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Mrs. Cox
Hadley fretted.
The General had failed against the Sidhe as she’d predicted. When his attempt to coerce her into translating Nana’s book failed, he’d taken Sabrina Foxner away in a towering temper.
She’d been gone too long.
An itch deep in Hadley’s gut forewarned of something bad, something really, really bad. Quayla’s Dylan would have called it a disturbance in the force. She always looked at him blankly when he said such things even though she’d enjoyed all three Star Wars movies when they first came out in theaters.
Such a pity about that boy. I must find a way to protect Sabrina. Quayla’s lost enough friends.
A sudden throb behind her eyes forced Hadley to blink several times. Her vision cleared. A moment later she could almost glimpse something like a reflection behind her eyes.
Hadley’s pulse shot up.
She hadn’t felt the peculiar sensation since she was a girl, but she knew what the reflection was—second sight.
It took all of her moxie to keep her eyes opened when she wanted to see inside rather than out. She tried to refocus, to relax her eyes, anything she could think of to see better before whatever it was vanished once more.
The image lingered.
Rebecca died, thrust through with one of the nasty Champion blades.
A sob blocked Hadley’s throat.
The vision vanished, leaving her to collapse exhausted and weep. Quayla had lost another friend, though Hadley had no idea who had done the deed.
Probably that same bastard that destroyed my building. I should have stabbed him harder.
She had only just finished recovering when Second Sight hit her again. She managed to glimpse the reflection better this time, though it shifted. First, she saw the Saint Louis arch filled with strange light. The next moment the reflection shifted, sweeping away from what seemed a cruise ship port hole to a view of the nest room in Mare’s house.
The nests were empty.
Two were gone entirely.
Oh, no! I have to do something. Think Hadley!
Before she could so much as open her mouth to scream for the guards, another porthole came into view. General Small glowered down at the phone on his desk.
“Gary, this is Francis. Bring me a nuke.”
Oh, dear God, please tell me no one would give that maniac a—
A gruff frumpy voice barked from the speaker. “I’ll need you to go through the security protocol, Francis, and we’re not doing this on speaker phone. You know better.”
“Fine,” Small snatched up the receiver, pulled a briefcase from under his desk, and started rifling through its contents.
Soldiers dragged Sabrina into the cellblock, interrupting Hadley’s vision. Sabrina’s condition pushed all other thoughts from Hadley’s head. The former detective hung limp in their arms, blood dripping from multiple injuries. One foot hung wrong, mangled in ways bones weren’t meant to bend.
To Hadley’s keener than normal gaze, the former police detective had been questioned to within an inch of her life.
A rifle pointed at Hadley. “Step away from the door.”
Hadley retreated to a corner of their cell.
The soldiers opened the door and hurled Foxner inside. The delirious woman almost caught herself before falling face first to crack her head against the hard cement.
Hadley’s ears rang. She scowled to match the soldier’s dark expression. “Have you ever heard of the Geneva Convention, young man?”
“Animals don’t have rights,” he snarled, marching away.
“They do, actually,” she huffed. “But if this is how you were raised, it’s pity no one spayed and neutered your parents.”
Hadley grabbed a pillow, rolling Foxner over onto it. She filled a Styrofoam cup from the indecently exposed commode.
Not my first choice, but at least more sanitary than the floor.
She dabbed a corner of a scratchy, wool blanket into the cup and went to work on Foxner’s wounds.
“Pity you can’t do whatever you did in the hospital to heal yourself from the werewolf attack.”
A grizzled voice floated around a concrete wall separating cells. “The Detective doesn’t have a drop of Sidhe magic in her. If she survived a so-called werewolf attack, someone else did the healing magic.”
Hadley nodded. “Quayla.”
Surprise registered in her neighbor’s voice. “You know Quayla?”
“Not that it is any of your business, but yes I do.”
A reject from a sixties gumshoe novel strode around the corner and through the bars.
Hadley stared. “How?”
He rolled his eyes, disappearing in a flash of light that revealed a small winged creature. He expanded back to full-size in another flash and extended a hand. “Cember.”
Hadley eyed the hand before whispering to Foxner and climbing to her feet. “Mrs. Cox, widowed, not divorced.”
“How do you know Quayla?” Cember asked.
“She’s my tenant...or was until that, well I’d rather not say what he is, destroyed my building.”
“That what landed you in here?”
Vitriol burned out Hadley’s lips. “No, that small man—and I mean that in every sense of the word—tried to arrest the Detective in my presence. I objected in the manner of my bag and the cast iron pan inside to the general’s face.”
Cember let out a low whistle. “Yeah, that would do it. He’s not the most reasonable wafer I’ve ever met. I understand he shot one of his men when the officer made a trade with my cousins to get the army more firepower.”
“It doesn’t surprise me.”
“Would you like me to get you some cleaner water and a softer cloth? Maybe some antiseptic?” Cember’s voice softened. “Shitload of pain killers?”
Hadley narrowed her eyes. “At what cost? And if you can just waltz out of your cell, why are you still imprisoned?”
“No cost.” Cember frowned at Foxner. “As for leaving, why would I? It’s safe in here.”
“They aren’t,” Hadley made air quotes. “Questioning you?”
“Yeah, but they’re beating my glamour self. They haven’t laid a hand on the real me yet.”
“Why would you risk giving away your secret to help us for nothing in return?” A thought deepened Hadley’s frown. “They might have caught your little trick on camera already.”
Cember shook his head. “I took care of the camera before I came over. Besides, they’re way too busy to catch me.”
“How’s that?” Hadley asked.
Cember shrugged. “Big bruhaha up in Saint Louis. They lost contact with the unit securing the city. Satellite images showed the city perfectly normal, but some soldier managed to email phone pictures out. There’s nothing left.”
Oh, no.
Hadley swallowed hard. “Please tell me you mean there’s nothing left of the phone.”
“Saint Louis. Gone. My cousins leveled the entire city and exterminated the populace.”
“Heaven’s mercy,” Hadley gasped.
Cember snorted. “Not hardly.”
The little faerie had to be lying to her. That anyone, even the despicable Sidhe, would kill millions indiscriminately was too horrible to believe.
But I saw Saint Louis. No, it can’t be true. All I saw was the arch.
The faeries were pests and absolutely not to be trusted, but murder on that scale was unconscionable.
For that matter, why am I willing to believe this Sidhe?
Cember seemed to sense her reservations. He shrugged. “Believe me or not. Do you want those medical supplies?”
Hadley pressed her lips into a hard, thin line.
With what I saw, we’ll need much more. We need a miracle, but first things first.
After a moment, she offered a single emphatic nod.
Vitae
I drove back to Circlestone, entering to deposit the various phoenix essences reclaimed from my former shield. I set down the nest basins and container of life phoenix essence.
“Bradley, fetch a pair of empty—thrall!”
Bradley stared at the television screen. His disheveled mate watched beside him, sipping from a large cup. A comely news anchor I’d seen before was on location at a massive Sidhe battle. Her camera man shifted left and right to show the viewing audience that rather than one massive fight, there were two in progress.
“What’s going on here?”
Bradley gestured at the screen.
“If you haven’t anything better to do, then you should be breeding.”
“I tried, Master,” my thrall’s mate said. “Bradley gave me coffee instead, claimed I needed my energy.”
My thrall must consider himself quite virile.
A flash of white drew my attention to the screen. The camera view panned away from what had drawn my eye to the other battle. On the screen, the arrogant wafer who’d turned his primitive military machines against me and my hotel fought a two-sided battle against Seelie and Anseelie forces.
The camera shifted back to the first battle. Summuseraphi fought armies of Anseelie and Unseelie in front of a massive Arch. Behind him, Titania, the Lady of Fire, prepared a deadly flame spell. A flash of earth phoenix dove into the frame then below the sightline of the camera.
The view shifted back to the less important battle.
“Point that hell-blighted camera where it belongs!”
The anchor woman screamed, blood exploding from her chest to splash across the camera lens. The camera dropped to the ground as the camera man rushed to her side. A panicked scream proceeded a fat little man in a white coat.
“Tommy?” Bradley asked.
A short whistle proceeded an artillery round impacting against the pavement behind them. The explosion filled the screen with an instant’s worth of fire and debris then nothingness.
Bradley collapsed to the floor.
I had no idea what he was doing, but without the camera in broadcasting shape, there was no way to learn what had happened between Titania and the incompetent divine.
If he cannot handle her, he will need someone to elevate. I must get there at once.
Earth and fire phoenix essence pushed out of my body in separate directions. I rushed to Dunham’s kitchen, plugging the drains, and extruding the disparate water phoenix essence into separate sinks.
I hit the balcony doors without slowing, destroying them in my haste to get into position. Wind rippled my thrashing wings before I realized I’d forgotten to order my thralls to mate.
Quayla
Terrance dove toward the massive faerie Arch ahead of us. A screech in the phoenix tongue alerted Terrance to our arrival and told Mare my intentions.
I dove.
Instead of folding my wings tight to my body, transmogrification reformed them into makeshift air-water rockets. Essence flashed to steam along their inner walls, expanding explosively out the tight exit nozzles.
I shot forward, twin contrails marking my breakneck dive.
Titania’s spell hit Terrance full in the back. The intense inferno flash-fried feathers, melting stone and metal.
Agony flashed through the Shield link, but quieted.
A vice squeezed my heart into paste, but I focused on my attack. Terrance had more essence in his nest than any of us. He’d be back in the fight in a new body before we could finish the Sidhe.
I hit the ground as a human, hands gripped around the vapor trail stretched into the heavens. A violent jerk of muscle and will brought both trails down, slashing across Titania’s face like barbed whips. The Lady of Fire staggered back, golden blood dripping from flayed cheeks.
I focused on her ruined face, revealing to Terrance the first taste of retribution through our link.
For you, Big Brother.
The whip in my right hand sprouted icy barbs while the other returned to fill out my swirling center-grip shield. I daren’t enter Faery, but so long as Titania stood across the threshold attacking us, I was well within my rights to return the favor.
Mare hit the pavement next to me.
“Mare, that red post is filled with water!”
A ring of essence arced across the parking lot, decapitated the recently repaired fire hydrant, and returned to become a slender curved sword.
Neat trick.
“Kill them!” Titania shrieked, pouring fire out of both hands at us.
Another towering figure pushed into view on the opposite side of the threshold. “You heard her, kill those shields!”
Unseelie swept around Summuseraphi, flanking us.
A slash of the whip forced Mab, Lady of Earth, to flinch backward. She wrapped her fingers around Titania’s hand. Their free hands converged around a fire-wreathed bolder the size of a Volkswagen super beetle.
“Ditch the whip.” Mare’s swords slashed through an elf and a goblin. She launched another essence ring, accounting for two pixies and an imp. “Close combat weapons only.”
I lashed the charging line of Unseelie, breaking the length into a half dozen s-shaped blades. The barrage bought me enough time to extrude a short sword. I met a charging elf with a lunge—stretching the sword to pierce his chest before returning it to a less excruciating length.
An ogre stomped on the fallen elf, his spiked, bone club smashing down. My s-blades returned in a graceful arc, sinking into his back with enough impact to throw off his footing. I danced forward around his off-balance blow and hacked into his thigh. The blade rebounded off of armored greaves, so I reversed my spin to take advantage of the sword’s inertia.
“Mare, go high!”
I threw my shield forward, sweeping it through the Sidhe in a wide circle like a gigantic saw blade.
Mare’s wings swept down, throwing her into a skyward arc. She came down, swords extended full and close to her body. The attack impaled the faces of two Sidhe—one in front and one behind—that had avoided my attack and darted in to strike at my back. She didn’t yank the swords free, but swept them at the next opponent, reforming the blades just as they scythed through Sidhe flesh.
“Quayla!” Mare let go of her swords.
They spun end around end toward the ogre at my back. I hurled the shield toward her through a crowd of goblins. My spin brought my sword turned hammer around against the ogre’s outer knee. Aquakinesis took hold of Mare’s swords.
The hammer shattered the ogre’s knee, toppling his head and shoulders into the path of Mare’s blades. Feet become talons climbed the ogre’s torso defter than any rock lizard. I hurled my hammer at a Sidhe spell slinger priming an attack at Mare, yanked her swords free, and hurled them into hobgoblins on either side of her.
Mare sprinted in the back path of my hammer, sliding through legs with my elongated shield fileting Sidhe in her path. She grabbed my rebounding hammer, swept it up under the spell slinger’s chin, combined it with my shield, and then flipped the reformed double-bladed staff back at me.
The two queens launched their attack.
“Quayla, freehand!” Mare’s fingers entwined mine, jerking me from my feet in a bladed game of whiplash. Her hands shifted to my ankles as she ran an oblong spiral, using me as a living scythe. “Return fire!”
The two words made no sense until I realized my next orbit would smash directly into the molten boulder. I shifted my arms to wide wings just in time to scoop up the scorching projectile. Molten rock turned essence to steam, but steam that was still me and still under my control.
“Release!” Mare let go of me.
Rather than let go of the boulder and back wing, I planted talons on the rock, sliced through the boulder with both wings, and kicked the pieces into the Queens’ faces.
Unseelie mobbed me the moment I hit the ground. Wings scythed through my attackers, shifting back into a double-bladed staff in the grip of newly regrown arms.
We took advantage of the spitting hydrant, hurling watery or icy weapons into the unending Sidhe tide. Spare water orbited us like bladed satellites of a binary star.
I’d never faced a threat like the Army and two queens, but fear never crossed my mind. I fought, somehow one with both my essence and Mare’s. Even without a Shield link to bind our thoughts, we complimented each other in ways I could never have imagined. She knew tricks I didn’t, but only until she used them. I never worried about how, I just did.
“Skylings!” Summus boomed.
Somehow, I knew what Summus wanted even though he’d spoken only a single word. I turned my attacks toward a flash of magic, Mare swept in my wake slaying as she went.
Titania and Mab hurled a meteor storm of molten stalactites.
“Quayla, whip me!”
I hurled my double-bladed staff into the Sidhe, willing it into a spinning orbit around us. Mare’s hand met the both of mine. Leaning back, I threw her into a wide sweep, our fingers merging. Tentacles shot out from her in a dozen directions, seizing the queens’ missiles and redirecting them into the Sidhe between us and the two heavily beset Skylings.
“Release!”
I let her go, snatched my staff out of the air, and raced up Mare’s wake. Billy blinked in and out of existence ahead of us, covered in blood from crown to toes. At the eye of his bloody maelstrom, Dave’s fingers danced up and down an instrument with three pegless necks. Power built up around him with each discordant note.
“Go left!” I shouted, wading into the Sidhe to our right.
Mare threw herself into the faerie onslaught on our left.
“Billy, backside, triangular defense!”
The Skyling blinked from his close-in defense, reappearing where I wanted him. The Sidhe around his position were thicker than Mares or mine, but his position kept him furthest from the two furious queens.
Summus leapt into the center of our triangle, wrapping his wings around and in front of Dave like a giant megaphone. Dave unleashed his attack.
Divine energy amplified the minstrel’s spell into a million yowling alley cats sliding their claws down a chalkboard.
The earsplitting torture shot cracks through the Arch’s face.
A moment later, the magical portal exploded like a thousand tons of shattered glass.
The Sidhe crashed through our lines. They were too late. Without the support of the two Sidhe queens, they couldn’t stand a chance against the five of us.
Dave’s mouth moved in my periphery, but I couldn’t hear over the ringing aftershocks of what Summus’s power had done to Dave’s magic.
Smaller arches opened in an overwhelming wave of taint. Anseelie retreated to their Market while the Unseelie poured into Faery in full retreat.
I stood, weapon in hand, and pulse pounding my ears just beneath the ringing.
Something high above caught my eye.
Terrance! You missed all the fun!
He didn’t answer.
Dread filled me.
Vitae
The trip to Perimeter Mall from Circlestone wasn’t a long one, though the unexplained absence of King and Queen buildings made me momentarily question my direction sense.
The battle beneath me took my breath away.
At no time in Creation’s history had such a large force of Sidhe fought so out in the open. A gigantic arch towered over one side of the field, Titania and Mab visible just beyond its threshold.
Summuseraphi fought with his back to the Sidhe Queen, a bladed chain whipping around him in a display of expertise I could hardly believe.
Though both the massed forces and Summuseraphi’s obvious weapon competence were wrong-footing, what cost me my breath were the two phoenixes between Summus and not one but two Sidhe Queens.
Mare and Aquaylae fought all comers, simultaneously slaughtering Sidhe and redirecting everything Mab and Titania threw at them. They whirled like desert djinn in and out of each other, seemingly passing and interweaving their essences with exacting, dizzying, and totally impossible precision.
Mare couldn’t possibly have taught Aquaylae so fast.
They took position around a Fae Kissed of some kind, two points of a triangle capped by another Fae Kissed. The center abomination worked some kind of instrument, power building around him in a throbbing nimbus. Summuseraphi leapt into their midst, finally freeing himself to stop the traitorous mortal.
An obscene chord escaped the Fae Kissed’s instrument, dropping Summus to his knees with his wings covering his head.
My breath quickened.
This was it.
I needed to get down there before he elevated one of the others. The horrid, discordant sound exploded from between the corrupt shields. Cracks shot through the Arch, exploding a moment later in a hail of shattered shards.
Smaller arches opened around the confrontation. Unseelie poured back into Faery as fast as they could flee. No sign of the mortals remained across the parking lot. Seelie fled the battlefield, much as their Unseelie cousins.
Summus rose, a smile on his lips. He clasped hands with the Fae Kissed musician.
They were working together? That doesn’t make any sense.
With Summuseraphi out of danger, no phoenix would be elevated. My reward would have to wait until after I’d raised a Shield of Phoenix Kissed and proved myself to my Creator.
I turned wing.
Images of Mare, Aquaylae, and the whole tableau haunted me all the way back to Circlestone. Questions buzzed my thoughts. The two water phoenixes had been defending Summuseraphi. Perhaps that act stayed him from slaying them outright, but when the battle ended, he hadn’t Judged Aquaylae.
It wasn’t beyond possibility that she’d been able to corrupt the young Watcher and use that entity to deceive the Divine One enough that he unseated me as Shieldheart. What I couldn’t fathom was how she stood so close to a divine phoenix and still managed to fool him into ignoring his duty. Aquaylae’s sanctum housed a Fae Kissed and a Sidhe-conjured elemental.
How much more evidence does he need of her corruption? Could Summuseraphi be so incompetent that he can’t sense what she’s done to Mare and Terrance? And where is Ignis?
The very nature of a divine phoenix prevented him from becoming corrupted.
Why wouldn’t he Destroy her for what she’s done, what she is?
Her only tool to manipulate him was her lustful carnality, but I could not believe a Divine One could be ruled by his nethers. They weren’t reborn. Their bodies never lusted.
Could I have misjudged?
Could I have been wrong about her?
Could Aquaylae have somehow gained the ability to corrupt the incorruptible?
Anima
Anima whispered into the microphone purchased by Bradley, then relocated temporarily into Dave’s van. “Dave?”
“Give me a second.” The mortal slew a hobgoblin with his musical instrument then launched a barrage of rainbow missiles from the frets with a few rapid notes. He stepped back from the few Sidhe that hadn’t yet cleared off the battlefield, panting hard.
“Yeah? Anima, right?” Dave breathed.
“Yes. Could you please give your radio to Quayla?”
Dave frowned. “Yeah, but BJ’s closer.”
Skyling Billy was closer and not engaged at the moment. To an extent, Anima yearned to spare him the news.
She couldn’t.
“I am sorry, but it must be yours unless there are any still functional units in what remains of your van.”
Dave glanced at the vehicle aspiring to a new career as an accordion. He shrugged and marched over to the three phoenixes and extended his tactical gear. “Quayla? Anima wants to speak with you.”
Quayla took the radio, velcroing the microphone around her neck before pushing the earbud into position. “What’s going on, Anima? Another incursion?”
Anima looked into Quayla’s face in the swirling spring-water pool. Quayla couldn’t see the Watcher, but it felt right to look into the water phoenix’s eyes as much as was possible.
She reached a hand to the emerald in her forehead, pain still throbbing. “Terrance is True Dead.”