Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He had shields up by then, because he wasn’t stupid, but I was suddenly less sure that they would have saved him.
Because my foot was burning, and one of the other mages was screaming, and my wolf wanted out so badly that the arm under my warded gauntlet grew, and black fur flooded down the muscles.
Cyrus cursed and grabbed me because he thought my wolf was forcing a Change, which it kind of was, only that was a good thing.
The added strength and her fury worked where my magic alone hadn’t, and we slammed the writhing little bastard against the floor and beat it and cursed it and beat it some more, until I felt my floorboards splintering and the subfloor cracking and the wicked spell losing coherence under the double assault of fury and magic.
“Don’t finish it off!” Hargroves snapped, right before I was about to grind the last of it into what was left of my nice, new carpet. He flicked a wrist, and a warded pouch appeared, like the kind we used for evidence collection, only about a hundred times thicker.
He grabbed the last of the bastard, which now looked less like a shadow Hargroves and more like a limp, black, tattered dishrag, steaming slightly at the edges.
He shoved it into the pouch, and we all held our breath for a second to see if it would escape.
But although it flailed around a little, it quickly gave up, because it was almost out of juice and the pouch was like glass, too.
There was nothing for it to grab hold of.
It settled into a seething, blackened lump in the middle instead, and gave the impression that it was glowering at us.
I sat down on my burned and still-smoking carpet and contemplated passing out again.
“Chindi,” someone said from beside the door, and I looked up to see Jen standing there.
“What?” Sophie asked, trying to see over the boys’ huge, furry backs. “What’s that?”
“The malignant residue of someone who died by violence.”
“Residue? Like a ghost?”
“No. More like... emotional radiation.”
“Come again?” I said harshly.
Jen bent forward to get a better look at the thing in the ward, her expression fascinated rather than repulsed.
“The Navajo believe that a person has multiple spiritual aspects,” she said.
“The animating force, or breath of life; the personal identity, or essence of who you are; the mind or awareness, basically your ability to reason; and the residual spiritual energy made up of a lifetime’s emotional weight—rage, fear, loss, and pain.
“When a death goes well, the mind dies, the spiritual energy dissipates, and the essence moves on to a new plane of existence.
But when someone is murdered, or their life ends badly for some other reason, a chindi may be created from the residue of all that spiritual energy that stays behind like a malignant cloud.
“It’s not a ghost—it doesn’t think. But some necromancers can use it to do certain tasks.”
“Like what?” I asked sharply.
She shrugged. “A lot of things. Chindis can be bound to an item, making anyone who touches it sick, or to a place, causing whoever lives there to constantly be paranoid or exhausted. They can be used like spiritual acid to weaken wards, or like metaphysical static to mask other magic. You can even sick them on a person, to suppress their will or awareness for a short time, and essentially program them to do something mindlessly—”
“Such as?” Hardgroves demanded harshly, startling Jen, who hadn’t seemed to notice him there. Possibly because her eyes had never left the thing in the ward. And when they did, they weren’t friendly.
The Corps had promised my students that their reward for fighting in the war would be freedom after the conflict ended.
But nobody, including me, really believed that.
Mainly because the kids who had gotten out were the most powerful of the stable sort, those whose abilities and lengthy imprisonment hadn’t driven them mad.
They were the kind that, in non-war conditions, the Corps would be the most worried about. And once those conditions returned? Yeah, that’s exactly what the kids thought, and they were very likely right.
But the magical world was their world, too, and letting it fall to the dark didn’t guarantee any better treatment.
They were imprisoned by one side and exploited by the other.
And while the Corps did allow some of them to mingle with the rest of the world after they learned how to suppress who they were well enough, I doubted Jen saw much difference between the two groups.
Her expression certainly said so, loud and clear.
“Jen,” I said quietly, because pissing off Hargroves wasn’t going to help them. He might even be the guy to decide their fate one day.
“Nothing major,” she finally said. “Chindis are weak sauce—”
“That was weak?” one of the guards muttered.
“—with their only real value being that few people know about them, or how to protect from them. But they’re not like a compulsion spell that can overwrite your moral compass—or whatever passes for one,” she added deliberately, still looking at the boss.
“Like it couldn’t make you poison someone, but might cause you to forget to give grandma her daily pill, and risk her having a heart attack. ”
Hargroves’ eyes narrowed. “And how do you know all that?”
“My old school had someone who knew how to bind them. We were all necros of one type or another, and the Shaman, as we called him, was versed in native magic. He used chindis to harass the teachers in their sleep and send them nightmares. It took them a while to figure out who was doing it.”
“And you didn’t tell them.”
Jen just looked at him, her steady blue gaze saying it all, but Sophie wasn’t so restrained. “Sure, and have him taken off to real jail for the rest of his life? They tormented us in there; why shouldn’t they feel a little of the pain they caused for once?”
“They do not torment anyone,” Hargroves said, “or if they do, and you can name them, disciplinary action will be taken—”
“Not torment?” Sophie’s eyes flashed gold. “Not torment? Do you know what it’s like to have to repress—”
“Sophie,” I said.
“—who you are and what you can do your whole life? To never be able to use your gifts or even learn about them? To be hidden away like something shameful—”
“Better than the fate that used to befall you,” Hargroves said mildly, and I had to bite my tongue on a snarl.
“Oh, I should thank you then, for not butchering us? For not killing us in our cradles?” Sophie’s voice, already high, hit the stratosphere, and the two war mages, already het up from fighting something out of a nightmare, reached for their weapons. And I had had enough.
“Out!” I snarled.
It took the two a moment to realize I meant them. And then one of them sneered at me. “Bite me.”
“Don’t,” Cyrus said, grabbing my wrist to try to calm my beast before she went for the challenger’s throat. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He didn’t mean it—”
“The hell, I didn’t,” the man said, before Hargroves barked at him to shut up.
“What is it?” he asked Cyrus, as the two of us struggled.
“What is it? Your man just challenged Lia to a duel on her home turf—”
“He did no such thing!”
“Stop thinking like a human!” Sophie snapped. “You want to use Weres? Then you damned well better understand Weres! And his ignorant ass did exactly that!”
“Get them out,” Cyrus said to his wolves. “Get them all out.”
And this time, his voice had changed, enough that nobody, not even the Corpsmen, gave him any argument.
Of course, that was likely because their boss was already striding through the door, heading off to the labs in the belly of HQ to find out if Jen knew what she was talking about, and how something had gotten its claws in him without his top-tier detection spell noticing.
The war mages followed, looking confused and belligerent and hedged by a mountain of fur as half of Cyrus’s boys peeled off to escort them out, and then chastened when the boss snapped at them to hurry up.
Yeah, before I rip them to shreds, the human part of my mind thought, right before my wolf lunged for the door.
But Cyrus had been expecting it, and he took me down before the rest of the wolves piled on top and sat on me. I fought them, even as fear clawed at my belly, fear that the same thing would happen in this fight that had in the other. But nothing did.
Except for me ending up squashed under a mountain of muscle, while half a dozen voices growled reassurances at me even as they held me down.
“Damn, she’s strong,” a voice I couldn’t recognize because it was all the way into wolf-speak said.
“She’s Lupa. What do you expect?” That was Jace, sounding proud and worried and a little freaked out, all at once.
“Get out,” Cyrus growled after a while. “All of you,” and they went.
“I need to talk to Lia!” Sophie repeated.
“Think you talked enough,” Lee told her, and dragged her off again, with the back of her t-shirt in his mouth like a misbehaving cub.
I just stayed sprawled on the torn-up carpet, wondering if I was ever going to get the home of my dreams. Something tastefully decorated in desert shades, with crimson and lavender accents, like a sunset. I liked sunsets.
Cyrus lay down beside me, still in human form, which was a good trick with that many other wolves changing around him.
That’s why he’s Alpha, I thought, feeling his hand find my arm.
I immediately felt better; the touch was comforting to both me and my wolf, which was still pacing around my head, mad as hell.
But a few moments breathing with Cyrus had her curling up and starting to lick a paw. It was a resentful licking, but still. Best I was going to get right now.
“You alright?” he asked, stroking my skin.
“Yeah.” With him, I was always alright. “Why are we home?”
“For one, it’s not safe at Dante’s as long as some of us might... have an incident—”
“Like going prehistoric at the drop of a hat?”
“—especially around the often deliberately provocative members of the leading clans. For another, we’re no longer too concerned about an attack by Rand, for some reason—”
No, I supposed not. Not with five Relics now in the house, assuming Cyrus and the others could still Change. I didn’t know and didn’t want to find out.
“—and most importantly of all, there is Sebastian.”
“He can’t know, Cyrus. Not about this.”
“He won’t. Your boss and I have an understanding.”
I felt myself relax, as much as possible at the moment, which wasn’t very even with him stroking my skin.
“Your wolf is angry,” he said, after a moment.
“Yep.”
“Do you know why?” I shook my head. Dark eyes found mine. “Would you like to?”