Magic Triumphs

CHAPTER 12

“IT WILL BE okay,” Roman told me from the passenger seat.

I took the turn too fast. The Jeep jumped over a protruding root. The trees on both sides of the road stood so thick, it was like driving through a green tunnel. The witch forest thrived during magic waves.

“I sat by that damn fire for two hours. I fed enough magic into it to wake the dead. I screamed myself hoarse.”

“Parents,” Roman said. “Can’t live with them. Can’t kill them. You call, they don’t pick up. You don’t call, they get offended. Then they chew a hole in your head because you’re a bad son.”

“He is a bad father!” I snarled.

“Okay,” Roman said, his voice soothing. “Of course he is. Be reasonable. This is the guy who ordered his own grandson killed. Nobody is saying that he is a good father. All I’m saying is that parents don’t like being yelled at. He knows you’re upset and he doesn’t want to take your calls.”

“That’s family business. This is an outsider attacking us. This is different!”

Roman sighed. “I get it. I really do. Have you tried pleading? Maybe cry a little? That way he would know it was safe to take the call, and he would swoop in like a savior. Parents love to play saviors.”

I glared at him.

He raised his hands. “All I’m saying is when I need to talk to my dad, I don’t call him and scream at him because he got into a drunken brawl with Perun’s volhv, and Perun’s idiot kid followers decided to Taser Chernobog’s idol in his shrine, because that’s the closest they can come to lightning, and now my god wants them all murdered. I call and say, ‘Hey, Dad, I know you’re busy, but I’ve got a serious situation on my hands and I need your advice.’ Just try my way. I bet it will work.”

“Where the hell is this damn camp?”

“Make a right at the next fork.”

I took the next turn. The Jeep screeched, protesting the bumpy road. It was just me, the woods, and the black volhv. I’d sent Julie back. I’d wanted to bring her, but Roman had dug his heels in. According to him, he’d had to cash in all his favors, and that would only cover him and me.

“I feel like we’re driving in circles.”

“We are. They’re deciding if they’re going to let us in.”

I brought the Jeep to a halt and parked.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t have time for druid shenanigans.”

I shut the engine off, opened the passenger door, and stepped out.

“This is a mistake,” Roman told me.

I looked up into the treetops. “You know me,” I called out. “You know who I am and what I do. I brought you a name today. Neig. Neig the Undying. The legend. I spoke to him and he is coming for all of us. I need to know who he is.”

The trees didn’t respond.

I waited. The forest churned with life. Squirrels fussed at each other. A woodpecker drummed a steady staccato somewhere to the left. Things rustled in the underbrush.

Nothing.

I got back into the Jeep. The witch forest was outside my borders. The land called to me. It needed to be claimed and protected. All that magic, stretching to me. All that life, vulnerable to outside threats. I could claim it and flush the Druids out like foxes out of their flooded burrow.

That was a hell of a thought.

I’d had over two years to deal with having claimed the city. I’d learned to manage the craving for more, but some days the urge to take land, to make it my own, gripped me. My aunt called it the Shar. The need to hold and protect. It was bred into our family to make us better rulers. Most of my now-deceased relatives had been taught how to handle it in childhood. I’d had to deal with it as an adult, and it almost drove me off a cliff. I’d beaten it, but once in a while, when it reared its ugly head, I had to beat it back again.

I wouldn’t be claiming anything today. I would chant the engine back into life, and Roman and I would go home.

“Huh,” Roman said. “I take back what I said. Your way is faster.”

I looked up. A palisade rose in the middle of what a moment ago was dense forest. Huge trees formed its wall, their trunks perfectly straight and touching each other. A gate reinforced with iron and bristling with spikes guarded the entrance. Dark blood stained the tips of the four-foot spikes.

The gate shuddered and slid aside.

“We need to hurry now,” Roman said, grabbing a duffel bag, “before they change their mind.”

We walked to the gates. A Caucasian man in his forties stood in the center, leaning on a staff. He wore plain trousers, boots, and no shirt. Blue whorls and symbols, painted in blue ink, decorated his muscled torso. His headdress, made of a grizzly’s head, gave him another six inches of height. His face fit right between the bear’s jaws. If I fought him, I’d come from the side. His peripheral vision had to be shit with all that fur.

The man glared at us, looking like he was about to roar and unleash a Pictish horde. The last time I saw him, he’d worn a snow-white robe and was groomed like he was about to attend a white-tie event. He’d been smiling at some children at the Solstice Festival and handing out candied fruit with the other druids as part of their community outreach.

Hi, we’re druids. We wear pretty white clothes, hand out sweets, and teach about honoring trees and forests. Look at us, all gentle and nonthreatening. We’d never strip naked, paint ourselves with battle symbols, and dance around in the woods with savage weapons and fur headdresses. Yeah, right. No wonder they didn’t want anyone to come to their masquerades in the woods.

“Is that Grand Druid Drest?”

“Uh-huh,” Roman murmured. “Watch what you say.”

“I always watch what I say.”

“If the words ‘I didn’t know you were having a fancy dress-up party, pity I wasn’t invited’ come out of your lips, I’ll turn around and go home. And that’s a promise.”

“Killjoy.”

“These are my colleagues from work. I have to have a good relationship with these people.”

“Okay, okay.”

Next to the Grand Druid stood a woman. She was about two inches shorter than me, with bronze skin and thick wavy brown hair. She wore an outfit of fur and carried a spear. Judging by the definition on her arms, she could use it, too.

“What about her?” I murmured.

“Jennifer Ruidera.” He pronounced “Ruidera” like “Rivera,” but with a D sound.

“What does she do?”

“You don’t want to find out. And call her Jenn.”

My luck with women named Jennifer wasn’t exactly great, so “Jenn” would work just fine.

Behind the pair stretched a camp. People walked back and forth, some naked, some clothed, most painted. Weapons waited in racks. The magic was so thick that if it were fog, we wouldn’t be able to see past three feet. Here was hoping there were no wicker men present, because if they tried to sacrifice someone or something by burning them alive, I wouldn’t be able to sit on my hands, professional relationship or not.

Drest met my gaze. “You said Neig.”

“Yes.”

He looked at Jenn. She shrugged. “Anything is possible.”

Two men joined us, one old and stooped, wearing an ankle-length tunic, his white beard stretching down to his waist. The other was in his thirties and looked like he got his exercise by tossing cows into the air for fun.

Roman bowed. I did, too.

Drest held up one finger to us and turned to the old man. “This woman says she spoke with Neig.”

“Ah?” the old man asked.

“Neig!” Drest repeated.

“I can’t hear you. Stop mumbling.”

Drest sucked in a lungful of air. “SHE SAYS SHE SPOKE TO NEIG!”

People stopped what they were doing and stared at us. Drest waved them off.

“Neig?” The old druid peered at him. “Oh, that’s not good.”

Drest looked like he wanted to slap himself. “Brendan, he has to wear his hearing aid when he comes to the rites.”

Brendan raised hands the size of shovels. “What do you want me to do? Sit on him and shove it into his ear? He takes it out. He says he wants to be one with nature.”

“Aha!” a male voice called out.

I turned. A man was striding toward us. Thin and painted with blue, he wore a cloak of crow feathers and carried a large black chicken.

Drest’s face drooped.

“I told you I had a vision about it,” the chicken man announced. “I told you last Thursday. I said Neig is coming. And you said, ‘Alpin, stop sacrificing your chickens. Stop putting yourself into a trance, stop looking at the entrails, and stop calling me in the middle of the night.’ You said that if I couldn’t fall asleep, I needed to drink a beer and suck it up.”

“He’s right,” Jenn said. “You need to leave those chickens alone. It’s unnatural.”

“For the last time, I don’t sacrifice chickens,” Alpin declared.

“I saw a dead chicken in your kitchen last week,” Brendan told him.

“I was going to cook it for dinner. I bought it at the market! I don’t eat my friends. I like to have them, because they help me with astral projection. Their squawking is soothing.”

Jenn dragged her hand over her face.

Roman cleared his throat.

Drest looked at him.

Roman unzipped the duffel bag and held it open for me. I took the box out.

The druids took a step back in unison. Only Jenn remained. She reached out, touched the box, and withdrew her hand.

“Open it,” Drest said.

I opened the lid.

They peered at the contents. The old druid reached out, ever so slowly, his ancient hand shaking, grasped some ash between his fingers, and let it fall back into the box. His face went slack. He looked like he was about to weep.

“It will be all right, Grandfather,” Drest said gently. “It will be all right.”

“Everything will burn,” the old man said. “He will set the world on fire.”

“No, he won’t.” Drest nodded to Brendan, and the big man gently steered the elderly druid away.

Drest turned to me. “Put it away.”

I did.

“Come with me.”

He led us deeper into the camp. “What did Neig say when you spoke to him?”

“He told me that he gave the world a break, but now he is back, and he is going to conquer it. We think he has a place outside of time, like Morrighan’s mists. We’ve had people disappear, whole settlements. Serenbe and Ruby in Milton County. He took them, killed them, and boiled them to extract their bones. Any idea why he would be doing that?”

Jenn shook her head. “No. But he is a crafty old bastard. If he’s doing that, it isn’t for anything good.”

Alpin just looked like he would collapse at any moment.

We reached the back of the camp. A big slab of rock protruded from the ground, one side polished and covered in Pictish symbols. Kudzu had climbed it, covering the top. An outline of Ireland and the British Isles was carved in the corner. Drest pointed to Ireland.

“First came the sorceress Cessair and her people. They inhabit the isle for a bit, then die out. Then comes Partholon and his people. They start farming, fishing, building houses. Then in one week they all die of plague.”

“Then comes Nemed,” I said. I had brushed up on British magic history. Most people thought it was one-tenth history, and the rest was equally myth, wishful thinking, and bullshit, but I’d read it all the same.

Roman threw me a cautious look.

“The correct name is N-e-i-m-h-e-a-d-h,” Jenn said. “When you pronounce it correctly, it sounds like . . .”

“Neig,” Drest finished.

Only Celts would use nine letters to make one sound.

“He called himself that because he wanted people to think he was holy.” Jenn sneered. “Neig of the skies. Neig the unkillable. Neig the mighty.”

Drest snorted. “He conquers Ireland and moves on to Scotland.”

“That’s not how the legend goes,” I said.

“Legends are often wrong. This isn’t legend,” Alpin said softly. “It’s our history.”

“He steals babies and turns them into his army,” Drest continued. “The Picts fight him, until he pushes them all the way to the eastern edge of Scotland. There is nowhere to go but the sea and the Scottish cliffs. So, they outsmart him. They build the standing stones. There are many kinds. Some warp the magic around them; they are the curving kind. Others sound an alarm; they are the warning kind. And so on.”

He pointed to the carvings on the surface of the stone. “The curving stones hide the villages. Neig’s troops can’t find the settlements so he can’t find the settlements, and if he does, the shielding stones give people protection long enough to escape.”

“What do the symbols mean?” I asked.

“Disc and rectangle,” Alpin said. “The settlement has a warning stone that will let others know when Neig is coming. The crescent and V-rod means the shield is holding over the settlement. Don’t fire arrows at it even if Neig is coming because they won’t pierce it. Disc and rectangle means the settlement has the sun disc to signal for help.”

They were explanatory signs. Like traffic signals. So bloody simple.

“Double disc and Z-rod?” I asked. “He signed the box with it.”

Alpin grimaced. “He picked that symbol for himself. His troops would mark things with it to remind you of what happens when you disobey him.”

“What is it?”

“Shackles,” Jenn said. “Neig doesn’t have servants. Only slaves.”

Alpin traced the outline of the symbol on the stone. “When you see it with the broken arrow, it means here Neig can’t see you. Here you are free.”

“What about this one?” Roman asked, pointing at another symbol, which looked vaguely like a flower.

“Bagpipes,” Drest said.

“What do bagpipes have to do with anything?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Bagpipes were battle music.”

“He would’ve killed everyone eventually,” Jenn told us. “But then the Fomorians invaded and kept him busy. They killed his wife. His children he either killed himself or ran off.”

“He doesn’t like competition.” Drest grimaced. “His brother tried to fight him, lost, and sailed off with his own portion of the army. They got their asses kicked somewhere in Europe. Only one ship came back.”

“What about the Tuatha Dé Danann?” I asked.

“They made a bargain with Neig,” Drest said. “Gave him tribute. By that point he’d moved on to Scotland, anyway. Bigger place. More land. He had both islands before he was done.”

“How did your ancestors beat him?” Roman asked.

“They didn’t.” Drest’s face was grim. “They outlasted him. Eventually the magic fell, and one day he disappeared. He’d clawed himself a lair outside our world and took his hoard and army with him. Occasionally, he’d raid while the magic held. You never knew when or where he’d pop out. Our people were so scared of him, they kept building curving stones centuries after he went dormant.”

“In all that time, nobody managed to get close enough to hurt him?” I asked. “I understand he has fire magic, but I fought Morfran and I met Morrighan. You’re telling me nobody could get to this guy?”

“You don’t get it,” Drest said.

“Show her,” Jenn told him.

Drest touched the kudzu. It rolled back, creeping up and over. The stone lay bare. I looked at the carving in the top of it. My insides went cold.

“Neig isn’t a man,” Alpin said softly.

“He is a dragon,” I whispered.

A colossal dragon reared up on the battlefield, the figures of fighters tiny next to him. A cone of churning flame tore out of his mouth, disintegrating the palisade.

That was whom I’d felt in the clouds above me. That was why he’d tried to kill Yu Fong. Goose bumps ran up my arms.

“But his magic is blue,” I said. “Like a human.”

“All dragon magic is blue,” Alpin said.

“Everyone knows that,” Jenn said.

“Neig will never find us,” Drest told me. “We have curving stones. But you, you’re fucked.”

ROMAN AND I didn’t talk until we reached the city.

“It could be metaphorical,” he finally said.

“It’s not.” I told him about Yu Fong. “Everything we ever read about dragons suggests they are highly territorial. He felt Yu Fong and tried to take out the competition.”

“But he was in human shape when you saw him. So, what, he can shapeshift?”

“I don’t know.”

“Aspid can’t shapeshift,” Roman said. “It’s a blessing too, or he would follow me everywhere, licking me. That would be weird.”

Aspid, an enormous black serpent-dragon who belonged to Chernobog, had a deep, all-encompassing puppy love for Roman, which he expressed by wrapping his tongue around the black volhv.

“We need to call an emergency Conclave,” I said.

The Conclave had started as a way to avoid conflicts between the Pack and the People, but in an emergency, every magical faction in the city came to it. It would take everyone to fight something like this off.

Roman raised his black eyebrows. “And tell them that we’re about to get invaded by a dragon?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have any evidence,” Roman said.

He was right. Yu Fong was still in a coma, Beau Clayton and his deputies only saw Neig as a human, and the Druids wouldn’t back me up in public. They barely even came to the Conclave. I would need evidence. Something more than visions of fire and carved rocks.

At the very least I had to warn the Pack and the People. With those two, my word would be sufficient. I had to call Nick, too.

“Let me out here,” Roman said.

I pulled over.

“I’ll talk to the volhvs and the witches,” Roman said. “But talk is cheap. We need evidence. Witnesses.”

“I know. Do you believe me that it’s a dragon?”

“Yes,” Roman said. “I believe you. But not because of the Picts and rocks. I believe you because you’re you. I don’t need to see it. It’s enough for me that you believe it’s a dragon. But it won’t be enough for others.”

“I know.”

“It will be okay.”

I doubted that, but nodded anyway.

“Don’t kill yourself.”

Oh, for the love of . . . “Will you stop with that?”

He shook his finger at me. “Don’t do it. I’m watching you.”

“Get out of my car.”

I drove straight to Cutting Edge. Neig was right about one thing: he was legend. Over the years, legends became warped. They grew and evolved as they were passed from one generation to the next. Everyone “knew” that dragons hoarded treasure, lived in mountain caves, breathed fire, and killed their rivals. But how much of that was true was anybody’s guess.

Was there even a point in trying to research? Most of what Drest had told us was considered to be myth. And it was distorted by Christianity. As Christianity had crept across the Middle East and Europe, the priests had realized that fighting old pagan ideas would doom the new religion. They were too deeply ingrained. So instead, Christianity adopted them, incorporating them into their rites, borrowing everything from Christmas and Easter to the idea of the immortal soul that separated from the physical body at death. Christianity tied the timeline of ancient Ireland to Noah’s descendants and the flood. None of it would be helpful in figuring out Neig.

I drove into our parking lot and maneuvered the Jeep into the parking space. Mine was the only car. The kids and Curran were gone.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Over the years, Cutting Edge had become my fortress. Like my house, it was a place where I could take my sword off my back. I unbuckled the sheath and dropped it on my desk. I opened the fridge, took a pitcher of iced tea out, and poured myself a glass. I’d done this hundreds of times before. There was comfort in the ritual and I needed comfort today, because the dragon had knocked me off my stride.

How the hell do you fight a dragon? How large was he, exactly? If the carving on the stone was to scale, we were in deep shit. I could just imagine the conversation around the Conclave table. So what evidence do you have of this dragon? Well, there is this overgrown rock in the magic druid camp. You can’t see this rock or find this druid camp, but take my word for it. Ugh.

Someone knocked on my door.

“Come in,” I called.

The door swung open. Knight-abettor Norwood stepped through, followed by the two other knights. Just what I needed.

I leaned on my elbow. “The Holy Trinity. Come in, don’t be shy. Grab a chair.”

“You’re disrespectful,” the Hispanic woman told me.

“I’m so sorry, I should’ve used your names. So rude of me. You take the chair on the right, Larry, and Moe and Curly can sit over there.”

The Hispanic woman opened her mouth. Knight-abettor Norwood glanced at her and she clamped her jaws shut.

Right. So, there was a script. They weren’t sure what I was capable of and they wanted to find out, so they picked her to bait me. Bad idea.

The knights sat.

“Please let me introduce my colleagues. Knight-diviner Younger and Knight-striker Cabrera.”

My guardian, Greg Feldman, was a knight-diviner during his life. They didn’t always practice divination. They served as a cross between psychiatrists and priests and possessed a unique ability to “read” people. They were the Order’s confessors and the advocates for the individual knights. A knight-striker was the Order’s equivalent of a bazooka. Nice. Diplomacy and force, the knight-abettor had both sides covered.

“Kate Lennart.”

“I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” Norwood said.

“How?”

“The Order is interested in ascertaining the state of things in Atlanta.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You are a power in Atlanta.”

“The.”

He blinked.

“I’m the power in Atlanta,” I told him. “I claimed the city as my own.”

“Wow,” Cabrera said. “Humble, aren’t you?”

“You came here looking for clarity. I’m clearing things up for you.”

“What does that mean?” Norwood leaned forward, focusing on me.

“It means that when something sufficiently large and dangerous threatens the city, like my father trying to invade, I will use Atlanta’s magic to protect it.”

“So Atlanta has personal magic?” Cabrera snorted.

I ignored her.

“Well, does it? Is Atlanta a person?” she pressed.

“I don’t have the time or the inclination to educate you,” I told her. “The Mage College is up the street and over the bridge. If you go by there, I’m sure they’ll bring you up to speed.”

“Do you rule Atlanta?” the blond diviner asked.

“No.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Atlanta is doing fine on its own without my leadership. We have a democratically elected government, and I have no intention of interfering with it.”

“If you claimed Atlanta, why don’t you stop the crime here?” Cabrera asked. Her eyes were calculating. She was asking leading questions they already knew the answers to. They wanted confirmation that I wasn’t omnipotent and omniscient.

“Because it’s not my responsibility to stop crime. We have a well-funded police department, GBI headquarters, and local sheriff departments, not including a number of private organizations, like the Guild, the Red Guard, and, of course, the Order.”

“But could you stop all crime?” Younger asked.

“Nobody can stop all crime, knight-diviner. You, of all people, should know that.”

Norwood studied me. “The Order is interested in forging a relationship of cooperation and mutual understanding.”

“I already have a relationship of mutual understanding with the Order.”

“Really?” Norwood asked.

“Yes. Nick thinks I’m fruit from the poisoned tree and hates my family, and I tolerate his assholeness because occasionally I need the Order’s help. Nick and I understand each other very well.”

“We find that people tend to be more productive in a less hostile environment,” Norwood said.

I sighed. “Okay, so the Order would like to be friendlier. Great. What do you know about dragons?”

“What?” Cabrera asked.

“Dragons. Weaknesses, habits, how one might possibly go about killing one?”

“That information is classified,” Norwood said.

“And here we are. When it comes down to it, there isn’t much you can do because you have regulations that bind you. You divide your world into humans and nonhumans, and your definition of human is so circumscribed, your influence is collapsing. I sympathize. It’s hard to fight with your arms tied behind your back, but it’s not my problem. You are not my problem, unless you make yourself into one.”

Cabrera opened her mouth.

I didn’t wait for her. “Go back to Wolf Trap. Nick and I have a working relationship. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. I don’t need him to be my friend. I need him to put manpower on the field when it counts.”

“Nikolas Feldman will be replaced,” Norwood said.

“That’s the Order I know. Always putting appearances above the welfare of their knights.”

“What actions will you take if Feldman is removed?” the knight-diviner asked.

“I will bar the Order from having a chapter in Atlanta.”

“You can’t do that,” Cabrera said.

“I can, and I will. I’m tired of your turnover problems. I prefer to work with Nick. After everything Moynohan put him through, he deserves to have his own chapter. His performance is exemplary. You want to get rid of him because he’s politically inconvenient, go ahead. But don’t put lipstick on a pig and pretend it’s on my account. If you take him out, I promise you, the new chapter of the Order won’t be welcome in Atlanta.”

“You’re a nobody,” Cabrera said, biting off words. “You’re all talk. I can feel your magic. It’s nothing.”

The phone rang. I held up my hand and picked it up. “Kate Lennart.”

“Conlan escaped,” Curran said.

“What?”

“He shifted and ran away from Martha. They are chasing him now, but they’re too far behind. He’s coming toward you.”

Our son was out in the open, with sahanu all around the city.

I focused on the magic around me, stretching through the arcane power drenching the city. Where are you, baby? Where . . .

A bright spark moved through the magic. Conlan! He wasn’t far.

I grabbed my sword and dashed out the door. The three knights sprinted after me.

I ran like I’ve never run before in my life. Streets flew by. I turned, guided by magic, focused on the brilliant glowing drop of magic. I was almost on top of him. A deserted street lay in front of me. On the left, the shell of a building waited, its first floor all empty brick arches. The entire building lay exposed, its roof gone long ago, the arches at the far end dark and shadowy.

Conlan was in there.

Someone had cleared most of the debris, pushing it into a large pile at the far end and a smaller one to the right, outside the building. Not a lot of places to hide.

I walked to the building. Behind me the knights rounded the corner.

“Conlan?” I called. “It’s Mommy.”

A small creature exploded out of the pile and jumped into my arms, shifting in midleap into a human baby. I hugged him to me. My heart was beating so fast, it was about to jump out of my chest.

“Mama!”

“What were you thinking, you little idiot?” I squeezed him to me.

Big gray eyes looked at me, wet with tears. “Bad.” He sniffed. “Bad.”

Oh no. “Where? Where is the bad thing, Conlan? Show me.”

He buried his face in my chest.

Something moved within the building, deep in the shadowy arches on the other side.

The sahanu had stalked my son. They’d found him and scared him, and he ran across the city to me.

They’d scared my son in my domain. Never again.

A splash of magic landed within the arches and died. I see you.

A vampire landed next to me, smeared in grape-purple sunblock. “We found the sahanu,” it said in Javier’s voice. “In-Shinar, do you require assistance?”

A second vamp dropped on my other side.

“Yes.” I thrust Conlan into Javier’s vamp’s arms. “Protect my child.”

The vampire took my son.

I grasped the second vamp’s mind. The navigator let go.

I unsheathed Sarrat, dropped the sheath on the ground, and marched into the building, the undead at my heels. The sahanu waited for me in the arches. I felt them. The damn building had too many holes.

“I see you.” My voice spread through the building. Fury boiled inside me, blotting out everything else. “I see all of you.”

I yanked the magic to me. Words of power burst from my lips, the pain barely registering. I’d had a lot of practice.

“Ranar kair.” Come to me.

Magic ripped from me like a tidal wave. The arches rained sahanu, my power tearing them out of their hidey-holes and throwing them to the ground. I saw familiar faces in that split second: Gust, pale, green hair, air magic, twin swords; Carolina, seven feet tall, brown-skinned, chain mail, hammer, muscles like a champion weightlifter; Arsenic, bright red hair, wrapped in diaphanous cloth like a mummy, poisonous to the touch. Fourteen sahanu. They had all come for my son. All except Razer.

I sliced the back of my left forearm and slammed the cut against the side of the building. My blood shot out in a hair-thin stream, running along the walls, across the open spaces of the arches, across bricks and holes until it touched itself, completing the circle. A translucent red wall burst into existence and vanished, the blood ward sealing itself.

One of the sahanu, a lean dark-haired man, leaped, aiming to escape through one of the arches, and fell back from the ward. The assassins turned toward me. They finally realized the truth: they were trapped in here with me.

“There is no escape.” I crushed the vamp’s mind. Its skull exploded. The undead blood surged out of it, obeying my call, mixing with my own.

“Don’t let her don the armor!” Carolina screamed.

They charged me.

I vomited a power word. “Osanda!”

They crashed to the ground. Carolina tried to crawl to me, but my magic clamped her down.

The mist of undead blood settled over me, flowing, shaped by my will, turning into armor. It coated my arms, my stomach, my back, impenetrable but flexible, the color of a ruby, the color of my blood. The mist congealed on Sarrat, forming a blood edge. I felt all my chains fall away. All the brakes were gone.

The drained vamp fell next to me. I charged.

The first sahanu tried to counter and I cut him in half with one swing. Carolina came at me, swinging her hammer. I sidestepped and cut off her arm at the elbow. She screamed, and I added a second mouth across her navel to put her down. A woman stabbed my back with her spear. A jolt of pain ripped through me as the armor absorbed the impact. I spun and beheaded her.

Gust dropped from above, diving with his blades.

I spat a focused blast of magic at him. “Hessad.” Mine.

His mind broke under the pressure like a cracked walnut. He landed, mine before his feet touched the ground.

“Amehe,” I ordered, sending a sharp arrow of power through him. Obey.

In front of me Arsenic spat a power word. I flattened my magic into a shield and it glanced off. “Kill!” I told Gust.

The green-haired sahanu sprinted at Arsenic, his twin blades raised for the kill. The other assassin twisted out of the way, sprouting spikes on his arms.

Gust whirled like a dervish. The spikes pierced him in the same moment he buried his left sword in Arsenic’s chest. They sank to the ground together, but I was already moving. The world faded to the vivid precision of battle. Every moment mattered. Every step counted. There was no other place like it. This was my calling. This was what I did, and I danced through the battlefield, through the spray of blood and boiling magic, the sword of my grandmother’s bones singing a song as it bridged life and death.

I cut them to pieces. I disemboweled and maimed. They would never again scare my son.

The last sahanu collapsed.

The ground at my feet was bloody. Pieces of human bodies littered it.

I turned around.

The knights stood on the street, their faces wearing identical expressions: eyebrows raised, eyes wide open, mouth a tense half-open slash across the face. Fear.

The vampire had frozen, Conlan in its arms. My son was looking straight at me.

Damn it, Javier. That wasn’t something Conlan should’ve seen. I had to mitigate it. I dissolved the ward and walked toward them, killing the magic in my blood armor. It crumpled to dust. I walked to him, my magic swirling around me. I had no cloak and I didn’t care.

Cabrera and Norwood took a step back. Younger remained, awe on his face. He raised his hand toward me, fingers trembling, and Norwood yanked him back.

I raised my arms. Conlan reached for me, and I took my baby from the vamp, my magic spilling freely out of me. Conlan hugged my neck and petted my hair. “Shai.”

Oh, how I wished I were shiny and not a killer.

A Jeep rocketed onto the street, taking the corner too sharply. Another followed, then an SUV, then a truck.

The first Jeep screeched to a halt, and Martha jumped out of it, moving much faster than a plump woman twice my age should’ve moved.

Six vampires came scuttling over the roof, in assorted colors of sunblock, like someone spilled a bag of Skittles. Taste the undead rainbow.

“Secure the perimeter,” the lead one barked, landing next to Javier’s vampire. “Sitrep?”

Beside me Javier’s vamp looked to the left, looked to the right, and unhinged its jaws. “The first generation of the sahanu is dead. The second generation of the sahanu is dead. The Order of Sahanu is dead. Everybody is dead.” Javier paused. “Praise be to In-Shinar, the Merciful.”

“Stop it,” I growled at him.

“Right,” the team leader said. “Team One Leader to Mother, fourteen bandits down, no pulse, scene hot, the Dove and Chick are secure. Advise?”

The dove? Kate Lennart, the Dove? Just when exactly had I ever done anything remotely dovelike?

The vamps had spread through the street, taking positions on the buildings.

“Roger. Team One, hold position until cleanup complete.” The vamp swiveled to me. “Cleanup crew is on the way, ma’am.”

Martha reached me, with George at her heels. “I’m so sorry. We thought he was down for a nap. He shouldn’t have been able to open the latch on the window bars.”

Oh, but he did. I was mother to the smartest boy alive. I hugged him to me. He was still alive. He could’ve died. He would’ve died if Curran hadn’t called to tell me he was missing.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. My knees almost gave, and I locked them in place.

George wrapped her arm around me. “It’s okay,” she said. “He’s alive and safe. It’s okay.”

She held on to me for another moment and let me go.

The cars kept coming. The street filled with female shapeshifters. The ones I recognized were from Clan Heavy. Ten, no twelve . . .

“Who are all these people?” I asked George.

“The book club,” she told me.

I pulled my magic back into me. “Has anybody heard from Curran?”

“I called him at the Guild when Conlan came up missing,” George said.

“Ma’am,” Javier said. “I have a report from the patrols. The Guild is under attack. Would you like us to assist?”

“Yes!”

“Team Three, In-Shinar requests assistance at the Guild.” Javier’s vamp scuttled away.

Martha turned and roared, “Turn around! Everyone back to the cars! My son needs help at the Guild.”

Clan Heavy ran back to their cars.

I turned to the knights. “Help or get out of the way.”

Norwood stepped aside, and I ran to the nearest car, Conlan in my arms.