‘So they can just blow up three helicopters, killing how many people?’
Caleb answered that question, his rumbling voice deep with grief. I think he’d spent a fair amount of time with Gog and Magog, picking their brains about life overseas.
‘Sixteen, total,’ he said. ‘Nine supernaturals, including the three Alfar in each of the other choppers, and then the one with Gog and Magog. And seven humans, including the pilots and co-pilots, and Daniel.’
‘Fuck,’ was my only response, but my grief ran a lot deeper than that. Losing Blondie had felt – still felt – like a knife in my heart. But she’d been killed by her greatest foe. I would never be okay with her death, but it made sense.
But to get randomly blown up by a supposed ally when the danger was over?
I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact I’d never see Gog and Magog again, or Daniel. They hadn’t been in my life long, but we’d been through some heavy shit together.
If my reaction to the news of our friends’ death was to slide downward, inside myself, Ryu’s response was to slam down more coffee mugs on Anyan’s granite counters. I didn’t tell him to take it easy, for fear one of those mugs would find itself winged at my head. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the baobhan sith so angry, ever.
Numbly, I watched as he poured coffee, and then I helped him pass the mugs about. I even brought Tracy a glass of orange juice, since she couldn’t have coffee, and brought everyone else sugar and milk, letting things cool down before I began another barrage of questions. I also knew I had about twenty minutes, tops, till it sank in that the people I’d called friends for such a short time were dead, and I had a meltdown.
‘Seriously, how can they get away with this?’ I asked once everyone had had a few sips.
Ryu’s voice was back to normal when he spoke again, although his hazel eyes were still blazing. ‘Any number of ways, Jane. They’ll blame the attack on us. They’ll say that the helicopters were full not of supernaturals, who aren’t supposed to exist, but of Western spies. The British government will say that’s ridiculous, but won’t do anything about it. Somewhere there’ll be a few closed-coffin funerals, and end of story.’
‘But why won’t Britain do something? They were citizens—’
‘Who were in Chinese airspace, with no formal clearance since everything was done under the table. If Britain really pushes this, all the Chinese have to say was that they never had permission, the helicopters were obviously full of spies, and they deserved to be shot down as they were in armed military helicopters in Chinese territory, unannounced.’
Under normal circumstances, I would have said something like ‘fuckerdoodles’. But these weren’t normal circumstances. These circumstances sucked. So I stayed quiet. We all did. Except Ryu, whose calm had only been temporary.
‘Damn them!’ he shouted suddenly, throwing his mug at the sink. Coffee went everywhere as it broke, spectacularly and loudly. He got up and strode to the sink, leaning over it, his breathing heavy with suppressed emotion. I listened for any movement from upstairs, but Ryu’s temper tantrum didn’t seem to have awakened the barghest.
‘What’s going on, Ryu?’ I asked, trying to make my voice soothing. But I stayed where I was in case he wanted to throw anything else.
‘Damn the Red and the White. This is exactly what they wanted. The fucking humans will start killing us, and there will be nothing we can do.’
I blinked, surprised at the outburst. I’d always known Ryu held a modicum of contempt for humans – they were his dinner, after all. But I’d never heard him express anything so bitter. Then again, under the circumstances … and Ryu hadn’t even been that close to Gog and Magog. He’d barely known them. He hadn’t known how in love they were…
I choked down a wave of grief, and concentrated on Ryu.
It was the idea of what had happened that rankled him.
So instead of asking what he meant by ‘the fucking humans’, I tried to put myself in his shoes. Out loud.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re mad at the Red and the White for exposing us, correct?’
Ryu straightened up, giving me his patented ‘No shit, Sherlock’ look.‘And you think that this attack by the Chinese is only the beginning?’
Tracy and Grizzie had begun looking distinctly uncomfortable the minute Ryu started throwing things and blaming humans, and I didn’t blame them. After all, Ryu could annihilate any trace of them with a snap of his magic-riddled fingers.
And that was the problem.
‘They fear us, Jane,’ was Ryu’s response, as if echoing my own thoughts. ‘And they have every right.’
‘The baobhan sith is right,’ Hiral said, his long nose twitching. ‘The humans’ll be after us if we’re not careful.’
‘But you guys are humans. Or were. Whichever.’ We’d learned the truth about the supernatural origins from the creature right before I’d become the champion. I’d been fighting Phaedra in the creature’s underground lair, and it had beamed out the truth into our minds, and most of the minds in the surrounding area. The supernaturals were really a type of mutated human, who – unlike ‘normal’ humans – could do things with the elemental power that was all around them.
‘Do you really think that matters?’ Hiral asked, his beady eyes staring into mine.
I wished I could respond that it wouldn’t matter. That humans would be better than they were, and see that we were really all the same, but I couldn’t. I knew my people – on both sides – too well. And the humans were no better than the supernaturals, and vice versa.
The truth was that supernaturals were scary. They were the things that went bump in the night, and could easily bump you off in the night. They were terrifying – some even looked terrifying, and even the ones that looked totally human, like Ryu, had powers that any individual human could only dream of, probably in a nightmare.
That wasn’t the whole story, however. Yes, one-on-one humans were no match for their supernatural counterparts. But humans and supernaturals wouldn’t have to be one-on-one if it ever came down to a real race war. Humans outnumbered the supes at least thousands to one, maybe even more than that. And they had big guns, and missiles, and tanks. Yeah, a powerful Alfar could probably last awhile, maybe days, against a thousand humans, all armed to the teeth. But what if they caught someone like Trill, my sweet kelpie friend, on land? She’d be a goner, unless she was in the water, where she was strong. Iris wouldn’t last seconds against ten humans, let alone thousands. Even someone really strong, like Ryu, wouldn’t survive an all-out, sustained attack.
In a race war, the supes would lose. But they’d do a lot of damage before they died.
Then the other shoe dropped.
‘And she has nothing to lose. A war is what she wants.’ My voice was a low breath that barely carried. But everyone heard it. ‘Does she know yet?’ Everyone knew what I meant.
‘We think she does,’ Caleb said from where he sat on the couch. With some clomps and shuffling of fabric, he and Iris extricated themselves and came toward the table. They both took seats at the free end of the trestle benches.
‘Before they were shot down,’ the satyr continued, ‘Daniel was reporting. The Red was furious they’d disappeared, and was trying to find some way to get them to show themselves; figure out where they’d got to. But then he reported she just stopped. Went dead in the air, even started to collapse toward the earth. Then she screamed. We could hear it, even over the sound of the chopper. It sounded … heartbroken.’
‘So she knows,’ I clarified. The Red must have felt the White’s death.
The others all silently nodded in agreement.
‘And now she’s got nothing to lose. She’s lost her White, and she’s not going to stop at anything to get revenge,’ Hiral said.
‘More than that,’ Tracy said, before casting an apprehensive glance at Ryu as if she were worried he’d throw his mug at the human for talking. When he didn’t budge, she continued. ‘Even more than that, she knows you’ve got the power to destroy them. So she’s lost her partner, yes, but she’s also lost her immortality.’
‘Oh, snap,’ Grizzie said lightly and inappropriately. We all stared at her for a second, and she shrugged an apology before pointing at her wife’s bulging stomach. ‘Sympathy hormones.’
‘If I were the Red,’ I said, thinking about how I’d felt when I’d lost Anyan, ‘I’d want the biggest, baddest revenge possible, as soon as possible. And what better way to do that than to have us kill each other?’
‘She’s going to show herself again, and soon.’ Ryu’s voice was grim, and he avoided looking at Tracy and Grizzie.
Sitting in the grim atmosphere of the kitchen, I was glad Anyan was still upstairs sleeping. He deserved a tiny amount of time away from all of this worry before it slapped him right upside the head.