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Dunham
Dunham shattered a thirty-thousand-dollar vase against the phoenix’s main display screen. The equipment was powered, but it didn’t work. To exasperate matters, there’d been no word from the Terra. The driver he’d sent with the phoenix had lost her in the park, only managing to catch up and begin filming after the fight was joined in earnest.
The Terra had torn out after fleeing prey too fast for Dunham’s agent to get to his car and follow. Despite losing the Terra who had no choice but to return once her mission was completed, the agent had done the smart thing. He’d called in for support and collected abandoned Sidhe campaign paraphernalia.
Viviane ascended the stairs. She looked at him, then the pottery shards and sighed. “I loved that vase.”
“This thing doesn’t work!” Dunham snarled. “And your informant should be skinned alive. He said the Sidhe would be fighting, not lounging around in tents.”
Viviane’s laugh incensed him further, but he grappled his temper back under control. “I’m not amused.”
“The Terra?”
“Following my orders. I thought I’d included instruction for every possibility, but it never occurred to me that the Courts would be sitting around drinking in broad daylight instead of trying to kill each other.”
“I imagine they were killing each other, just not at the pace you desired. Life’s treated differently when you can’t die of old age.”
“What’s the draw of these little war games they play then? Faerie fascination with death?”
“Pretty much. What’s wrong with the control center?” Her tone became dry. “Other than the rogue fragments of three-thousand-year-old pottery?”
“The servers have power. None of the hardware has any alert lights showing. Everything is connected exactly as it was, but there’s no data. No seeds. Nothing.”
“Could they have rigged it to purge the database? Could the automata have initiated some kind of self-destruct protocol when Dolumii and Gherrian returned?”
“It’s possible, but if that’s the case this junk is useless. Hell, my lowest, entry-level employees have newer gear than this.”
“Have you asked them about it?”
Dunham turned his attention to the cages. “Caelum’s still in too bad of shape to be very responsive and the Pyri remains stubbornly resistant to control even when I use both his egg and heart.”
“Strong.”
“Very. I’ll ask the Terra when she returns.”
“What are you going to do if you can’t get this to work?” Viviane’s question held an edge.
“If you want me to thin the Seelie and Unseelie ranks, we’re going to have to rely on your information sources.”
“We need to stay focused, Dunham. You can’t use this as an excuse to shift your attention away from the plan.”
“Your plan, and I’m upholding my end of the bargain. It’s the intelligence from your people that’s falling through.”
Viviane closed the distance, her voice dangerous. “I’m coordinating a worldwide offensive, boy. Atlanta may be the tip of the spear, but without everything I’ve been building these past couple centuries—including your little empire—all of this is for naught. You will find a way to force the Courts to concentrate here. The other Queens both need to be convinced they need me and the Anseelie to tilt the balance against the other.”
Dunham turned his back on her. She wanted her vengeance even more than he wanted his own. He’d prepared for the eventuality just in case there were elements of the phoenix tech he didn’t understand. Looking at it up close, he wasn’t sure what he was missing, but even so, there were other ways to keep track of incursions.
Never offer up a miracle until you’re sure the client will pay for it.
Quayla
I headed over to a Lowes and bee-lined through the store for the garden section. Searching up and down the exterior aisles offered small fountains, but none small enough to turn into a nest. I eye-balled the edging stones, wondering if I could seal a ring of them well enough to create my own basin. In the end, I picked up a few plastic buckets from cleaning supplies so I could build up reserve essence. The line wasn’t moving very fast, so I scanned the impulse buy items. I decided which candy bars needed to go into my bucket and then shifted my scan to the next register to see if there was anything different there I wanted to accompany my chocolate.
My gaze drifted past the third register’s goodies to an end cap display under a sign which read: Are you compliant with the new code?
Beneath the sign, a water heater with some kind of sub tank suspended over it rested on a small aluminum catch pan. My breath caught. I ducked out of line, shoving several goodies into my buckets before hurrying back to the plumbing area. Not finding what I was looking for, I finally stopped an old wafer. He led me back to the right section and left me to gaze down at the water heater catch pans.
“Ani?”
She sounded sullen. “Here, Quayla.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“You know you can tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I...I got in trouble.”
“Why?”
“For talking to you, but not to Vitae.”
My brow furrowed. “Why aren’t you talking to Vitae?”
“He thinks I’m just some horrible tech that he resents. He treats me badly, and to be honest, right now I’m scared of him.”
I flashed to Vitae wading through the foliage into the entry of the Marriott. The plants recoiled and died around him. Then he’d tried to run me through with both Champion blades.
“Yeah, he’s a little scary right now.”
“The Isaac managed to get one of the first host sent down to help—”
“What?! That’s fantastic. Where is he...she...whatever?”
“Vitae insulted him and sent him away.”
My core went hot and cold all at the same time. “He did what?! We need that help, blighted-night, we need an angel more desperately than just about anything right now.”
Anima’s reply was tiny and quiet. “I’m sorry.”
I pushed away my frustration with Vitae and softened my voice. “It’s all right, Ani. You’re awesome. Thanks to you, we’re going to rescue the others and take back Atlanta.”
“Dunham took all the control equipment from the sanctum. He’s trying to get it to work.”
“I can’t fathom why he needs the ability to see incursions.”
“He can’t...not unless I interface with the tech.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m his missing component. The control center tech let you guys interface with me in a way you understood, but I’m the one that feels the seeds and feeds the information into the displays.”
“Why does it work like that?”
“The old way, the oracles, we had no voice. We showed Shields the incursion locations, but as the cities became bigger and bigger, we had to find a better way to communicate with the Shields. The computer systems allowed us to help better without revealing what we are.”
“I don’t understand why knowing what you are is forbidden.”
“The Isaac will not answer that question no matter how many times I ask. None of the others I’ve interacted with know either. We just know that we are supposed to be separate, Watchers only.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“The Isaac knows. He Sees all. He has not punished me yet.”
“Can you tell me more about the Isaac? What he is? How he does what he does? Like the IDs. Why did you have them delivered to the bank instead of waiting for me when I woke up? I know you can materialize at my location.”
“The government facilities had to be open to process the requests. It’s why some shields work places like the DMV. If you look at yours, you’ll see we had your new identification delivered from out of state since you don’t have a home here.”
I took out my ID and checked it over. Sure enough, I was from Jacksonville, Florida. “You couldn’t get me an address on the west coast where the water isn’t so dirty?”
Anima laughed.
“All right, back to business. Can you see these?” I picked up one of the catch pans. “Will this hold enough for a rebirth?”
“At your current mass, yes.”
“Can we link more than one?”
“If you draw a precedence rune on the basin, it will disappear from the previous basin. Only one nest can be primary.”
“All right. Thanks.” I tucked the bucket into the basin and headed back toward the front. I stopped mid step as a horrifying thought struck me. “Ani, can you tell when precedence is changed on a nest?”
“Of course.”
“Can I?”
“Not instinctively no, but you’d be the one changing the rune.”
“After I get this one built, please warn me immediately if precedence changes. I don’t want Dunham capturing me again.”
“Neither do I.”
I exited the Lowes and headed to where I parked my scooter. Digging into the bag, I unpackaged a small container of bungee cords and went to work securing everything.
A subtle taint rippled across my skin like a breeze on a lake surface, tickling my nose a moment later. I yanked the Karambit hilts from my belt loops and turned to look into a Guy Fawkes mask with its nose painted red and an American flag across its forehead. The figure dressed in a tailored suit. He folded his hands behind his back and waited.
“You know Fae Kissed don’t normally walk right up to us.”
A husky voice escaped the mask “If you ever desire to see Mr. Snyder alive again, you will come with us.”
My mind reeled, but before I could even ask a question, he turned his back on me and marched across the parking lot to an old blue panel van. Glancing around for observers, I jogged toward the van. It pulled out and headed for the exit, forcing me to run back to my Vespa. The van pulled into traffic as a pickup older than Terrance’s sharked slowly through the parking lot looking for a space.
The Vespa mumbled insults under its breath as I forced it to whip around the truck with all the power it could muster. The van took a left several blocks ahead just as I slipped into traffic. Aggressive driving and scooters are made for one another. I rode the dotted lines staying watchful of blinking lights on side view mirrors. It took forcing the Vespa to shriek like an asthmatic banshee to cross the heavy oncoming traffic. The van had accelerated to an almost six block lead. I did everything I could to catch up. Even though the Vespa was doing all the work, my heart thundered in my chest, silent under the roar of the ocean in my ears. Whoever the Fae Kissed was, he had Dylan. The idea that erasing myself from his life hadn’t been enough to protect him made me sicker than the faerie taint. We played cat and mouse, my scooter slowly closing the distance between us as stop signs and traffic played in my favor.
I didn’t try to overtake them. I didn’t assault them. There was no way for me to tell whether or not Dylan was in the cargo van. There was also no way to know how many were involved. I knew one thing—there wouldn’t be enough of them and their sure as blight wouldn’t be enough left of them to identify when I was through.
The van turn left into an industrial area and turned left again almost immediately, pulling through an open chain-link fence topped with razor wire. It disappeared inside a large warehouse. The garage door rumbled closed behind the van, leaving only an open doorway as an invitation.
You’re going to be really sorry you invited me to this party.
I dismounted and pushed essence into my Karambit knives. The fence gate rattled closed, but I paid it no mind. I would leave when Dylan was safe, and the Fae Kissed had been put down.
Vitae
The mortal shield summoned to the accident scene had shown more deference to my cleavage than doling out proper punishment for my damaged vehicle. Since his nethers seemed in charge of his actions, I carefully considered cursing them with something properly punitive or at the very least employing a glamour to convince him of imminent rotting.
The process involved in the damage to my Mercedes stretched on like an ancient Greek epic. The comedy of errors peaked as the little old woman in the crushed corvette repeatedly demanded I pay for her vehicle in a language only I apparently understood while we awaited an official translator.
She refused to understand the translator’s explanation of process and fault, dragging out the situation to unacceptable lengths.
I stepped up to her, fixed her with my gaze and pushed my will. “I have no time for your hysterics. You will be silent and stand aside.”
The translator snorted, but his expression changed to marvel when the woman folded her hands on her lap and leaned against her car.
I turned to the officer and pushed. “You will cease ogling my body, make these people move these vehicles, excuse me from further proceedings and complete this process without me.”
I turned to the startled translator. “You will forget all I said.”
“I-I need you to move your vehicles out of the road. Thank you for your patience, ma’am, you’re excused.”
“What?!” The minivan driver asked. “She pulled into the road out of nowhere. If she wasn’t cutting into traffic like she owned the road, I’d never have hit her.”
“Do as this shield instructs.”
They moved their vehicles, and I left their sorry melodrama behind. One of my dwarves would make short work of repairs, beyond that and the present mobility of the vehicle, I had no interest in the entire series of events.
There were far more troubling things afoot, particularly Aquaylae’s attempts to go over my head and undercut my authority. It seemed despite my desperation to reclaim the Unseelie Champion blade, bringing her to heel had to be elevated on my list of priorities.
I’ll see her put back on probation, purified and her essence employed to complete oracle construction.
A wafer blared its horn at me as I got out of my car and marched into the government building. The entitled mortal shouted after me about space ownership of some sort, but his opinion of reality didn’t remove my vehicle from the parking space.
A weasel-faced man with charcoal, oil-plastered hair nattered at my thrall, brandishing a sheaf of irrelevant documentation. My thrall’s eyes shifted to my entrance. A queer expression clouded his drawn features. He dropped to one knee, placing his forehead on the questionably sanitary flooring. “Master, I—”
“What the hell are you doing, Sky? I need all of these documents redone with proper language and none of your weird little hobby speak on them.” He rounded on me. “Where’s your badge? Who the hell do you think you are just marching into my morgue like the Queen of Sheba?”
“Your better. Begone little man, correct your own paperwork, I have need of my thrall.”
The wafer spluttered, looking back and forth between me and my thrall. “I...I don’t know what kind of perverted games you two are up to, but this is a government building, and—”
I seized the little man and threw him across the room. “Do as I command, wafer!”
He impacted against the entry door, slid to the ground and moaned. I marched across the intervening distance, seized him by his collars and ejected him from the room.
“I have need of your services. Why have you not returned?”
“You instructed me to ensure things were right here, Master. I swear that I’ve worked without a break trying to catch things up.”
“Have you procured more bodies for my use?”
“There aren’t any here.”
I followed the scent of death to a wall of drawers and yanked open one. “There are bodies a plenty for my use.”
My thrall stiffened. “Master, appropriating bodies who have families awaiting their release for burial won’t go unnoticed.”
“Notice is not acceptable. You will have to fetch bodies from cemeteries, but first I have another task I must entrust to you. I’d rather not, but my time is too important to be wasted.”
“What task, Master?”
“I must rebuild and cast a sentry net over this city. This involves strategically arranging small amounts of my essence throughout Atlanta so that the Oracle can alert me of Sidhe incursions.”
“We just need to smear your blood on things?”
“Seeds must be marked with angelic runes and engineered to minimize tampering or removal. Work it out on your way to a cemetery.”
My thrall bowed, his voice muffled. “Yes, Master.”
I turned my back to him, marching away to handle my next task.
Bradley
Bradley clenched his teeth. “Yes, Master.”
He was too exhausted to feel the pleasure transmitted by his obedience. He needed sleep, but he had orders.
Still, she declared drawing notice as unacceptable. It’ll be far easier to rob graves at night. That gives me time for sleep.
Bradley dragged his feet to the room’s rear and pulled out a body drawer with a cheap pillow and blanket. He climbed feet first onto the tray, pulled the drawer into the wall and drew the door closed with the tile puller attached to the door’s inside as an extra handle.