Witches, Voids, and Other Sanity Suckers

Az’s ear stays glued to her cell phone on the drive to the Patriarch’s River Oaks home. She checks in with Jose and relays my instructions to Greta. Her call to Greer is mercifully brief. She gives him a minimum amount of information regarding the kidnapping. He doesn’t put up much of a protest when she informs him that HPD support would not be turned away but outright interference would not be tolerated. The PC takes care of its own.

She makes one last call as I pull in to the driveway in front of a massive limestone reproduction French chateau. Who is she calling? Is she checking up on Quinn and Uriah? They didn’t go to school, so an update on them should have been included with Jose’s report.

“He is a child! You should be ashamed of your behavior,” she snaps at the person on the other end of the call. The knuckles gripping her phone are white and her eyes are incandescent with rage.

“There is always collateral damage in war. Do not worry so about one child. You and I will build a dynasty.” Olivet’s smooth voice fills the cab of the truck.

“Children are to be protected. Cherished. Not used as pawns in a power struggle.” Az sucks in a steadying breath and exhales shakily. Her jaw is so tense I fear for her teeth. “If Daniel is harmed, if he has the slightest scratch, I will take great pleasure in burning your entrails for divination. While they are attached.”

She ends the call and slumps as if all the bones in her body had been turned to liquid. I expect to see tears streaming down her face, but her cheeks are dry. When her phone’s case creaks, I pry it out of her clenched fist.

“I told you not to call Olivet.”

Her eyelids fall shut. A heavy sigh lifts her shoulders. “It’s a good thing I don’t possess the power my father wishes I did,” she says. “There are days when I long for the ability to set the world ablaze and salt the ground so that no life grows again.”

Well, when she puts it like that, I’m pretty damn glad she doesn’t have that sort of power, too. There isn’t much I can say to make her feel better. If she needs reassurance, she’s in the truck with the wrong person. I can commiserate, though.

“Humanity’s not so bad, you know. It’s people that suck.”

Mirthless laughter spills from her lips. “People suck,” she echoes. “I should embroider that on a pillow.”

I open my door. We won’t do Daniel any good if we sit and chat for half an hour. “You can embroider?”

“Nope. Never learned. Who would trust me with a needle?”

Excellent point. I don’t return her phone, but I let her cut off the circulation in my fingers as we walk up the wide driveway. Blood smears cover the textured porch and gradually form larger pools closer to the house . The forged iron handles on the pair of oversized doors show signs of having been exposed to high heat. The wood around the back plates is charred.

Still keeping her death grip on my hand, Az skirts the largest of the puddles and stops in front of the doors. She swipes a finger through the black residue on the handles before popping her finger in her mouth.

“Invisible Fire,” she says, wiping her damp finger on her jeans. She tastes the breeze with her tongue before curling it back inside her mouth. “Quiet, but effective. Points to him for subtlety.”

I refuse to give Olivet points for anything. While she checks the magic, I sniff the cracked doorframe. The wet-fur scent of not-Shifters is nearly overwhelming. They all smell so similar that I can’t tell how many Olivet brought on his goon squad.

Everything went down in the foyer.

It looks like a hurricane hit the room. Pieces from a marble table top litter the hardwood floor. The wheel-style crystal chandelier hangs to the ceiling by one of its three slender chains. The wall is dented in a dozen places and a fichus tree is imbedded in the plaster.

“Footprints,” Az says, drawing my attention downward. She tests the limits of my reach by wandering to the fichus. Her tongue scrapes across one of the waxy leaves. “Subduing spell. Weak one. He was in panic mode.”

“It didn’t work. I think he got more resistance than he expected.” I drag her along as I follow the pattern of footprints. Four sets of distinct clawed-and-padded prints and one set of human shoeprints. Olivet and four not-Shifters. Two sets of centaur hooves. Adult centaur hooves. The kid didn’t leave through the front door.

Az and I walk through my interpretation of the fight. There are no signs of weapons, but that’s hardly a surprise. Centaurs rely on magic and their strength. Not-Shifters are weapons. There is a fair amount of blood in the foyer, and we follow a trail of droplets down a wide hallway to the kitchen.

The cooling body of Katya Liakos, Dowager Matriarch of the Herd, is on display in the breakfast nook. An entire block of chef’s knives pins her limbs to the table like a specimen ready for dissection. Her chest cavity has been torn open and her lower jaw is missing.

“I’m never eating another banana again,” Az gripes as she carefully makes her way to the corpse. “Check this out, Rick.”

Most of the blood on the table is the dead Dowager’s. There are three distinct pools of blood that stand out from the rest, though. They are thinner. They haven’t congealed yet. If I tilt my head just right, the blood has a faint shimmer.

“It’s the magic,” Az says when I raise an eyebrow. She grabs my hand and uses it to point at the closest pool of strange blood. “Olivet’s scared. You’ve handled his not-Shifters better than he planned. He’s pumping more magic in them. Wasting his resources.”

“Getting desperate?”

“Desperate enough to attack the Patriarch’s home and kidnap a child.”

In my experience, a desperate warlock is more dangerous than an unpinned hand grenade. Okay. We can deal with this. I just need a clear picture of our situation. “Will he burn himself out doing this?”

“No.” Az leans forward so that she’s only a few inches over the blood pool. She sniffs but doesn’t lick. “He’s stealing from witches, so he has reserves. Plus, the Mage directing him has likely given up a bit of power as a boost.”

“No chance Olivet is doing this on his own?”

“You’ve spoken to him, Rick. What do you think?”

Yeah, we’re not that lucky. So not only will we have to put down Olivet, but we’ll have to take on the Mage pulling his strings. Two bad guys for the price of one invasion. Fun times.

“He won’t kill the kid. Not right away, at least. He’ll use the kid as motivation for the Patriarch.”

A sneer twists Az’s lips. “There was a lot of magic in the foyer, so I’m going to say that’s where he fought the Patriarch. There were no signs of anything lethal, though. Is he going to call up the Patriarch and say, ’give me your centaurs or I’ll murder your son’?”

“Yes.”

“Bastard.”

“Yes.” Anger’s a good, healthy emotion, but too much of it can cloud your judgment. With a finger under her chin, I direct her focus back to the body. “Anything else we can learn from this?”

“He either thought she was too old to be of use, or he doesn’t take females. He gave his not-Shifters free-range with her. She probably pissed him off by fighting back, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Centaurs are ferocious when their children are threatened.”

The human footprints stop at the kitchen island and make a sharp turn toward the nearest staircase. “I doubt he stuck around for the slaughter. He went straight for the kid. I’ll bet he has a weak stomach.”

“Why do you think there are so many long-range killing spells?”

“Pansy-ass motherfuckers.”

Az shoots a quick grin. “Yes.”

Olivet’s bloody footprints take us up a wide, shallow-stepped staircase. Left turn. Past two open doors. The third door on the right has the same burn pattern as the front door. Az and I linger in the hallway for a moment. I have to center myself. I have to get a handle on my rage before I step into a kidnapped child’s bedroom.

Once I’m certain I won’t Shift, I lead Az into the room. The mattress on the train-shaped bed is overturned. The train-themed curtains are in tatters, and there’s a lamp-shaped hole in a closet door. The unmistakable odor of urine is concentrated near the bed. That there is very little blood on the damaged furniture keeps the nearly overwhelming fury in check.

Az gingerly climbs onto a short, blue table and reaches for the ceiling fan. A red boy’s pajama top dangles from one of the blades. Her fingers barely manage to snag a corner of the fabric.

I wrap an arm around her waist to guide her to the floor. The last thing I need is for her to fall off the desk and break her damn neck. Though her feet are firmly on the floor, my arm remains around her waist. Just in case.

She buries her face in the pajama top and inhales deeply. For a moment, everything is quiet and still. Sputtering and sneezing, she shoves the pajama top at me. “Lethe’s Sleep. Makes you unconscious. When you wake up, you won’t remember what knocked you out.”

“How dangerous is it for Daniel?”

“A lot of parents use it on their children, especially colicky babies.” Az lifts the hem of her shirt so that I get a glimpse of the lacy cups of a black bra. One line of gray text curls around the left side of her rib cage. “It’s short. Quick. Harmless.”

Since there are no not-Shifter footprints upstairs, I have to assume that Olivet used magic to carry an unconscious centaur child downstairs. Az confirms that there are spells that would allow him to do so. By the time we return to the kitchen, Greer and his crime scene unit have set up shop.

I have to get out of the house. I can’t stand smelling Katya’s blood or remembering the torn sheets on Daniel’s train bed. I should have talked to the Patriarch about security. I should have gone straight for Olivet as soon as we learned his name. I should have smelled something off during that first meeting and ripped out his throat.

I squeeze Az’s hand before leaving her to brief Greer. Circling the house doesn’t elicit additional information, but the sunshine burns away most of the fog of self-recrimination. Time to think objectively.

Olivet has Daniel. Olivet won’t kill Daniel because he wants something from the Patriarch. The Patriarch isn’t currently in any condition to give Olivet anything. Olivet’s desperate and dangerous and in command of an unknown quantity of not-Shifters. We don’t where Olivet is holed up or who is pulling his strings.

Assessment result: we’re screwed.

We need more information. I wish I’d had a chance to get a list of recent centaur deaths and abductions from the Patriarch. Then again, if I can’t talk to the man directly, I am in the perfect place to search for answers.

Neither Az nor Greer pay the slightest attention to me as I hurry past them towards the Patriarch’s home office. I’ve been in the massive, antique-filled room a handful of times, and I remember watching the Patriarch store files in a small cabinet near the white marble desk.

Herd politics involves a shit ton of paperwork. Apparently, the Patriarch’s secret to keeping his people in line is to bore them to death with forms. Under a stack of mediation request forms, I find an unmarked file folder.

The Patriarch is too organized for it to be an oversight. All the other files are marked with the date, name, and type of request. Blank forms are in files labeled with the form name. Unnamed files are suspicious.

“Whatcha got?” Az asks, peering over my arm at the file.

I hadn’t heard her enter, which means she came in alone. She’s stealthy, but Greer is as noisy as a herd of drunken cattle. “Where’s Greer?”

“Upstairs with his techs. Do you know who we need to call from the Herd? Greer shouldn’t be the one to make the notification. He’s…,” she trails off with a frown.

“Human.”

A wince. “Not quite where I was going, but it’s close enough.”

“I have the number for his second-in-command. I’ll call shortly.” I tap a finger on the first sheet of lined paper in the file. The handwriting is clear and the list is easy to read. “A list of missing and dead centaurs. The Patriarch started it five weeks ago.”

There are thirty names on the list. Thirty missing or dead centaurs, and he never said a word. While it’s only a single-digit percentage of his Herd, it is still a staggering number. The centaurs had become more isolated than I’d realized. If he’d said something about it sooner, came to me for help, I could have started an investigation. We could have prevented Daniel’s kidnapping.

“This can’t happen again,” I say, folding the list and shoving it in my pocket. “If no one shares with the class, we’ll only find out about problems when it’s too late. Not everything’s going to explode all at once like it did with the Succubae-Incubi War.”

“The Paranormal Community needs cohesion.”

Know-it-all smug bitch. “If the next words out of your mouth are ‘I told you so’, I’m going to gag you.”

“Ooh! Cleave, stuff, or ball?”

My glare just bounces off her eager grin. “Duct tape.”

“How unoriginal.”

She hovers by my side while I call Pernice Sutherland, the Patriarch’s second-in-command. After expressing his resentment over no one at the ‘dome calling him, Pernice promises to make arrangements for Katya’s body. Informing him that I will be investigating Daniel’s kidnapping seems to ease some of his panic. Once I agree to update him every hour, he withdraws his offer of assistance. I don’t mind working with centaurs, but too many people bog down an investigation.

Az calls Rachael at the ‘dome. I don’t remember the two of them going from rivals to bosom buddies, but there isn’t any detectable resentment on either side of the phone call. Fucking fickle women. All that Rachel can tell Az is that the Patriarch is stable but comatose.

My promise to keep Greer updated is less sincere than my promise to the Herd. Greer doesn’t have a personal stake in this clusterfuck. If Olivet succeeds and a Mage takes over Houston, Greer’s job won’t change much. Hell, things’ll probably get easier for him.

It isn’t until we’re in the truck that Az and I discuss what we know. Thirty missing or dead Centaurs. We’ve killed seven for sure. That leaves the potential for twenty-three not-Shifters.

Definitely very screwed.