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Quayla
My relief at seeing Sabrina Foxner alive and well vanished, replaced by the realization she’d cornered me in the same building with caged corpses. Sabrina wasn’t the kind of woman to be forgiving. Even the revelation that I was a phoenix or that I’d entered Howell Mill Humane society to save animals hadn’t dissuaded her from putting me away.
Only fighting and bleeding together in the Lady’s trap had brought her around, and I’d had our ordeal in Faery erased from Sabrina’s memory.
She’ll take one look back there and throw the book at both of us. I can die—hopefully—but without Summus to rewrite her again Bradley is stuck.
“Sabrina stop—”
“Shut up, hands where I can see them,” Sabrina said.
Bradley raised his hands, looking sidelong at me with a soured milk expression that told me he hadn’t forgotten what was hidden in the back room either.
I stepped away from the young doctor, splitting my focus between gathering my essence and meeting her eyes. “Sabrina, please.”
“Detective Foxner,” she snapped. “Stop where you are or I will shoot.” The hard set of her eyes confirmed that she would put a bullet in me if I didn’t start cooperating. “Sky, on the ground. You, hands up, stop moving and kneel.”
I transmogrified my torso and unfolded my wings with as much glow as I could manage. I hoped to all that was holy she’d follow training, shooting me in my center mass instead of in the face. “My name’s Q—”
Bullets ripped through my torso.
I fought against showing her the pain that came with them. She wouldn’t aim for my torso the second time if I didn’t convince her I was invulnerable to her bullets.
She wasn’t convinced.
I transmogrified the rest of me, becoming a winged man made of shimmering, glowing water. “Sabrina. My name’s Quayla.”
She shot me again, this time through the face.
I kept speaking, rebalancing my essence to repair the holes. “You have helped me before.”
“I think I’d remember meeting something like you,” Sabrina said, the venom in her use of ‘something’ stinging like acid.
“You first encountered me investigating the break-in at the Howell Mill Humane society. You thought I’d done it, so you staked me out when you couldn’t find anything searching my apartment.”
Her eyes stayed on me, but a slight wrinkle to her forehead told me she was fighting a doomed battle to fit what she did remember of those events with my story.
“On stake out, you witnessed goblins abduct a woman from the apartments. You followed, but—”
“I remember that,” Sabrina interrupted. “But the perps sure as hell weren’t goblins. They were gangbangers, some kind of sick cultists. She was dead when we arrived. They’d sacrificed that woman on a makeshift crucifix built in the middle something a lot like that.”
I shook my head. “They lost you behind Whole Foods. I helped you track them to the rundown apartment complex west of Georgia Tech—you can’t remember the fantastic parts because I had your...memory rewritten—to protect you.”
“Convenient story.” She turned the gun on Bradley.
I threw out a hand to catch her attention, “No, stop. He’s mortal. You’ll have enough to explain expending rounds with no evidence of a target.”
Her gaze narrowed. “What the hell are you?”
“I’m a phoenix—”
“Everyone knows phoenixes are made of fire.”
“Only some of us. We are God’s protectors on Earth, shields like yourself but here to protect you from the supernatural.”
“The devil can look like a saint.” She jabbed her chin at the blood circle. “That doesn’t look like a holy roller picnic to me.”
“We’re here investigating—”
“Bullshit. We’ve got Sky there wheeling bodies out of the morgue, a video of some Igor-looking fuckers digging up children’s graves at Oakland Cemetery and loading them into the coroner’s van he checked out.”
I shot Bradley a look.
He opened his mouth, but I cut across him before he got himself shot. “Bradley was forced to do those things by the person who owns this warehouse.”
She charged toward me three steps. “Hands up, on your knees and...get back in human form so I can cuff you.”
I let a little of my exasperation into my voice. “You are the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met.”
“Good thing I don’t date men then, on your knees or I shoot Sky over there.”
I snorted. “You’re a good cop, Sabrina. You won’t shoot him so long as he complies no matter what I do.”
Sabrina looked as frustrated as I felt. Her hand hesitated over her radio. Backup wouldn’t solve the problem raised by facing a being of pure water, but if push came to shove, we’d be gone before her reinforcements could arrive.
“Dispatch, this is Foxner.”
Static.
“Dispatch?”
She pulled out her cell phone and swiped a thumb across it to unlock the screen, eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and me.
Whatever Vitae had done to the place had killed all in and out communications. The only question was whether or not I could reach Anima through the bronze statue on my person.
I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Ani, please tell me you can get me a divine.”
“What are you saying?” Sabrina snapped.
A chuckle escaped me. “I’m asking dispatch for a supervisor.”
Anima didn’t bother whispering, her voice reaching me from the tactical headset rather than the statue. “I’m afraid no one is available, Quayla. You will have to act on your own discretion.”
It took me a moment to realize that since she apparently couldn’t penetrate whatever barriers Vitae had put in place, she’d tapped into the device like we’d discussed once upon a time.
The whole situation couldn’t go much worse. I’d known from the moment Sabrina raised her gun that turning her to an ally was a doomed proposition.
I spread my wings and hands. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I’m out in the cold here, and I could sure use all the help I can get right now. Please don’t make me fight you.”
“If you’re some kind of supernatural cop like me, how are you out in the cold?”
“Other than a supervisor who covers the southeast only five of us protect Atlanta. I’m the last one in any condition to do the job.”
“That’s bullshit. Look at you. How could anything harm you?”
“You fight your criminals, we fight ours. We’re in the middle of a supernatural gang war heading from bad to Armageddon. Our headquarters is gone. All I’ve got is what I’m carrying and one mortal caught up in this against his will.”
I saw the ‘bullshit’ forming on her lips. Hating myself for doing it, I jumped her. She fired several more times, the bullet’s lancing through me and bouncing off the concrete floor behind me. Pulling my punches forced me to hit her a few extra times to knock her out.
“Shit,” Bradley said. “You realize how bad this is, right?”
I sighed. “Yes. She will have called in her position outside before coming in. If she doesn’t report back in within a reasonable period, this whole place will be teaming with police.”
“Actually, I meant about losing my license, but that’s bad too.”
I owed Sabrina a lot for rescuing me from the Lady. She’d lost a lot of time in the timeline of that slice of Faery. Summus had been able to reweave things together to keep her from losing her job, but without a divine to clean up after me, anything I did to her damaged someone who really didn’t deserve it.
“We’ll take her car out to a friend’s place and hope I can reach a divine to remove all this from her memory.”
He climbed back to his feet and came over. “There’s a way to help her remember again?”
“No. They don’t rewrite memories so much as reality around people so they live the whole scenario over in a different way.”
“Kind of like Marvel alternate timelines.”
Bradley’s resemblance to Dylan made my heart ache like a missing limb.
“Hey, what are the chances the brain remembers both, accounting for stuff like déjà vu?”
I shrugged. “Never been rewritten.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, several times.”
He didn’t look too happy about that, but I was just too tired to lie. I headed toward the exit.
“Um.”
I turned to find Bradley resembling the three-year-old standing over the shattered cookie jar.
“I could use Vitae’s serum to tell her what to remember.”
“Vitae can’t do that. Not only shouldn’t but just plain can’t.”
“He can and so can I with the stuff he gave me. I think it’s a side effect of the Sidhe blood he’s mixed in.”
Light save me, can things get any worse?
“No,” I said with all the vehemence I could muster after everything else that had happened. “Enthralling her with faerie magic isn’t the answer.”
I took Sabrina’s keys and exited through the big door.
Bradley followed. “Then what do we do?”
“You pack your things and get the hell out of Atlanta. Anima?”
“I want to help you,” Bradley said.
“No. My job is to protect mortals, not risk their lives.”
“Quayla, perhaps he could help us learn what’s wrong with Vitae,” Anima said.
“No mortal could live long enough to catalog everything wrong with Vitae,” I snapped.
“I’m a passable biochemist,” Bradley said. “I could at least try.”
“No, you’re safer just leaving. I’ll deal with Vitae when the time comes.”
Bradley’s expression turned shrewd. “You can’t rewrite her memory, so you can’t rewrite mine either, right?”
The conversation wasn’t getting me any closer to finding a way to deal with Sabrina. “So?”
“So, you can’t use faerie glamour to enthrall me either, right?”
“Of course not! I’m a phoenix, not some Sidhe from the pit.”
He smirked. “Then you can’t force me to do what you say.”
My irritation must have shown in my eyes, because he took a step backward. “I can break your legs and fly you to the next nearest territory.”
He stopped retreating. “I don’t think so. Vitae needs to be stopped. I’m going back. If he’s one of the good guys, I’m going to find a way to bring him back to your side.”
“I don’t want him on my side!” Anger shook me like an earthquake. “He k-killed D-Dylan. I-I want to rip his h-head off and use it to replace t-that stick up his ass.”
“I’m going back. It’s my experiments he’s using to enforce his will on others.”
I looked at the odd little wafer, really looked at him. He didn’t seem like much, but he had a fire in his belly that reminded me of Ignis. He was right that I couldn’t control him. If he was going back anyway, maybe there was a way he could help.
“Fine.”
“Quayla, he might fall under Vitae’s influence again. You can’t let him return to enthrallment. You need to protect him.”
Blighted hells, Vitae wielding glamour.
Anima was right. She was trying to do what was right, but the wafer was right too.
It isn’t my choice.
“Quayla?” Anima asked.
“You heard him, Ani. I can’t control him. Maybe he can tell me things that we can use to fight our way through this.”
“Maybe I can tip you off so you can kill Vitae,” Bradley said.
I fought off the roar of Niagara Falls once more.
Bradley fidgeted under whatever he saw in my face. “I mean, that would stop him for good, and he did murder your boyfriend.”
Bradley’s story gave me the impression that he’d freed himself, but there was no way to tell which would win in a war between cumulative anger or Vitae’s glamour.
Such a rare mortal deserved a long life, not to be sent back into the lion’s den to dodge who knew how many teeth.
Maker, protecting free will sucks.
“It’s your choice, Bradley.”
“He’s digging up children.” The young doctor tightened the fists at his sides. “I’m going back. Someone has to find a way to stop Vitae.”
I shoved my Johammer keys into Bradley’s hands. “Go get nose plugs, something that filters out pollen. I’ll modify them to filter out faerie taint. Hopefully that will help you resist any attempts to enthrall you once more.”
I drove Sabrina’s car into the garage, taking care not to hit her or park atop the blood circle.
If I can’t convince Sabrina to help, I’ll just have to die again.
“Ani, can you or the Isaac scrub any video from the car? Ani?”
Guess Vitae’s ward is cutting us off again.
I closed the big doors once more and went to work pitting both my essence and my hatred of Vitae against his sins.
Vitae
Isn’t that a fine How Do You Do?
In typical Aquaylae fashion, the selfish, miserable excuse for a shield disobeyed my instructions and launched her fully transmogrified form into the sky without concern for exposing herself before the public.
That is the last straw.
I’d tried to embrace her after her betrayal. I’d tried—against my better judgment—to bring her back into the fold until such time Vilicangelus removed her. I’d even rescued her paramour from unimaginable torments.
She should be grateful.
Hadn’t I’d given him a merciful end—quick and relatively painless? Hadn’t I freed her so that she could perform her duties without having to fear Sidhe leveraging her addiction against her?
She’s beyond redemption. It falls to me to do what should have been done centuries ago.
A lazy thinker, it seemed reasonable that she would return to comfort and familiarity. I took my Mercedes into Cobb county, heading for her former apartment. I wasn’t disappointed.
Her essence tingled at the edges of my awareness.
I drew my fighting canes and marched into the old three-story walkup. There wasn’t any need to feel for her essence in order to confirm my suspicions, but I did so anyway. When I arrived on the third-floor landing, my senses turned me aside from Aquaylae’s old residence to the next-door apartment.
Better, but still lazy.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mrs. Cox asked.
I turned to the geriatric woman, something about her perfume burning my nostrils. “I’ve come to visit A-Quayla.”
Mrs. Cox scowled at the canes in my hands. “Quayla’s out of town. You’re going to have to come visit some other time.”
I met her eyes and pushed my will into the frail old landlady. “You will let me into this apartment here.”
My nostrils burned.
Mrs. Cox smiled. “Oh, of course, dear.”
She shuffled forward, pulling a massive ring of keys from her large purse. She unlocked the desired apartment, pushed the door open and stepped aside. “Anything else I can do for you, dear?”
“Stand aside.”
Mrs. Cox stepped to one side of the door frame and pushed her keys deep into her bag.
I ignored her, the feeling of Aquaylae’s essence heady.
What power would mixing her essence with mine provide my next body?
I stepped into the apartment, sweeping my gaze over the atrocious mess.
Just moved in and already a pig sty.
A ferocious battle cry offered me only enough warning to twist around. A small sickle slammed into my side, piercing a kidney and burning like molten agony. “Try to enthrall my mind, will you?”
She jerked the sickle through my gut, ducked an answering cane with shocking agility and hacked into the arm holding the weapon that barely missed her.
“You won’t get one over on Hadley Sage Cox, Faerie!”
I reeled, backpedaling from the mad little berserker. Despite the added pain, I would have normally rebalanced my essence to repair wounds without a full body transmogrification. Considering her shrieking accusation that I was a faerie, I shifted my body to pure essence to restore myself and extrude the half-moon blades from my fighting canes.
“Two weapons against one, huh?” Mrs. Cox dug a handful of something from her bag. “I don’t think so!”
I charged her only to have a handful of flung rock salt slam into me like dozens of tiny flaming comets.
That’s not possible.
She dug an old combat knife from her bag as I recovered, kicking her bag so that a handful of Edenberries rolled out of it into recesses across the floor.
My eyes fixated on the fruit.
I licked my lips.
Her sickle hacked my hand off at the wrist. The little woman leapt, bringing the Rambo knife down at my chest. “Die, faerie scum!”
I backhanded her with my stump.
The little woman left a dent in the drywall and slid to the floor, no longer a threat.
Even so, her knife had cut an eight-inch gash along my torso. Being in essence form, it shouldn’t have done anything but passed through with the essence filling back in automatically. Instead, a charred laceration scarred my liquid body.
I willed the wound to fill.
It refused.
I forced my essence to regrow the lost hand.
The stump burned but didn’t sprout a new hand.
I pushed my essence to the higher plasma energy state and tried again. My injuries refused to mend. My plasma ignited, fury burning with the same heat as the agonizing wounds.
Glaring at the broken little woman filled my mouth with the taste of hot blood. The impudent wafer had attacked me in the course of doing my duty. She would hurt for it, at least as much if not more than the injuries she’d inflicted.
I stalked across the intervening distance, raising my bladed fighting cane.
The closet door exploded outward, Anima’s voice thundering in its recesses. “Shieldheart, stop!”
Quayla
“Quayla, Vitae’s going to kill Mrs. Cox!”
Panic shot through me. I’d only partially finished the cleanup meant to protect Bradley from getting arrested for Vitae’s warehouse, but I had no doubt he’d kill the little old lady just like he had Dylan.
If I transmogrified, I still couldn’t fly across town in time to save her. That didn’t absolve me from trying, but if Foxner arrested Bradley, Vitae was as likely to abandon the mortal as kill him too.
I dropped what I was doing and sprinted across the intervening space. I scooped up Foxner on the fly and shoved her into her passenger seat, leapt into the car and drove it backward through the garage doors.
Ani will just have to send the putti to finish up for me.
I hit the sirens and broke every law I could in my haste to rescue Mrs. Cox. Slapping my thumbs on the steering wheel wasn’t enough to salve my fury. If I’d been a fire phoenix, the steering wheel would have melted beneath my grip.
If Vitae killed my landlady, I was going to steal his egg away from Dunham, stomp it to little pieces and kill Vitae and keep killing him until he stopped coming back.
Caelum
Caelum curled around the rotisserie chicken thrown at his feet just before Viviane closed him back into his cage. Up to his own devices, he’d have avoided eating another bird. His hunger insisted birds of prey ate what they wanted, even other birds. After being forced to destroy churches and fight Sidhe with almost no rest, his conscience was in no shape to go three rounds with primal instincts.
He’d managed to escape death thus far, but he was exhausted enough that the thought of filling his belly nauseated him.
Dunham descended from his bedroom and strode across the intervening distance. Caelum’s old boss didn’t waste time with the intercom, instead triggering the robotic arm on his way to Caelum’s stone.
“Put that aside, I have a task for you.”
“I may not be human, but I still need time to rest and recuperate,” Caelum said.
“I see.” Dunham drew out the control key chain and deactivated the spell keeping Caelum penned. The grip of Dunham’s hand wrapped Caelum like the hand of an iron Colossus. He drew a large caliber pistol from within his suit jacket and shot Caelum in the face.
The free essence of his former body eased Caelum’s fight to reform against the control valve at the stone basin’s bottom.
“New body, no fatigue,” Dunham said. “Problem solved with the bonus that you now resemble your old self somewhat.”
Caelum dug nails into his palms.
“Now, a conflux of major incursions is about to happen—something about an old blood debt being settled, but the thrust is that two large Sidhe forces will converge here in Atlanta to settle their differences. You’ll slay both groups.”
Caelum seethed. “Yes, Master.”
“Excellent, see to it.”