Chapter Twenty-Three
Angie
I was fully armored, this time in the queen’s armor, because if we had to kill someone, it needed to be under the queen’s flag, not my own self-recognizance.
Aunt Jane—or rather, the queen—wanted Gertrude disabled, not eliminated.
But things happened fast in fights. No one could predict what would occur in a battle, especially against a para who, according to the latest security reports, “stole some serious mojo amulets from a marine base. And some serious armament.”
If Gertrude Lothringen, the witch hunter who had tortured Nyoka in World War Two, died, I didn’t want her people coming after us.
No supernat lived in a vacuum. The queen’s banner—and the five-million-dollar reverse bounty on my head—dissuaded all but the most zealous from trying to kill me, but it took only one who cared less about survival than vengeance.
The queen owed me no intel or help. Aunt Jane seemed to be working around all the political realities of our intertwined relationships to give me the freedom I craved, despite both potential political repercussions and my personal danger.
By our bid for independence, EJ and I had put everyone—the queen, my family and coven, Walter, us, and now the security unit—in jeopardy. The queen had been trying to protect our safety, our independence, all our people, and still keep peace and a royal balance of power.
Freedom—EJ’s and mine—was a danger to everyone.
Crap. As Aunt Jane might say.
I hooked my silver-plated steel gorget around my neck and drew a pair of shooter’s gloves over my stark-white hands, gloves that left the fingertips bare so I could work and feel.
The skin wasn’t healed, even with the bloodbath Shiloh had given them and the healing amulets she had brought from Mama.
The flesh wasn’t tender, the surface mostly numb except to pressure, but deep down, there was a persistent ache, a sensation of icy needles and stabbing pins, and the occasional sensation of being burned by hot embers.
I turned to the mirror and picked up the tube on the kitchen table.
I drew on scarlet lipstick. I had learned early on that women warriors each had a special something that made an opponent hesitate.
I had picked scarlet lipstick because Aunt Jane used it, this exact same shade.
I twisted my strawberry blonde curls into a tight tail and tucked the low ponytail into the gorget.
“Hmmm,” I murmured, looking at myself, thinking I needed something. Just a little more…
“Can I at least watch you jump, cara?”
I tilted my head to the side and down. Lee had been watching me arm up, and his eyes were half lidded, heated, saying he’d rather I was taking the armor and gear off than putting it on. I ran a hand over my hip as if checking the position of my shortsword, though its placement was perfect.
His warm eyes followed the motion, as I intended, and he smiled slightly.
“Yes,” I said. “You can…watch.”
He chuckled at the double entendre.
My voice hardened just a bit. “But stay here. Please.”
Villetti flicked his fingers. “I understand political realities. There are no exigent circumstances that might allow me to enter. But if you happen to find a dead human or two in the stairwell, that changes my involvement. In such a case, you will call me, yes? And I will take the normal route, through the snow and in the front doorway.”
I laughed, picturing my cohorts and me leaping over dead bodies. Maybe I was a little wacko too. “Yes. I’ll call if I find DBs.”
Villetti made a soft hum in the back of his throat as he reviewed my words.
I walked to the kitchen area and stood over my black stone battery.
From its surface, I chose three small amulets: a gold leaf, which I pinned to my lapel, a wooden disk with a tree of life carved into it, and a small bone I had found in the forest on the hill behind my childhood home the year Mama and I brought the forest back to life.
It was the thigh bone of a squirrel, killed by mama’s death magic. The bone carried a bit of that forbidden and deadly magic within it still.
I tucked the disk and bone into empty pockets. Yes…That felt right. I might need these amulets and the workings embedded and woven through them. Or I might not.
I blew Villetti a kiss, patted all my other amulets through the BOBB bag’s heavy fabric. Took up my staff. Just in case our target was possessed.
Please don’t let me have to use it. I didn’t pray often. This situation had appeared simple at first. Find a missing woman. But it had proved to be over my head and my skill set.
I tapped my unicom and the door opened. Not because anyone had requested entrance. But because a sliver of an image from my precog told me it needed to be open.
Raccoon and EJ walked from the elevator door, both wearing the queen’s armor, both weaponed up like battle bots.
Both wearing climbing harnesses. My brother was carrying some kind of tuba, one that was nearly as long as he was tall.
I didn’t ask. I wanted to. But I didn’t. Like my three amulets, it felt right.
But a tuba?
EJ said, “Follow the plan. If the shit hits, and Gertrude’s possessed, shoot demon rounds first, worry later.”
“Got it, boss,” Raccoon said.
“I’m no one’s boss,” EJ said, fast, his face cold in an instant.
Raccoon stood soldier straight. “You were the youngest LT in the Witch War, sir. I’m honored to serve under you, sir.”
EJ went utterly still, something I didn’t understand in his eyes. “If we didn’t have demons around, I’d tell you what I thought about all that, in language you wouldn’t forget,” he snarled.
“Stop it,” I snapped. Magic crackled through me. The top stone on my staff brightened with light, glowing, throwing water-like waves of blue and green light onto the green walls. I cast a small happy times working. “No bitching about the war. Let’s…” I lifted my head high. “Let’s party.”
“And you call your first cousin Wacko,” Villetti said, still wearing that small smile. His voice dropped into a soft timbre when he added, “Have fun, amore mio.”
I wasn’t sure what personal qualities I’d had as a young college woman that would have led Lee to assume I would have fun invading the lair of a dangerous vampire. What had Aunt Jane told him about me? How much had I revealed of who I am now without realizing it?
But I liked that he didn’t ask anyone to take care of me.
Taking care of people was my job. I pulled my headset into place and readied the oculars.
We walked to the balcony, where EJ leaned against the railing, aiming a grappling hook for the small piton on the building’s third floor, one he’d inserted into the wall face the first month after he’d arrived in Chat-town.
It had been dangerous night work, hanging from a line secured at the ninth floor during an illicit B&E look-see between vamp tenants.
We hadn’t told Walter. EJ tossed the hook.
It caught on the piton on the third throw.
In a practiced gesture, he tossed three amulets high into the air, one up, one to each side.
As they flew on an upward trajectory, he lifted his tuba and blew a deep note.
The amulets exploded instantly. The alley filled with smoke above and all around, impacting, if not disabling, the ability of regular-vision security cams.
He tossed the tuba to Raccoon, who barely caught it, and handed the instrument to Lee. Hidden by the smoke, EJ leaped to the railing, balancing on one hand and his feet. The rope attached to the grappling hook was secured in his free hand and on his climbing harness.
EJ threw himself forward and up. Momentum and gravity pulled him across the alley.
The smoke was so thick I lost sight instantly, but I heard him hit the wall face.
He’d slammed against the building’s cement brick.
Listening carefully, I picked up the sounds as EJ dropped into the small nook of the restaurant’s delivery doorway.
The rope reappeared through the smoke, as if thrown, with EJ’s harness attached.
In silent breathless laughter, Raccoon pulled the line, tossed me the harness, and repeated the maneuver. I heard the shooter join EJ in the doorway’s small space.
I had never been into rock climbing, but I had practiced rappelling down a building wall and this escape two times in the past. Two years ago.
I was about to discover if it was like riding a bike.
I pulled EJ’s harness on and let Villetti buckle me in.
Nerves jazzed through me as I climbed onto the railing, jumped high, through the thinning smoke, and banged into the building, scraping down.
I grunted, landing hard, but uninjured. I removed the harness as if I jumped off my balcony every day.
As EJ punched in the door’s code, Raccoon released the rope from the grappling hook, leaving it and our harnesses in place for later retrieval.
The door opened and we stepped inside, closing the door.
Raccoon placed a small mat on the floor, and we cleaned our boots on it.
EJ pulled his oculars into place and spun up the low light, re-familiarizing himself with the layout.
I adjusted my headset to the low light and checked to make sure all traces of our passage were gone, before drying the mat and handing it back to Raccoon.
Following EJ, I crossed the room to the cooktop and ovens.
Around the wall at the floor was a row of tiles.
He motioned to Raccoon to be ready and pointed at the wall.
At the base of the oven where the owners prepared their signature salmon dishes, EJ tapped the second tile until it popped free, pressed the lever behind the tile. A narrow two-foot-wide door opened.