungle on these idiots. I’m not saying eat anyone -- just roar like hell. They’ll be so busy pissing themselves, it should calm them right the hell down.”
Turning to Erica, he’d added, “Keep an eye out. If anybody starts using any magic, I want you to put a stop to it.”
“I’ll check the park grounds beforehand, make sure nobody’s set any traps.” She wished she could tell him the counterprotesters wouldn’t stoop to violence, but any population had its criminals and psychotics. The Fords had proven that when Talents went bad, they could do a hell of a lot more damage than your average asshole.
That was part of what made the Humanists so infuriating. Amid all the lunatic conspiracy theories was just enough truth to make their paranoia sound almost justified. So, while teams of cops with metal detector wands searched the protesters and counterprotesters, Erica had worked her way over the Laurel Park grounds, searching for spell circles or MEEDs.
Nothing, thank God. They probably had more to worry about from the HHers.
“Why the hell did it have to be a beautiful day?” she grumbled to Jake. “A good thunderstorm would’ve kept some of these idiots at home.”
“Maybe you should have tried a rain spell.”
“Too bad it wouldn’t have worked.” Morosely, she looked around. Spring had officially sprung, and the day was just cool enough to be comfortable. The dogwood, crabapple, and magnolia trees of Laurel Park were in full bloom, surrounded by azaleas and daffodils that filled the air with a rich floral perfume.
This part of the park was a natural amphitheater, with a grassy hillside sloping down to form a bowl. Here and there, granite outcroppings protruded from the hill, offering places to sit or picnic.
In the center of the grassy hollow stood a wooden gazebo where musicians performed during the summer. Just now, though, Virginia Laurel was doing her damnedest to whip up the mass of Humanists, while chanting Talent counterprotesters tried to drown her out. Meanwhile, camera crews from a dozen news organizations circulated through the crowd, transmitted her message to live trucks idling in the nearby parking lot.
Erica had to admire the old bitch’s sense of theater. She’d created a hell of a backdrop to announce her gubernatorial campaign.
Laurel was dressed like someone’s favorite aunt, in red slacks and a blue-and-white silk tunic, her blonde hair styled in a deceptively simple bob. Though she was in her sixties, she looked much younger. Either she had an excellent surgeon or an Arcanist painter on the payroll, despite her anti-Talent rhetoric.
As she spoke, her voice rang from the amplifier, resonant and rich. “For too long, these so-called Talents have used their magical abilities to unfair advantage. How can even the most skilled cordon bleu chef compete with a cook whose every dish is infused with magic? All our education, hard work, and ability means nothing when the playing field can never be level.”
A woman’s voice rose from the crowd of counterprotesters. “Oh, bullshit, Virginia!” Glancing around, Erica was amused to see Diane bellowing between cupped hands. “Y’all run the damn government! How are we supposed to compete with you?”
Next to her, Shannon Biggerstaff and his mother, Kim, booed lustily along with the rest of the Talents. Erica made a mental note of the Bard’s location. He might come in handy, given the way he and his sister had calmed down their irate neighbors.
Virginia ignored the hecklers. “Just last year, terrorists killed seven people and sacrificed them in a spell designed to assassinate President Roth and every member of Congress. Virgil Ford has admitted their objective was to terrorize Norms, to make us fear Talents and prevent us from protecting ourselves against them. Well, they failed.”
Yeah, thanks to Jake, Genevieve, Dave, and Kurt, Erica thought.
“Now we learn that a drug-dealing Alchemist has attempted to sacrifice a nine-year-old child and his mother in an act of Satanic magic. How long are we going to permit the Talents among us to commit these crimes? We need more stringent laws to prevent them from using their magic on normal Americans. We need to quit turning a blind eye to their crimes, and we must stop polluting our bodies with their magic -- with their microbrews, their food, and especially their drugs. We need to crack down and make it clear to them that they cannot continue to take advantage of normal Americans. We must make it a felony for them to use any magic at all on us.”
She paused to let the Humanist crowd shout approval.
The Talents booed. “We are what democracy looks like!”
“Norms are becoming second-class citizens in our own country, and we can’t allow it to go on. If you elect me governor, rest assured I will do everything in my power to level the playing field for God-fearing South Carolinians! I…”
A few feet away, one of the Humanists bent over and vomited onto the grass.
I’m right there with you, Erica thought dryly. She makes me sick too.
A ripple flowed over the crowd, accompanied by the sound of someone else being noisily sick. When he straightened, he stared at the ground in horror. “Fuck, I’m bleeding!”
A videographer pivoted in his direction, focusing a camera with a CNN logo on his shocked face.
More sounds of vomiting. At the edge of the Humanist crowd, a man turned toward Erica, his eyes wide as he swiped a hand across his nose and looked down at the blood on his fingers. “What the fuck?” Taking a staggering step to the side, he toppled to the ground. A stir rolled over the crowd, as more cameras planned over protestors collapsing with blood smearing their faces.
Crap. Erica’s training took over, and she hurried toward the nearest victim. Kneeling beside him, she saw his eyes had rolled back. The pulse at his throat thumped too fast against her fingers. What the fuck is this, some kind of drug? Poison?
Good thing there were EMS units standing by. She reached for the radio mic clipped to her uniform shoulder and triggered it. “I need a paramedic for an unconscious white male, bleeding from the nose. Not sure of the cause.” Frowning, she looked around, aware of the sound of people retching and calling out. “A lot of these people seem to be experiencing some sort of gastrointestinal…”
“You did this!” a man’s voice snarled in rage. “You fucking witch!”
Erica jerked her head up. A middle-aged man loomed over her and the unconscious Humanist. His face contorted in an expression of insane fury beneath the blue dragon tattoo that wrapped its wings around his bald head. “You did this!” He drove his fist at her face.
Erica swung up an arm, knocking the punch aside. “Are you out of your…”
“I should’ve killed you when I had the chance!” He leaped on her as she started to rise, knocking her flat with his greater weight. His next punch connected in an explosion of white stars and stunning pain. “Missed with the truck, but this time you’re dead!”
Wait, what? Erica blocked another wild blow and hit him in the jaw, knuckles splitting as they ground against teeth. He didn’t even seem to feel it. When she checked his aura, it was batshit-crazy white. Oh fuck.
She threw up both arms to protect her head and started to hook both legs around his hips, intending to wrench him off her. But before her thighs could get a grip, she heard a rippling, leonine snarl.
The man vanished, jerked into the air like a rag doll. He hit the ground facedown, Jake astride him and seriously pissed off. “I don’t think so, asshole!”
“I’m gonna kill you, you fuckin’ freaks!” the Humanist screeched, writhing. “You ain’t getting away this time!”
“You’re under arrest.” Jake ground his knee into the small of Dragon Head’s back as he jerked a pair of zip ties off his duty belt with one hand, the protester’s wrist clamped in the other.
“I’ll do it. You hold him.” Erica took the plastic strips so Jake could use both hands to immobilize the man. Even so, the Humanist fought like a rabid dog as she bound his wrists and ankles. If it hadn’t been for Jake’s Clarence-enhanced strength, she doubted they could have controlled him.
“You’re dead, witch!” Dragon Head bellowed, spittle flying. “Next time I’m not going to fuck around running you over, I’m gonna blow your brains out! You’re gonna die!”
Jake stiffened, staring down at the man, eyes narrowing. “What did you say?” His voice rumbled with that deep, leonine undertone.
“Fuck you, freak!” DH snarled. “And you too, witch!”
“So not my type.” Blowing out a breath, ears still ringing from the punches she’d taken, Erica sat back on her heels. And froze, her breath catching as she stared around in growing horror.
In the few minutes she and Jake had been busy with Dragon Head, the park had become a battlefield. Knots of cops fought with Humanists who punched, kicked, clawed, and bit in an insane frenzy.
Nor was it only cops versus protesters. Many of the Humanists seemed to be fighting each other just as viciously. One coldcocked a cameraman, who went down like a felled ox, his camera crashing to the ground beside him.
Every protester’s aura glowed a blinding white. Erica had never seen so many raging psychotics, not even during firefights with Caliphate sorcerers.
A single person in a psychotic frenzy was one thing, but it looked as if hundreds of these people had lost their damn minds. No way is this natural, Erica thought, appalled. It’s got to be magic. But I checked the park, and there was no sign of booby traps.
But something unnatural had sure as hell happened, and it didn’t bode well for the cops.
Off to her right, Katilia Sharp gave a man in a Human Heritage T-shirt a faceful of CAP-STUN pepper spray. The stinging, choking oleoresin capsicum should have stopped him in his tracks as his eyes swelled and teared, but the HHer didn’t even appear to notice as he charged her, fists swinging.
Erica leaped forward to grab the Humanist’s arm before he could land a punch. Jerking him in a circle, she cranked his arm behind his back and up between his shoulder blades, then crashed into him, forcing him to his knees. She and Katilia forced him face down on the ground, ignoring his howling rage. Jake planted a knee on his ass and put him in an arm bar, immobilizing him long enough for the women to get him zip tied.
Panting, one thigh aching from a vicious kick, Erica studied his aura. Like far too many of those around them, it burned white. But against that background, she spotted an unnatural magical current zipping through his field. It wasn’t his magic -- the man had no Talent at all. “Yeah, he’s definitely under a spell.”
“What?” Katilia shouted, evidently unable to hear her over the angry howls and curses of battling cops and protesters.
“What kind of spell?” demanded Jake, who must have been drawing on Clarence’s hearing.
“Not sure.” Frowning, she sank her hand into the protester’s churning aura, extending a magical probe to explore.
ZAP! The tingling burn felt like an electrical shock. Hissing a curse, Erica resisted the instinct to jerk back. “I don’t think this is an Arcanist working. It feels more like… Alchemy maybe. Like something he drank or smoked. Some magical drug.”
Katilia stared at her. “You mean all these assholes are under the influence of something?”
“Yeah, and it’s nasty, whatever it is.” A few feet away a South Carolina highway patrol trooper went down, felled by a punch from an HHer the approximate size of a grizzly bear. “Damn it.”
They ran to help the cop. By the time they got the attacking HHer down and zipped, Erica had added yet another bruise to her collection. But she’d also confirmed her suspicions, because the HHer had the same magical patterns as the previous jerk. “Yeah, that’s a spell,” she told Jake. “If we can’t snap them out of it, somebody’s going to get hurt.”
“Sounds like my cue to roar.” Gold sparks exploded around him as Clarence flashed into view. This wasn’t a dim partial manifestation Erica alone could see, either. He blazed like a spotlight even in full sunlight, ten feet long plus three feet of tail, his head waist high on Jake. He reared, covering her lover in a bulletproof shell of blazing magic.
And roared.
The raw power of the sound could have been heard five miles away. Erica was no stranger to pissed big cats, yet it made even her inner cavewoman gibber in terror. She wasn’t surprised to hear screams from Talents and cops alike.
But the Humanists didn’t stop. They kept right on attacking cops, Talents, camera crews and each other, frenzied by whatever potion they’d been given.
Jake roared again, and this time Kurt answered him from among the crowd of Talents. Turning, Erica saw his tiger manifestation looming over the crowd, bright as an acetylene torch. The cats’ bloodcurdling chorus should have sent anyone with a lizard hindbrain diving for cover.
The Humanists kept right on attacking anything that moved.
Erica’s heart sank. We’re so fucked.
* * *
The roaring chorus of two big cats was so loud it was all Adrian could do to control his reflexive jerk. Fortunately, he was no stranger to painting sigils when all hell was breaking loose. That was why he used stencils in such situations; otherwise it would be far too easy to ruin a spell.
And he sure as hell didn’t want to ruin this one. If it worked, it would be perfect. Not only because of the effect it would have, but because it was so fucking ironic.
He glanced over the edge of the stone outcropping and smiled in satisfaction behind the full-face mask of his Spook Suit. Judging by the chaos of battling bodies that filled the park, the Demon in all those spelled bottles of liquor had worked just as Ray had promised. Demon not only caused psychosis, it gave its users inhuman strength and no awareness of pain whatsoever. This batch had been the Alchemist’s last creation, brewed while Adrian had painted the spell on the floor of Meghan’s house.
Then, of course, there were the bottles laced with Bleeder, which had made the other members of the crowd so violently ill. Ray really had been a hell of an Alchemist.
Adrian had served both potions during the HHer party last night, accompanied by a spell to delay the activation until noon.
Now all those news cameras were getting lots of great video of poor Humanists being poisoned and driven crazy by some evil Talent spell. Virginia Laurel would ride that footage all the way to the South Carolina governor’s mansion. Roth and his Humanist allies might even be able to use it in the next legislative session.
Which was pretty much the whole point of this little exercise.
Forcing himself to take his time, Adrian chose the next stencil, then dipped the wide brush in the jar of ultraviolet paint. Breathing deeply in and out to keep his hands steady, he stroked the paint over the plastic cutout he’d laid on the stone. His blood seemed to fizz with a delicious combination of fear and exhilaration. If even one of those Talents in the crowd glanced up at the outcropping with their eyes closed, they’d see the magical glow of the Spook Suit that rendered Adrian invisible in normal light.
The suit had cost him all the profits from the assassination of a South American warlord, but it’d been worth every dime. No one had any idea he was up here, and they weren’t likely to. Only the most sensitive Arcanists could see the suit’s magic without closing their eyes against the glare of daylight.
Not until it was too late.
* * *
As Jake rescued another cop from yet another Humanist, Erica scanned the crowd of Talent counterprotesters beating a wise retreat from the riot…
There.
She broke into a run until she caught up to her quarry on the edge of the crowd. Grabbing the young Bard by the shoulder, Erica pulled him to a stop. “Shannon, I need your help!” It was a damn good thing she’d caught him and his mother before they escaped the park with the others. “You’ve got to help me stop this.”
Shannon Biggerstaff’s dark eyes widened. “Me? What can I do?”
“Sing.” She started towing him toward the chaos.
“Are you nuts?” His mother stepped into her path, frowning ferociously. “Nobody’ll be able to hear him in all this!”
The woman had a point. Erica could barely hear herself over the howling Humanists, roaring cats, and bellowing cops. Her gaze fell on the gazebo, where Virginia Laurel had been speaking to the crowd over the PA system. The politician had disappeared -- no surprise -- leaving the amplifiers and mic unattended.
Unfortunately, several hundred crazy Humanists separated them from the sound system.
Following her gaze, Kim scowled. “If you think you’re taking my kid into that,” she jerked her chin toward the melee, “You’re out of your mind!”
She was right again. But they had to do something, damn it, or people were going to die.
Erica’s attention fell on Jake, who stood back to back with Kurt, both fully manifested. They were fighting at the head of a flying wedge of cops trying to push their way through the crowd, swinging batons and fighting hand-to-hand with protestors.
“Disperse! Disperse or go to jail!” The two men’s voices rang over the howls of the crowd, reverberating, inhumanly deep, amplified by their magic.
Jake snatched up a Humanist as if he were a toddler, jerked his wrists behind his back, and held them there as another cop zip tied them. “If you don’t disperse, you’re going to get hurt!” Every word he spoke blasted over the screams and curses of the battling Norms.
Inspiration hit. “Shannon, wait here. We can get Jake to amplify your magic.”
The Bard’s eyes widened. “Jake?” She’d never been so glad to see hero worship on a kid’s face.
“Oh, hell no!” Kim told her son. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Mom!”
Erica didn’t stay to listen to the argument. She just plunged into the crowd, screaming Jake’s name.
She passed a white-faced cop, blood pouring from a cut on his forehead, as he swung his baton at one of the protesters. This time she didn’t stop to help. Every moment this continued, somebody could -- and probably would -- get hurt much worse. “Jake! Jake, I need you!”
The lion’s huge glowing head turned toward her. “Erica?”
He said something to Kurt, then pushed his way toward her as the cops separated to let him through. “What?”
“I need you to play amplifier for Shannon!”
His eyes widened. “That could work!” Then his brows snapped down, and he whipped out a huge glowing paw that missed her by inches.
Startled, Erica turned to see a protester behind her face-plant on the ground.
“He was about to punch you in the head,” Jake told her, as he started clearing a path through the crowd. Erica followed, ducking and blocking attacks as he picked Humanists up and tossed them aside. A woman with a network news camera trailed them through the scrum, her lens pointed in their direction.
To Erica’s relief, they found Shannon and his mother waiting for them at the battlefield’s edge. She’d been afraid Kim would drag the boy off -- and she’d probably have been justified.
Even Shannon seemed to be having second thoughts, his eyes wide, his face white with anxiety. “I’m not sure I can do this,” he yelled.
“He can’t -- these idiots are crazy,” his mother shouted. “If he had the kind of power he’d need to influence them, he’d already have a recording contract.”
“He won’t be doing it alone. Jake and I will help. Or do you want to just stand there and watch cops get killed?” Erica shot a finger at the riot. Blood flew as cops and Humanists fought with berserk desperation. “A Talent did this. And Talents are going to have to stop it -- or we are going to end up in those fucking camps!”
Kim stared at her, then at the brawl. Muttering something that was probably a curse, she gave her son a tight nod. “Do your best.”
“Thank you!” Erica planted one hand on the teen’s shoulder, then reached for Jake’s manifestation and started forming the conduit they’d practiced last night. Unfortunately, she’d never done anything involving a Bard. She was just going to have to make it work anyway. “Now sing!”
Shannon threw his head back and obeyed.
Erica had never experienced how a Bard’s magic actually worked. Now, as deep magical vibrations rolled through his aura, she realized how similar it was to the way Dave, Kurt and Jake manipulated sound.
She let her own aura resonate with Shannon’s, adding her power to his and passing it on to Jake. There was a nerve-racking pause, as if Jake was trying to figure out what to do with that thrumming energy. Just as she was starting to worry, his manifestation began to vibrate. Shannon’s voice blasted out of him to roll across the park with the same thundering power as one of Jake’s roars.
As the words of “The Old Rugged Cross” rang over the chaos, the tight, frightened faces of the surrounding Talents began to smooth, fear draining away. Even the woman videographer stared at Shannon in awe.
Turning toward the battle, Erica spotted an entranced deputy gazing at the Bard as if hypnotized. He didn’t see the fist-sized rock that flew out of the crowd to slam into his head, dropping him like a hammer to the head.
Oh shit. Erica concentrated harder, trying to amplify the Bard’s magic with more of her own. Damn it, the drug’s too strong. He’s not going to be able to overcome it.
“We can help!” Genevieve and Kurt emerged from the crowd, already linked; her fingers were sunk into her husband’s manifestation, and magic leaped between them like tiny forked lightning. Their joined auras made Erica’s eyes tear. “We just need a singer…”
“I can do it.” A woman Erica didn’t recognize hurried up. Genevieve took her hand as the Bard began singing in a pure, ringing soprano, joining Shannon’s in an exquisite duet.
More Bards streamed out of the woods, singing as they came, gathering around the Ferals, Erica, and Gen. And Christ, it hurt. Each additional singer increased the throbbing burn growing behind Erica’s eyebrows. Without the layering trick Genevieve had taught her, she suspected her brain would explode like an aerosol can in a microwave.
She ignored the pain as she drew in the Bards’ magic and fed it to Jake, who sent it thundering over the riot.
The videographer who’d been shooting the group stepped back, her expression dazed. Then she lifted her camera and started filming them again, the look on her face a tortured blend of exultation and determination.
The fighting began to slow.
First one Humanist and then another turned in their direction, eyes startled as the magic finally overwhelmed the potion’s effects. More and more of them stopped fighting to listen entranced as the Bards sang, until they all stood frozen, silent tears rolling down their cheeks. Drunk on magic.
* * *
Adrian ground his teeth in rage. Goddamnit, he’d been afraid some fucking Talent would pull something out of a hat, but he hadn’t dreamed they’d figure out a way to stop the fighting completely.
Good thing this is only the first act.
For the hundredth time in his long, black career, he found himself blessing the tattoos that made him resistant to other Arcs’ mental magic. He was lucky his mother had been so fucking good with a spell.
Which reminded him -- it was time for the next phase. Adrian started down the hillside into the trees where the Talents had retreated from the riot. The Spook Suit ensured nobody saw him, even when he knocked more than one idiot out of his way.
And there she was. Slipping up behind his victim, he reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small metal tube. Adrian popped the cap off, removed the plastic needle cover from the syringe, then jabbed it into the thin skin of her neck.
“Oww!” She slapped at her nape as if trying to kill a mosquito. Adrian dropped the syringe on the ground and flipped the spelled blanket he carried over the woman’s head. The Talents, thoroughly enthralled by the Bards’ song, didn’t even notice her vanish behind the blanket’s magical camouflage. Clamping one hand over her blanket-covered face, Adrian muffled her outraged yell as he wrapped the other arm around her to contain her struggles.
Barely a minute passed before the drug took effect and she went limp in his arms. Adrian bent and swung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, grunting a little from her weight. “Damn, woman, you could stand to lose a few pounds.”
As he turned and started back toward the outcropping where he’d made his preparations, his gaze fell on Jake Nolan.
Who had no idea his mother had just been kidnapped.