Camille groaned. “Let me guess—Van’s on a rampage?”
“Looks that way. He’s out to scare the hell out of this city, and what are we going to tell the press about all this? Demons terrorizing the city!? I’m worried about Tim’s business and all the other Supe businesses and homes. And what about Vampires Anonymous? We have to stop him or he’s going to burn down the city.” I pulled out my keys. “How’s your side?”
“I’ll live. Meet you there.” She ran to her Lexus, Smoky and Trillian right behind her.
I stared at the Jeep. I was so tired of running around town, trying to put out fires—in this case, literally—that I could scream. But there was no choice. But before I got in, I pulled out my phone and put in the call that I really didn’t want to make.
“Hanna? Put Marion on, please.” As I waited to tell my friend that she’d lost not only her house, but her business, I looked up in the sky. The clouds were massing again. A crack of thunder split the sky and lightning flashed as rain began to pour, beating against the pavement. At least it would help the firefighters put out the blaze at Marion’s—the drops were as fat as orb weaver spiders, breaking apart as they hit the ground.
Marion came on the phone. “Delilah? Hanna said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Your café’s on fire. There are injured. We’re headed there now.”
“Oh, Great Coyote Master…we’ll get down there right away—”
“No!” I was overexcited and yelled at her. “No, Marion. You stay there. We can’t chance you being out in sight. We caught Jaycee, and the Tregarts killed her before we could get anything out of her. Put on Roz, please.”
Marion protested, but I convinced her that she needed to leave the job to us. Roz came on.
“Listen, you and Vanzir tell the guards around the house to beef up security until we catch Van. Things are reaching an explosive level. Once they have more guards come in, get all our weapons ready for tonight. And if we’re not home when Menolly wakes up, tell her we’re going hunting tonight.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah, I think it will be. We’re going to have ourselves a party at the Energy Exchange and it’s likely to get bloody. Ask Morio to prepare whatever spell concoctions he and Camille are likely to need. And make sure you don’t forget to grab my dagger. I don’t know if we’ll have a chance to make it home first.”
“Gotcha. Okay, we’ll get everything together and I’ll restock my armory.” By his armory, Roz meant the coat full of weapons he routinely wore. He challenged Neo in the Matrix for most dangerous duster of the year. “So, you’re expecting this to be big?”
“Yeah, we are. Van, Telazhar, Newkirk—”
“Who’s Newkirk?”
“Our bald-headed man. He’s a Koyanni with a spirit seal. Van and Jaycee have been posing as Trytian’s lackeys while they’ve been double-timing first Stacia and then him. They work for Shadow Wing. Things have just gotten incredibly chaotic, and we have to take them down before they go on a spree. Right now they’re targeting specific organizations and people, but that could snap at any time.”
Spree killers didn’t care what or who they hurt, and while—in the long run—that was essentially the nature of the demons, right now our singular focus was preventing a wider massacre.
“We’ll get everything together and meet you…where do you want us to meet you?” I could hear Roz scribbling notes on a pad.
“Meet us at the Energy Exchange. I’ll call you with a time.” Flipping my phone shut, I slid into the car. Camille and the guys had already taken off.
Shade gave me a long look and I leaned my head back against the seat. “This sucks. Just a couple days ago we were having fun, preparing for Iris’s wedding. Now we’re running around like maniacs trying to stop a group of trigger-happy Tregarts. At least Iris and Bruce are having a better time than we are.”
“Yeah, but look at it this way: We’re not bored.” And with that, he pulled me in for a kiss, then snapped his seat belt shut. I started the ignition, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed for the Supe-Urban Café.
Chapter 20
Marion’s café was smoking. The front windows were busted out, but the building was still in one piece. Flames licked the timbers, but the fire department had managed to catch it before it engulfed the whole place, and the fire appeared to be normal, not magical. Maybe they’d run out of canya. We could only hope.
Two fire trucks were there, with firemen pouring water on the structure. Three ambulances were parked by the curb, treating customers who’d been overcome by smoke and light burns.
Chase and Shamas were there, running operations. Camille was searching through Jaycee’s phone while Smoky, Shade, and Trillian talked to the customers milling around on the sidewalk.
I folded my arms against the rain. The pouring skies were helping put out the flames. As the scent of ash and smoldering wood filled the gloomy afternoon, I felt rage rise up. Marion didn’t deserve to lose her house and her business. Alfina hadn’t deserved to be raped. The Supes didn’t deserve to lose five members and their meeting hall. The demons were running rings around us.
Camille edged over to me. “I found several text messages on Jaycee’s phone. And she has a calendar. Tonight she was supposed to meet ‘N’ at the Energy Exchange and the notation reads: Bring payment.”
“Payment? For what?” I ran through everything that we knew about the Koyanni. “Remember what Van and Jaycee were making for the Koyanni?”
Understanding lit up her face. “Wolf Briar. If they’re to bring payment…then maybe the Koyanni are back to snatching werewolves. Or maybe they were about to be paid for the drug. Have there been any more reports of missing male beta lycanthropes?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t keep track after we shut them down the first time. Damn it!”
Wolf Briar was a dangerous drug, made from various glands of beta werewolf males who’d been caged and hyped up on steroids. The werewolves were terrified, angered, and at the height of their rage, they were flayed alive and dissected. When mixed with various herbs, this created a drug that would subdue most werewolves when inhaled. It also played havoc with some witches. Camille had been knocked unconscious when she triggered off a trap. Another exposure could possibly kill her.
“They’re back at it. I know it. They’re back at making that fucking drug!” I slammed my hand against a telephone pole.
“That’s got to be it. That’s why Newkirk and the Koyanni have targeted Marion. She gave us information about them. The Koyanni found out, and they consider her a traitor. She’s friends with the Weres—werewolves and all. So they’re systematically destroying her life. They killed her sister. They burned down her house and tried to kill her husband.” Camille pressed her hand to her stomach. “What if they’ve already gone after her kids? She has three.”
“I hesitate to have her call them—if there’s trouble, there’s no way in hell we’ll be able to stop her from going to help them, and that could get her killed. We can’t go along to protect her.” We were stretched too thin as it was.
Camille pressed her lips together. “We don’t have a choice. These are her kids. She has to know they’re in danger, and she’d better call to make certain everyone’s okay. And she has to warn them to be cautious.”
As much as I didn’t want to, I called Marion again and told her to check on her kids, make sure they were safe, tell them to be careful, and then call me back. As the smoke poured out of the now-smoldering but no longer flaming restaurant, I paced, wondering how much it would take to refurbish the café.
“We’re not doing any good here. What next?” Camille leaned against her Lexus, watching the crowd that had gathered. She stiffened, nodding to a group that were just arriving. “Oh, hell—look at the slime that creeped out from under a rock.”
I glanced at them. Protesters, carrying signs that read Good Riddance and Burn, Supes, Burn and other hate slogans. I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket and was about to head over to warn them off when another throng—about twice as big as the first—arrived on hand. They were carrying picket signs, too, only they were in support of Marion and the Supe Community. The minute the hate crowd began chanting, the others slid between them and the yellow caution tape cordoning off the café and overpowered their outbursts with a louder one.
“Looks like Neely and Tim have managed to coordinate things. They’re right on top of it.” Camille gave me a brief smile. “That’s one of the first pieces of good news we’ve had.”
“Think we’re needed here?”
“I think they can handle it. Hopefully nothing will get out of hand.” She signed and called to the guys, who began walking back to us.
“We can’t hit the Energy Exchange yet—I want to go in at night, when we have a better chance of catching the Koyanni and Van. And when we have Menolly—and maybe Roman—on our side.” I mulled over what we could do in the meantime. I wanted a nap—curling up in one of my cat beds seemed like the ideal thing to do for a few hours—but we didn’t have that luxury.
Then it hit me. “We were going to go talk to Queen Asteria. We’ve got a good five or six hours until we can even think about going to the club. What say we take a quick trip to Otherworld and visit the Queen? Or at least talk to Trenyth?”
That brought the first real smile from Camille I’d seen since Iris’s wedding. “What say? I say hell, yes. You know, Chase has always wanted to see Otherworld. Why don’t we take him? He can leave Yugi in charge for an afternoon. He can use a break.”
And so, within half an hour, we were standing at the edge of Grandmother Coyote’s wood, ready to portal-jump to the Elfin City.
Since we weren’t planning on staying long, we decided to skip dressing for travel. The portal in Grandmother Coyote’s wood would take us directly to Elqaneve and the city wasn’t rough, or hard going, so we didn’t need to worry about hiking gear. Chase looked nervous. Even though he’d been dragged into a different realm not long ago by one of the Elder Fae, he’d never been to Otherworld. And he’d never been through one of the regular portals.
We stopped at home first, to gather weapons and make sure everything was okay, and decided to leave Trillian and Shade behind. We didn’t need them to update the Queen on the situation, and they could spend the afternoon finding out everything they could about the Energy Exchange and preparing for the evening.
Chase stared at the portal that shimmered between two large trees in the middle of the forest. Grandmother Coyote wasn’t anywhere in sight, but we had license to use the portal anytime we needed to. The shimmering blue energy crackled and snapped.
“Is it like the one that I got dragged through by that freak show spider-Fae woman?” He eyed it suspiciously.
“Don’t sweat it. The principle is similar, but it won’t feel as weird. Well, I don’t think it feels as weird.” I patted him on the back, and he forced a smile. “I thought you wanted to see Elqaneve?”
“I do…I’m just…” He paused, then shrugged. “What the hell, I’m going to have a long life unless I get murdered or do something stupid. I might as well learn how to be adventurous.” Sucking in a deep breath, he followed the three of us to the portal. Camille went first, then Smoky, then Chase, and then I stepped through.
Traveling through a portal is like stepping between giant magnets—with your body rippling apart into atoms, breaking down to the primal energy that makes up both spirit and form. Then every atom, every cell, goes singing through time and space. Within seconds, the body slams together again, in a dizzying whirl, and you find yourself standing a world away from where you began.
We were near the Barrow Mounds. Centuries ago, they’d been the home to the Elfin Oracle, Sarasena. She’d been killed by bandits, and after that, no plants ever grew again on the barrows. The ghosts of elves, long dead, walked between the mounds, whispering to themselves, thinking whatever distant thoughts they thought. They lingered, the victims of old battles, memories that would not rest.
There was a haunted feel to the Mounds, and every time we came through them, it gave me chills. Camille could see the spirits, and so could Shade and Morio. I was beginning to feel them more, the longer I trained with Greta. Eventually, she told me I’d be able to see ghosts and spirits with ease.
I looked around. By now, Morio should have used the Whispering Mirror to contact Trenyth, the advisor to the Queen. And…there he was, right on clockwork.
Trenyth, like all elves, looked younger than his years by far. He was loyal to the heart, and though he didn’t seem to realize it, he was in love with Queen Asteria. I secretly hoped that one day she’d realize his feelings, but the age difference was probably too great for her to allow a tryst to take place. Not to mention the difference in caste.
Trenyth broke out in a wide smile. “Camille—Delilah! Welcome. Morio contacted me and said you’d be coming over. Are you staying for a while?” He noticed Chase and inclined his head. They’d met before. “Chase—what an unexpected surprise.”
Chase held out his hand and Trenyth, used to the greeting by now, took it. “I hope you don’t mind that I tagged along with the girls.”
“Not at all.” Trenyth motioned toward an enclosed carriage pulled by two horses. Noblas stedas—a variant of Earthside Clydesdales, they were gorgeous, broad shouldered, and regal.