Ruled by Tainted Blood Page 20

  “Safer? Like Judith?”

  Rising fury momentarily burned away my other emotions. “You have a really annoying habit of interrupting people.”

  “As opposed to brainwashing people?”

  “Damn it, Foxner, this is the way it has to be. Wafers can’t know about the supernatural world. Too much is at stake.”

  “I’m not a wafer. I’m a shield—like you.”

  “It’s too big a risk,” I said.

  “You let your boy toy know what you were.”

  “And maybe that was a mistake. Humans are...awful,” I held up a hand to forestall another interruption. “Yes, you have so much potential for good and giving, but too many of you are selfish beyond reason.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “Imagine what would happen if I could grant you a wish, any wish in Creation.”

  Foxner’s expression turned inward.

  “Sure, if I grant that wish to an incorrupt saint, maybe that wish would benefit humanity.”

  “But even saints have ex-girlfriends, hurts they want righted,” Foxner said. “They might wish wrong.”

  “Now imagine armies of wish granting amoral nutjobs handing them out to anyone and everyone willing to make a deal.”

  “Even the good wishes wouldn’t be able to counter the global bloodbath that would probably ensue.”

  “That’s assuming the nutjobs bothered offering wishes to the saints,” I said. “We keep that in check—maybe not perfectly, but the best we can. If humanity learned about what the faeries could offer, it would be like shattering Pandora’s amphora.”

  “Box.”

  “It wasn’t a box.”

  “Whatever. Wouldn’t you still be able to hold things together? Maybe work with human law enforcement?”

  I shook my head. “We’d have failed. Maybe we’d simply be uncreated. Maybe we’d be replaced like we replaced the last heavenly host. Maybe we’d just stop being reborn.”

  “If you erase us, you’ll be alone.”

  The tears escaped, but I shook my head. “I’m never alone. I am a Shield of five parts cradled in the hands of the Undying Light.”

  “Lot of good they did you today,” Foxner said.

  “We’re at war,” I said. “We’re spread a bit thin, but they have my back. We’re a family.”

  “Even that stiff douche bag?”

  A chuckle escaped me. “Yeah, even Vitae.”

  “If you didn’t erase me, you’d have backup when the rest of your Shield is too busy,” Foxner said.

  I yearned to say yes. The word struggled against my sternum, threatening to shatter ribs to escape if need be. Foxner was a shield, a warrior, but there was no way to tell if she was strong enough to go toe to toe with faeries day after day and not break or be seduced.

  And she has none of the physiological enhancements we do to face off against them. Asking her to fight would be tantamount to feeding her to wolves myself.

  I needed someone in my corner. If I had to sacrifice Dylan, at least having Foxner for help running down leads and accessing the human resources would mean I wasn’t alone.

  “I don’t want to stop loving you,” Dylan said.

  My eyes shot upward.

  Dear Maker, how long has he been there?

  “Quayla, I love you. I proposed. I bought a gun and came to your rescue in a crayon drawing,” Dylan said. “What more do you want to prove my love is the real thing?”

  “Those are pretty solid credentials for a civvie,” Foxner said.

  “Dylan, please don’t do this. I don’t want to give you up, but I can’t stand to lose you like I did Judith.”

  “Even knowing everything, I chose you, I chose our love.” Dylan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Those are my choices. You do what you feel you have to do.”

  My voice broke. “You’d chose to die?”

  “I’d trade my life for yours even if it meant only being able to love you for one more moment,” he said.

  I can’t do this, I can’t choose because no matter what, every choice is selfish.

  I raised my eyes to the ceiling.

  Lord Creator grant me wisdom.

  Dylan gasped and Foxner drew her gun.

  I whipped around.

  The air fled my lungs.

  An angel floated before me, there but not quite substantial. Four wings kept the child floating, two from her shoulders and two from her calves. There could be no question the being before me was angelic. The light escaping from the swirling fog of colors coming off of the hovering, vaguely feminine entity washed away age and wear from every surface it touched.

  Energy surged into me, pushing away weariness and somehow filling me with wholeness.

  She watched me in silence from eyes embedded in her wings and her hands, on the tips of her fingers and her face. Five gemstone eyes glowed in a rainbow along her forehead.

  “Forgive me, Shield Quayla. I know this is a forbidden, but I did not wish to speak where others might hear.”

  “Ani?” I asked. “Dearest God, you’re so beautiful.”

  The eyes in Anima’s coloring cheeks flicked away and her head lowered so that none of her eyes met my gaze. “I am but a lowly cherubim, reflecting the Light of my creation.”

  “A little while ago I thought you were some kind of AI, how is this even possible?” I said.

  “Maybe a better question would be, ‘why is she here’ if being here is forbidden?” Foxner asked.

  “I heard your travail,” Anima glanced around at things I couldn’t see. “I must leave, but think on this. Any re-write to Hadley Sage Cox’s reality would reveal your other mortals.”

  The stairwell shook with sudden thunder as Anima popped out of existence. The weight of her departing words pressed down on my heart. The cherubim spoke true. My choice was all or nothing no matter what I might personally want.

  The grime Anima’s presence cleansed didn’t return, leaving Caelum’s painted angel peering down into my very soul.

  My thoughts flitted to the other shields, to Caelum’s sport sex, to Ignis and Terrance’s celibacy. I could reach out to them, seek their council, but nothing they said would lift the decision from my shoulders.

  I climbed the stairs to Dylan, looking deep into his eyes. Warmth blossomed with his answering smile, curling my lips. I slid my fingers into the hair behind his head and drew him forward.

  Three words escaped my caressing lips over and over. Tears ran my cheeks as his answer washed through me one last time.

  He pulled away. “Quayla?”

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I love you too.”

  I am not an individual. I am a shield of the Undying Light, created with the duty to protect Creation, not to endanger it for my own comfort.

  A corner of my lips quirked up. “I love you more.”

  Too much to kill you by being selfish.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, pressing fingers against Dylan’s mouth. “Goodbye, my love. Summuseraphi. Summuseraphi. Summuseraphi.”

  Summus

  Summus looked through the thin veil of light separating them from the three still mortals. They weren’t frozen in time so much as Quayla and he were held in a bubble stretching an instant out as long as he needed.

  His shoulder muscles burned holding open his wings to shroud them in that moment. “Curse it, Quayla, I don’t need this.”

  She refused to look at him. Tears he of all people knew she didn’t have to shed rained to their feet.

  He barely heard her reply. “I’m sorry.”

  “Rewriting reality takes essence. Essence I never had much chance to build up and you people seem to be going through in tidal waves.”

  She didn’t throw his own complicity back at him. If he’d rewritten the detective when she’d asked, Sabrina Foxner wouldn’t have ended up in Faery, wouldn’t have dragged Hadley and Dylan in after her, and wouldn’t have rescued Quayla.

  He’d heard Quayl
a and Anima use Vilicangelus’s feather. He’d known Quayla was in trouble, but had trusted her to persevere. She was water after all, in many ways—pride not withstanding—the most capable of the five phoenixes where it came to adaptation or escape.

  But I should’ve checked that she got at least the basics of the training I received. Why did Vilicangelus prize this Shield so much? It’s a wreck. Their library has all the material, but their Shieldheart didn’t teach her. It’s almost like he wanted her to fail.

  Summus took a deep breath, resigning himself to setting the Shield right once the crisis had passed. In the meantime, he had a triple re-write to perform.

  “I’m sorry,” Quayla whispered once more.

  Summus drew up her chin and smiled at her. “You are brave, not sorry. After everything you told me, choosing to call me couldn’t have been easy.”

  “It’s right.”

  “Yes. You’re needed elsewhere, and you really don’t want to be around to see this.”

  Quayla opened her mouth.

  He inclined his head. “I will rewrite things so the detective rescues your dead friend so that the time she lost isn’t held against her.”

  “Will they remember me at all?”

  “I will try to erase you completely, but if reality’s flow doesn’t allow you to be completely erased, I’ll leave only fond memories of an acquaintance—a quiet, law-abiding, and very private girl that kept to herself.”

  Quayla looked at Dylan, choking back a sob.

  If only I could rewrite her so that this didn’t hurt so much.

  “Now, get back to headquarters. We need to regroup and find those nests before whatever the faeries are planning comes to pass and we’re forced to fight under threat of True Death.”

  Ignis

  Ignis surveyed the Sidhe bodies strewn along the alley. The Seelie and Unseelie died before his arrival. Gnoll and coyll, goblin and grendling bodies lay where they’d fallen interspaced with more powerful fey—an elf, a half-ogre and a dwarf.

  Left for the mortals to find.

  Movement drew Ignis’s eye to the alley across the street. A hunched figure bobbed a purplish head. Ignis strode toward the faerie, glancing both ways before crossing between cars.

  “You, do not move.”

  The grendling’s head shot up, blood painting his chin. It clutched the dog held in its hands closer to its chest and hissed.

  “In the name of the Undying—”

  The grendling bolted.

  Ignis lifted his hilt, sending bright yellow essence out each end.

  The grendling ran a serpentine retreat, ducking its head to rip free more dog entrails as it ran.

  The tips of Ignis’s bow glowed like stars, each casting a tine of light toward the other. He extruded a spark of essence from the thumbnail holding his hilt, stretching the mote back until the connecting shaft touched the line of starlight. Ignis pulled back both shaft and string together, the shaft’s end blossoming feathers as the string reach its limit.

  He loosed the arrow.

  The firebolt splattered the grendling’s head. The little fey sprawled forward, cranium smoking.

  Ignis crossed to the distance, kicking the grendling over. The mutt beneath was long dead, most of its organ eaten by the grendling. A lump clogged Ignis’s throat. He knelt, summoning essence to cremate the dog so that nothing else got the chance to chew on the stray.

  Runes burnt into the leather strap around the dog’s neck caught Ignis’s attention. He removed the collar and turned it over in his hands until he’d deciphered the spell.

  Null magic?

  Ignis touched the dog then the grendling, pushing fire into both. He returned to the first alley, still troubled by the collar. He incinerated the Sidhe bodies left behind.

  How does this fit with what’s going on? The collars that Fae Kissed made weren’t anything like this.

  He took the collar back to his car. Anima’s voice drew his attention to the bronze angel on my Camaro’s dashboard. “Ignis, I’m sensing an incursion in Buckhead.”

  “On my way.” Ignis set the collar aside, put his emergency light onto the dashboard and sped to the nearest freeway onramp.

  While en route, Anima provided an address to the incursion. Due to a recent fire, Ignis knew the Piedmont Road strip club.

  He laughed.

  “You sure Caelum isn’t free for this one? It’s definitely more his speed.”

  “Caelum informed me he would be out of touch replenishing seeds,” Anima said.

  Ignis whipped across traffic and into the strip club’s parking lot. A gaping hole in the front wall allowed a shrill scream to escape as he threw open his door. He drew his hilt and raced to the opening.

  Cries, laughter and sobbing filled the dark interior. Taint overwhelmed the stink of cigarette haze and old alcohol. A dark shape loomed out of shadow. A massive hand seized Ignis, jerking him off the floor.

  An adolescent ogre fifteen feet high sneered down. “Who are you?”

  Flames sheathed Ignis in a crackling nimbus.

  The ogre dropped him, sucking fingers into his mouth.

  “In the name of the Undying Light, I command you to surrender.”

  Another large shape stepped into the orange and yellow light of Ignis’s aura. A third appeared with a topless woman hanging unconscious in his hands. A fourth and fifth adolescent ogre entered the firelight from either side.

  Ignis pushed a long, curved blade up through his hilt.

  A sixth filled the last opening in the semicircle, naked women struggling in his hands under a cheesy grin. “Nice sword. Hand it over or I shake their maracas.”

  Half a dozen ogres, even adolescents, presented a difficult challenge, worsened by the presence of hostages. Relinquishing his hilt weakened his arsenal, but under the circumstances it bought time without offering the ogres any advantage.

  Ignis drew his essence out of the hilt and tossed it to the ground. “There. Now let the mortals go.”

  Six’s grin widened. “Why?”

  Ignis eyed the other ogres in turn. “I did as you asked. You have my hilt. Everything is still fine. Release the mortals and I will allow you to return peacefully to Faery in accordance with the Articles of Ararat.”

  Six licked his thick, cracked lips. “I like these girls. Maybe I’m not done playing with them yet.”

  The others chuckled.

  Ignis softened his voice, filling it with menace. “Maybe if you don’t release the mortals, I’ll be forced to teach you boys proper respect for a lady.”

  Six lurched forward stomping Ignis’s hilt. “With what?”

  “Yeah, what’re you going to do?” Five shoved Ignis. “You going to tickle us with your feathers, tiny?”

  Ignis recovered his footing, transmogrified shirt unfolding into flaming wings as fire wreathed his fists. “If you insist.”

  “What do you know,” Six laughed. “The buffet includes flame roasted chicken.”

  “Last warning,” Ignis hardened his feathers.

  “Pull him apart and make a wis—”

  Ignis’s pivoted left toward the first ogre, right wing whipping forward. A flaming pinion shot through the club, impaling Six between his eyes. He slammed both fists into One, ducked wild swing from Three and sidestepped a stomp from Two.

  Discarded women scrambled away in tears.

  Four seized Ignis. Ignis’s wings scissored forward, burning away both of the ogre’s arms. One and Three grabbed a wing, pulling Ignis away from Four’s screams.

  Ignis drew in his wings, hit the ground with a roll and spun to face the ogres. Someone walked over Ignis’s grave and a whisper of his name prickled his skin. The sprinkler system cut loose above them, flooding the club with old water.

  Two grabbed a steaming Ignis, fingers crushing him until bones snapped like twisted bubble wrap. “So much for you, bug.”

  Ignis fought the pain, compressing his essence. “I’m not the cream filled kind.”

  He release
d his power, transmogrifying into pure flame and rebalancing his limbs whole. Two jerked his hands away, but not fast enough to escape the inferno Ignis sent up the ogre’s limbs.

  Two ran screaming. He tripped on a pleather couch and careened into the bar. Alcohol and cheap plywood burst into flame.

  Three wrenched a pole out of the ceiling and slammed it into Ignis’s back. The impact sent Ignis flying into a nearby wall. Fire licked up the wood paneling as if it was soaked in gasoline. Three tromped across the intervening space, pole raised for another blow.

  Ignis rolled to one side, avoiding the strike. He put his left hand on the burning wall and extended his right toward the ogre. A stream of yellow-white fire roared from his palm, engulfing Three.

  Ignis climbed to his feet. He strode across the club, will drawing the flames away from the paneled wall behind him. “I would’ve been satisfied to let you return to Faery.”

  He stopped next to the bar, turning to face uncertain-looking adolescents holding furniture at the ready. “Instead, you had to play the bully, picking on smaller mortals.”

  One and Five eyed each other.

  “First lesson about playing with fire.” The inferno washed into Ignis, adding to his essence until his height matched theirs. “You have to be careful you don’t let it grow out of control.”

  Despite his calm facade, a firestorm of anger coursed through Ignis’s veins, demanding to be unleashed.

  Both ogres tossed away their makeshift weapons, speaking at the same time. “We surrender.”

  Ignis’s voice escaped low and throaty like a snarling dragon. “What’s wrong, don’t want to pick on someone your own size?”

  “We surrendered,” One said. “You have to let us go.”

  “Why?”

  They looked at one another.

  Ignis unleashed all of his pent-up rage and frustration. He rode a wave of cold fire through the club. Thick, crystalized flame swallowed the ogres like hot cotton candy then filled room after room. When Ignis was certain all of the club’s workers had fled to safety, he ignited the fibers. The club disintegrated in a firestorm.

  Ignis strolled from pillar of flame, transmogrifying back to his mortal guise. He rolled his shoulders, and Ignis dropped into the seat of his Camaro. “Anima? Did you try to summon me?”