Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel (2 page)

The highway sign indicating
my entry into Hardwick Township appeared just as the digital clock display on my GPS clicked over to noon. I’d been driving for four and a half hours by then, enough time to take me from the heart of my mother’s territory in Providence, Rhode Island, to its very edge in northern New Jersey. There were a lot of people who would’ve been surprised to know that I-80 demarcated a line of ownership that had been established with blood hundreds of years ago. Those people would have been even more surprised to learn that the path of this particular interstate had been placed at the direction of a vampire.

Or not. New Jersey politics were rather notorious, after all.

My mother was the vampire in question, and also the reason that I was driving through New Jersey. Madeline Scott reigned supreme in a territory that stretched from New Jersey’s border with Pennsylvania up into southern Québec—and like any good leader, she had realized long ago the importance of delegating menial tasks. Today I was on my way to discuss terms and conditions with a group of hopeful immigrants to the territory. Not humans, of course—with few exceptions, humans moved through territories with blissful ignorance. Territory rules and boundaries applied to a much smaller, and more secret global population—the supernatural.

This was normally the kind of task that my older brother, Chivalry, was best at handling—with smooth good looks and the kind of diplomatic skills that would’ve made Madeleine Albright jealous, my brother was practically tailor-made for these kinds of missions. I was definitely the second string in this particular field, but I was at least an improvement over our oldest sibling, my sister, Prudence.

Her diplomatic skills mostly involved leaving bodies on the floor.

I’d been involved with only one immigration request before, and that was a fairly standard one of a werebear (sorry,
metsän kunigas—
the bears are picky about the terminology) family from Mexico coming in to join up with our local group. It had been back when I was still doing ride-alongs with Chivalry as part of my training. I’d spent most of my life trying to be like the humans around me, and pretending that things like vampires didn’t even exist—that had led me to a film studies degree from Brown and then a series of minimum-wage jobs. But last year things had changed, and now I was irrevocably part of the family system, and was even on the family payroll. At my own insistence, I’d kept the minimum wage, even though I knew that my family could pay me marriage-counselor-level hourly rates and never even notice. During one of the periods that the Scirocco had been in the shop, and I’d been relying on the Providence bus system and shanks’ mare for transportation, my roommate, Dan, had asked me outright why I didn’t just take more money from my family—they’d be happy to give it, and in fact could probably have just bought me a new car from the petty cash account and relied on their fleet of accountants to turn it into a tax write-off. It had been hard to put a lifetime’s coil of fear, stubbornness, and tiny private high ground into words, but the best that I’d been able to explain was that taking no more than I would otherwise have been earning on the open market of shitty jobs made me feel like I couldn’t be caught by my family’s money, or ever build up a style of living that required that money and therefore could put pressure on me to do things that I felt might be unethical. This way, after all, I could always tell them all to go pound sand and maintain my current lifestyle by pouring coffee and cleaning public toilets.

Dan had been so utterly disgusted by what he termed my “bullheaded and bullshit martyrdom” that he’d lent me his car until the Scirocco was fixed. While I hadn’t exactly followed his reasoning on that one, I supposed that at least we were both equally mystified by the other’s actions.

Today was going to be my first solo effort—and it probably wouldn’t even have been happening, except that Chivalry was on vacation with his new wife, Simone, in New Hampshire. The call requesting a hearing for immigration into the territory had come in yesterday, and had cited some emergency as the reason for the short notice. Chivalry had offered to come home early to handle it, but I’d promised to do it myself. Simone was a professional mountaineer, and she’d just finished guiding a group of winter hikers up Mount Washington, so it didn’t seem fair to make her cut short her downtime afterward at a fancy and expensive ski lodge. Plus, she and Chivalry had been married for only a month and a half, and most of that had been sucked up with the holiday season. With the new year only a week old, I figured that she deserved a little one-on-one with my brother. After all, it wasn’t like she had a lot of time to waste.

So that had all led to me here, in my gray Scirocco, cruising into a rural town (population 1,696) in New Jersey whose sole claim to fame was that the original
Friday the 13th
had been filmed there. Under normal circumstances, I might’ve been kind of excited. After all, despite the layer of snow on the ground that was old enough to have acquired a nasty grayish crust that removed all picturesque elements from it, the roads were dry, my car was running well, and my partner in crime and new girlfriend, Suzume, was reclining naked in the backseat.

Well, naked other than her natural fur coat. Suzume was a kitsune, and apparently the Scirocco had been built on a scale far too compact for her to willingly spend four and a half hours in her human skin. She had shifted into her other form, which had coal-black fur, amber eyes containing a world of mischief, and a snow-white tail tip. From the soft whuffling sounds emerging from my backseat, she’d been napping for at least the last two hours. Before that she’d been playing with a balled-up take-out bag from Dunkin’ Donuts—all that remained of our breakfast of champions.

Normal circumstances didn’t apply because the Scirocco’s passenger seat was currently occupied by the generously endowed figure of Loren Noka, the family’s business secretary and a woman whose air of complete and utter competency left me feeling more than a little intimidated. Her Native American heritage was clearly written across her face, and even though I knew that she was in her late forties, her dark hair showed not the slightest hint of gray. I had almost suffered a near-death experience from sheer shame this morning when she wordlessly lowered her cream linen pantsuit–clad body down onto a subcompact car seat that was not only older than I was, but had been liberally patched and repatched with duct tape in four different colors. And I also had a very bad suspicion that the entire interior of the car was currently coated with Suzume’s black fox hairs.

Loren was along on this trip to provide double duty as my chaperone in diplomacy, and also to handle most of the paperwork. Immigration into the territory had copious aspects, such as whether my mother was willing to let certain groups or species enter, but the biggest focus was a simple one: money. From the meagerest kobold right up to the elves, every supernatural who lived in my mother’s territory tithed heavily for the privilege. We even ran their credit scores.

In exchange, those who lived in my mother’s territory were under her protection. It was a very Mafia-style protection, with many regulations on behavior and activities, and the possibility of death-by-Prudence if they violated any of those rules, but it did prevent any group from preying on another. I’d never set one foot outside the boundaries of Scott territory, but given how desperate many people were to get in, what was out there couldn’t be a walk in the park.

Suzume was along in case ass needed to be kicked at some point. Which, though her current form looked like nothing more than an adorable plushy toy, she knew how to deliver.

Loren must’ve been following my train of thought, because she glanced over her shoulder and noted quietly, “We’ll be at the Supplicant House in less than ten minutes. Shouldn’t your companion assume a more appropriate form?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s a lot more diplomatic the way she is.”

A delicately angled black snout immediately inserted itself between the two front seats, and a long vulpine tongue gave my right ear and surrounding hair a thorough slobbering, ignoring my shout of protest. Apparently Suze hadn’t been as asleep as I’d thought. The snout withdrew again into the backseat, and Loren restrained herself to a single raised eyebrow as she wordlessly removed a tissue from her purse and handed it to me.

I mopped myself off as best I could, grumbling as I did. A moment later I yelped again as Suzume leaned forward between the seats again, now entirely human and just as entirely naked.

“I resent your comment,” she said. “I have excellent diplomacy skills. In fact, of the two of us, I am the resident champion of diplomacy.”

“Yes, Diplomacy. The lying, backstabbing board game that appeals to every innate skill you possess. I’m aware.” We’d played it a few times with Dan and his boyfriend. I’d been soundly beaten each time. “Now can you please put clothing on before you cause a multiple-car accident?” Suze’s casual attitude toward personal nudity was genuine, but she was also quite well aware that the rest of the planet’s population was significantly less casual in response to it. In the passenger seat, Loren Noka suddenly exhibited a new and powerful interest in the rural New Jersey scenery.

Suze smiled at me, the delicate corners of the eyes that were the clearest marker of her Japanese heritage crinkling. “Now, who would expect to see a smoking-hot woman in the backseat of a car this shitty?” With that bon mot, she began a leisurely reapplication of her bra. All of the kitsune had a kind of illusion magic that they referred to as fox tricks—it allowed them to fool all of a person’s senses (and sometimes even cameras and technical equipment) into seeing only what the kitsune wanted to be seen. I knew that fox tricks were the easiest when the kitsune worked within what the viewer would normally expect to see—for example, it probably would’ve been more difficult for her to convince someone that there
was
a naked woman in the back of my car than to convince them that
of course
the woman in that car was wearing clothing—even while she was still functionally undressed.

“Don’t think I won’t turn the heat off if you take too long,” I muttered. If the January chill was what it took to get her dressed, then I wasn’t above unrolling my window.

Of course, if I wanted to see Suzume undressed again in a more
recreational
setting, then I knew as well as she did that the odds of me actually following through on my threat were practically zero.

“Hey,” Suze said, her voice partially muffled by the turtleneck she was pulling over her head, “any chance we can turn on some actual music? If I have to sit through one more minute of NPR, I might have to punch the next person I see with an
All Things Considered
travel mug in the face.”

“You knew the terms when you agreed to come on the trip,” I warned her. Suze’s preference in music could be best described as “tunes to speed to,” and while I normally didn’t mind it too much (and in fact had begun to develop an unwilling appreciation for J-pop thrash metal), I’d felt the need to intercede for the sake of Loren Noka (who struck me as more of a smooth jazz connoisseur), and we’d spent the entire drive going from one NPR station to another.

“This is completely unfair. If it wasn’t for me, we would’ve spent the entire trip with nothing but Springsteen.”

“I know that it’s New Jersey, but they do occasionally play something other than The Boss,” Loren interjected.

“No, she’s talking about my car stereo,” I explained. “When I bought the Scirocco back in November, the radio was broken, and there was a
Born to Run
tape permanently fused into the player. It wasn’t exactly at the top of my priority list of repairs, so Suze got me a new system for Christmas.”

“And surprised him with it,” Suze said. Her voice still sounded a little weird, and when I checked the rearview this time, I saw that she was in the process of wiggling into her jeans. Winter clothing was rough for shape-shifting.

“Yes. She surprised me with it by hiring someone to break into my car, take it to a chop shop, install the new stereo, and bring it back.”

Suze leaned forward again and frowned at me. “You’re not sounding appropriately appreciative of the awesomeness of my gift presentation.”

“It was a great present,” I assured her, “and I really was happy to not have to have it installed. I just wish that the installer hadn’t permanently broken the passenger door while doing it, and stolen my tire iron, cell phone charger, and flashlight.”

“No one likes an ungrateful gift recipient,” Suze said.

“They broke the passenger door?” Loren interjected, looking concerned. After all, if the door in question suddenly failed catastrophically, she was on the front lines.

“Not too badly,” I assured her. “They just broke the lock pin, so you can’t unlock the passenger door without the key anymore.”

“So I can’t open my door from the inside?” Loren asked.

“No.”

“So you now essentially have a kidnapper-mobile?”

“Some people would regard that as an added feature,” Suze said helpfully.

“Yes, Suze. But those people would be
kidnappers
.” I’d been having this conversation with her since the holidays. A preliminary phone call to a repair garage had also revealed that fixing this particular issue could only be accomplished with a special thread die, so this was probably now going to be a semipermanent feature of the car from now on. That had definitely tempered my gratitude for relief from endless repeats of The Boss. Suzume’s helpful suggestion had been to simply leave the door eternally unlocked, but given my lack of interest in allowing the petty thieves of Providence to treat my car as a personal rummage sale, I’d simply gotten into the habit of manually relocking the car on every occasion that I had to let a passenger in or out.

Loren headed off the topic with a polite redirection to the kinds of minimum tithing amounts that we would be looking for in this meeting, and I let myself focus back on the road. The percentages and payoffs had already been thoroughly drilled into my head during a cram session spent with the documents that I’d been sent last night, and Loren had gone over them twice already on the trip. But apparently Loren’s back-to-business topic choice was enough to remind Suze about what was waiting for us in a few more miles.