Chapter Seven

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Ann took the news of our competition better than I thought she would.

“Yeah, of course they are.” She delivered the line with such a sense of obviousness that I almost felt silly for not telling her earlier. “They want to get paid; someone wants to pay them. Supply and demand are a hell of a thing. At least there are only three of them.”

“About that,” I began, pointing out the blood drip on the map. “That’s Venice. Meaning if the Abbot doesn’t already have her, he’s well on his way. The man has more than two hundred followers, a hodgepodge collection of the homeless, vendors or employees, wealthy locals, and he has eyes everywhere. I think he might notice.”

Ann chewed her lip thoughtfully for a moment. “Well, maybe not. Think about it. Or, you know, think about it like a story, which is what I’ve started to do with all the fairly recent weirdness. So, this Abbot dude, you said his strength is mainly charisma, right? Leading the flock and all that? And Venice might be his stronghold, but that’s fairly out of the way, and it’s not close to the other locations that you’ve been to. If we’re assuming that the Coliseum was the location that the Battle Born actually escaped from and wasn’t just a random ass spot where they made them fight, then you can only track movement between here and here.”

Ann pointed out on the map the distance to the Coliseum from the Hawthorne Shopping center, which according to the map’s legend was about a ten mile straight shot through South Central LA, more or less. “So, we have questions, sure. The first question isn’t how she got from point A to point B. We don’t know how long she had to get there or even if the Coliseum was where she actually escaped from. But! Look! Hawthorne to Venice! How far is that?”

Standing behind her and looking over her shoulder, I followed the trail she made with her finger from the abandoned mall to the little blood dot. “Maybe twelve miles? Assuming you go around the marina and you don’t swim through it, we’re talking fourteen or fifteen miles, so what?”

“So consider the clues! How did she get there? She’s being hunted, right? So she’s not going to sprint through the city, no matter what time of day it is. It’s why she was hiding in the first place. And we know she doesn’t have access to Lyft or Uber, no means of income to pay a taxi unless she mugged someone, so maybe, but for my own mental health let’s assume not. No friends even, she’s lived a life of captivity. And we know she wasn’t in a hotel, she was in a condemned structure. And if you add the hour and a half it took for me to get to you, the hour or so it took to get home, and thirty minutes we spent chasing a map, we know exactly how long she had to get across town.”

“And she was injured, besides, I poked a hole in her,” I remarked.

“Yeah! If anything, that really should have slowed her down. So what do we know?”

“She couldn’t have made it on foot,” I thought out loud.

“Which means she either had help, or someone picked her up!” Ann exclaimed. “And don’t forget, even injured she almost killed you. So what are a bunch of cult members going to do? It would make sense that the Abbot sent out his followers all over the city, but individually they don’t stand a chance, do they?”

“No, but the Abbot himself might,” I mused. “As little power as he has, he still possesses a measure of magic, and we don’t know what sort of tricks he could have planned for this. So that means that the Abbot himself captured the Battle Born or...”

I trailed off, and Ann let the statement hang in the air for a moment before finishing for me. “She got a ride there! One more thing we both noticed. The food. Dozens of snack cakes! Where did they come from?”

“She could have grabbed a whole box of them off a delivery truck at a supermarket, not knowing what she was getting.”

“Maybe. Or it could have been delivered.”

I had thought that could be the case, but no, there was no evidence to support that. “Possible, but we should stick to facts, for now, so ignore the food. The Battle Born was bleeding out here, and a few hours later she’s here. And she’s not—”

I didn’t feel my legs give out from underneath me as much as I experienced the sensation of losing a fight with gravity as I collapsed to the floor. Ann started to say something, but I waved her off before she could get too excited. “It’s nothing, just a little weak from earlier. Perhaps this should wait until morning.”

Nervous eyes scanned my body and searched my eyes before Ann offered a curt nod. “The map is... we don’t have to worry about doing this again, it’s tuned to her now. We can follow her anywhere she goes as long as it’s on the map. Just... sleep, I guess?”

“Yes, bright and early tomorrow, I’ll be good as new.”

* * *

I was terrified of falling into another trance knowing what I’d see and remembering how little control I had with the last one, so I decided to fall back on that old adage: When in Thousand Oaks, sleep as the humans do. I didn’t get more than four hours of rest, but it would have to do. At any rate, the couch wasn’t as comfortable as I would have liked, and I was confident that I was awake before Ann. Hearing no noise from the bedroom at the top of the steps, I retrieved the now-charged phone, which was on loan from Alistair, from the kitchen counter, and I walked to the back door and looked out at pre-dawn colors and sparse lighting. This far out of the city, I was able to enjoy at least the idea of the sky. The descending color gradient of mostly starless black, fading into a navy blue with a thin horizon of a glowing golden orange with just a hint of burnt red underneath. It was calming. It wouldn’t last. The sun would obliterate this portrait soon; the sun would come up despite any efforts to the contrary.

The phone made a sound effect announcing that its coming to life was a matter of some importance, and my eyes left the sunrise to the phone and then to the wards I’d placed next to the sliding glass door as well as the other doors and windows in the house. I frowned. They weren’t set by a practicing magic user, no invisible webs of spells. Just blessed sprigs of holly and minor sigils etched into wood carvings. A whole lot of good they’d done to prevent my current situation. They may very well have even garnered the attention of someone like Alistair, and they wouldn’t be needed for the things they’d actually work against. And for the things that may give me real trouble they’d be at best a minor irritant.

On the one hand, having never had access to magic, I’d never grown reliant on it. But when you’re up against a remorseless, sociopath wizard, god spawns, and an entire bloody organization of reality-bending idiots, or to put it another way, up against the wall; it’s easy to feel like a stick and string might not be enough, no matter how many times making pincushions out of enemies had worked in the past.

Just then the phone lit up for the second time, and when I answered, the voice on the other end of the line reminded me of exactly how satisfying making pincushions could be.

“Did you really have your phone turned off?” Alistair demanded. “Because last I checked, I asked you to be on bloody call! If I have to—”

“Oh sod off, yeah?” I exclaimed into the phone, temporarily forgetting the hour. I hadn’t slept well and every bad thing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours could be directly attributed to him. “I’m in no mood.”

“Well, you’d best get in the mood, because—”

“Because what?” I cut him off a second time, knowing exactly how infuriating that would be to him. “Because you’ll poison my friend? A bit late on that one, eh?”

I could hear the controlled breaths through the phone before Alistair responded to that question. “Because it sure would be a shame if a certain bookstore burned to the ground in the middle of the night, and I’d hate to think that your courtesy was the sole thing that could have prevented that tragedy. Why, I even hear someone is living in there!”

A throaty laugh escaped my body in spite of myself. “Oh gods, I’d love to see you try, I really would! You mean to tell me you’d attack someone under the direct protection of Abarta? And that’s not to mention the deal she just struck with Freyja, if you can believe it. And before you feign surprise, let’s not kid ourselves and pretend you didn’t know. Come to think of it, for as much of a crash as she might be headed for, Elana Black may very well be the safest person in the world at the moment. That goes for her friends, by the way, in case you thought of a second clever plan. No, you’re greedy, but you’re not suicidal.”

“If any of that were true, then why aren’t the gods raining hellfire and plagues all around me right this minute, eh? Where’s that white-hot fury you’re so keen to promise me?”

The frustration and anger were rising in Alistair’s voice, and if he hurried, those levels might just reach mine. This wasn’t the conversation he expected when he called, but it was undoubtedly the one he was getting. “No, you know what? I’m glad you asked because there’s something you’d better know from this moment on. The only reason I’ve agreed to your deal is because what’s done is done. By the time you’ve been relieved of the burden of having limbs, I’ll be chancing that I can save my friend without your antidote and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take at the moment. You enjoy this small victory while it lasts because this is the only one you’re going to get. If you so much as dream about any of them after our business is concluded, there won’t be enough of you left over to dust off of my boots! Are we clear?”

I gave Alistair a whole four seconds to respond, and all he managed were a couple of angry snorts where words had failed him. “That’s about what I expected. Now if you’re interested in my getting back to work, I’ll thank you to hang up and maybe get into a staring contest with a gorgon if you still feel the need to bother someone.”

The screen glowed as I took the phone away from my face and hung up the phone before Alistair could respond. I was certain he was incensed wherever he was; he might have even come up with a clever comeback by now. There was something cathartic about telling Alistair off and taking away whatever sense of power he might have had. The mere sound of his voice or the mention of his name was enough to make me tense up and ready to chew through a cinder block. And yet, putting him off his game, letting him know that he didn’t hold all the cards was, well, it was the sort of dull endorphin rush you might get from popping a dislocated shoulder back into place.

I missed the sunrise. At least the best part of it. I’d been so focused on the call that the brief, almost insubstantial amount of time came and went. Two minutes that would have made the day that much more tolerable came and went. Perfect timing on Alistair’s score, if that was his intention. It wouldn’t surprise me.

“Telemarketers?” Ann called from the top of the stairs with a yawn that she made no attempt to hide.

My face flushed at that and I sighed, tossing the phone onto the counter without a care for its state when it landed. “I’m sorry, my friend, I didn’t think I’d wake you.”

“For real? I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard you in Venice.”

“It was Alistair,” I admitted.

“Yeah, I gathered. So we’re up now, I guess. Besides coffee, what’s our plan?”

“Our plan?”

“Yeah, our plan. How are we doing this?”

“We aren’t doing anything,” I said bluntly. “Unless you’ve lost your reservations about dying before thirty, you’re staying put. You’re already dying, so let’s not expedite the process, shall we?”

“Oh hell no!” Ann’s voice rose in a challenge that nearly took me off guard. I still wasn’t in the mood to deal with anyone, but that didn’t slow Ann down in the slightest.

She stomped down the stairs, trying to put as much of her weight into each step as she could. “This is still my life we’re talking about, isn’t it? And I know you’re not a hypocrite, so you must have an excellent reason why you overruled Elana last year when I wanted to enter the Knowing for the first time, but now you’re saying it’s not my choice.”

“That was entirely different!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, totally different!” Ann shouted back in mock agreement. “That was a god powered nightmare shaped like a horse, and this god powered nightmare is shaped like a person! Are you kidding me?”

“Enough of this!” I roared back. “You’re the pupil, I’m the teacher, and you do as I say, understand?”

“Like hell!”

Well, if there was one thing to be learned here, it was that Ann wasn’t going to just back down from a challenge, and I clearly hadn’t done enough to put the fear in her.

“You see this? Look at the necklace! I’m already down a petal, so I guess it’s getting real now so no, you’re not going to scare me with loud words. The clock is ticking, and I’m not going to debate this with you. My life and I’m in. And if you want some real talk? As far as I’m concerned, having to wake you up in the middle of Hawthorne after you nearly had your head knocked off your shoulders tells me that maybe this just might not be something you can handle on your own. Which means I’m not only backing you up for your sake, but for mine. Because if you die, I also die and then we both died for nothing. And besides, say you get the cure and can’t get back to me in time? I don’t know how long I have, so I’m sticking close until this whole thing is done! And...! And...!”

She was really on a roll there for a bit, and I didn’t expect her to run out of steam so quickly, but she either couldn’t leave well enough alone or her mouth just hadn’t caught up with her brain. “And?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“And I have a car!” The enthusiastic retort lacked the confidence of everything else she had said.

Some of the tension left my shoulders as I stifled a laugh. “You have a car? That’s it?”

“Well, yeah! Think about it. You just yelled at Alistair. How much longer is going to let you run up his ride sharing bills?”

It was a valid, but an unexpected point. “I can drive, you know.”

“And what? Does the DMV issue driver’s licenses to centuries-old mythical beings?”

I could have told her that I had an entire fake identity set up, complete with a social security number and a credit score, but I was starting to feel an odd mixture of generous and willing to prove a point the hard way. “You know something? You’re right. You want to come with me and face down lunatic cultists and who the hell knows what else, then why not? Maybe you’ll show me how it’s all done and I’ll learn something from you for once.”

“Maybe you will!” Ann yelled back, and the two of us stood in an uncomfortable silence followed as we stared each other down.

Ann was the first to break the silence with a shout that lacked some of the fury of earlier parts of our debate. “I’m not actually mad at you, and I didn’t expect you to agree with me, and now I don’t know how to move forward!”

I laughed at that with genuine mirth, all traces of authority wiped clean from my face. Ann nearly laughed at my laughter, looking unsure of how to not be fierce. “Oh gods, I don’t know why I agreed to train you!” I said, shaking my head.

“I don’t know either!” she agreed.

“You’re an absolute maniac. In some ways you’re worse than her, you know? I thought Elana was bad, but I don’t think she’d yell at me like that.”

“That’s because Elana is Gabrielle, the well-meaning sidekick and I am Xena, the badass warrior princess!”

“Oh really?” I asked doubtfully.

“Yeah, I can almost fire an arrow and everything. Soon armies will tremble at the name Ann Bancroft.”

“All right then, while you get the map, I’ll get the coffee. Does the warrior princess still take cream and sugar?”

“Ooh! No! Hot cocoa if we still have it! With whipped cream, please?”

Incredible. I shook my head incredulously as I looked through the cupboards. Ready to fight for her life one minute and sounding like a kid on Christmas the next. Challenging me at the crack of dawn as we’re getting prepped to hunt a one-woman army while she’s literally dying of an unknown poison, about to fight the gods only know what or who in the process, and she wants hot chocolate.

“The blood hasn’t moved,” Ann called out from the living room. “So, we’re going to fight the god blood person now?”

I carried our mugs back into the living room, Ann’s complete with a floating dollop of whipped cream precariously bobbing at the rim. “Eventually, perhaps, but not right away.” The end of that sentence clung to the air as I took a deliberately slow sip of my coffee, watching the anticipation build on my friend’s face. I knew how much the second half of my statement was going to excite her, and I wanted to savor the moment. “First, we’re going to see a witch.”

***