Tempest Reborn (22 page)

The fucked-up thing was that I understood why she’d do that. I mean, not why she would hurt others as part of her grieving process, but I could understand being so full of rage and hurt. We’d killed the love of her life, her brother and mate. That might have been creepy, but it was also quite a powerful set of relationships, all rolled into one incestuous dragon package. Considering she was evil to begin with, no wonder she was randomly striking out.

The scary part was that I also understood this striking-out stage would pass. Then she’d go for her real revenge. If her tantrums could kill a few hundred people, it was horrifying to think about what she could do given time to plan.

My thoughts continued along such dark paths as we drove through London’s deserted streets, seeing only emergency crews and soldiers directing everyone to stay indoors or take to the Underground to use as shelters, just like they did in World War Two. London looked and felt like I would imagine a war zone would, something I never thought I’d experience in my lifetime.

‘Here we are,’ Trevor said as our vehicle approached a smoking ruin. ‘Westminster. Or what’s left of it.’

Our vehicle stopped, and the others in our cavalcade pulled up beside us. Anyan and I got out of the car we’d been riding in, and I unconsciously reached for both the labrys and the silver stone in my pocket. My mind brushed against the place the labrys hid, waiting for me, as did my fingers on the stone. It was less of a comforting gesture, although it was that, and more of a subtle reminder that if we were at war, I was the warrior. It was a necessary reminder. Seeing the destruction of a building that was part of my cultural imagination of Britain made me want to run home to my childhood bed.

Iris, Caleb, and Ryu had gotten out of the car they’d ridden in, and were looking with similar expressions of horrified awe at the crumbling ruin in front of us. None of us asked about definitive death tolls, probably because we didn’t want to hear them. I felt a small, invisible hand press my knee, a bizarrely comforting gesture from our secret gwyllion ally.

‘So this is where she attacked first?’ Anyan asked from beside me. He was looking almost his old self, and now that we were back on the ground, I could feel a steady pull of his earth magics. He was healing himself with every step, building back up his physical and magical strength. As for his emotional and mental … only time would heal those wounds. Time and lovin’, and I planned on helping him have both.

‘Yes. Westminster first. She struck Big Ben and then attacked Parliament, then St Paul’s. Then it was just … random.’

I pursed my lips, considering, before I spoke. ‘I wouldn’t say it was random. She got the attention of the world first, and then she showed off what she could do.’

‘Well, we definitely saw that. The military didn’t stand a chance against her.’

‘You need water,’ I said, moving forward a bit to get a clearer view of the wreckage.

‘Water?’ Trevor asked, already reaching for his phone.

‘Yes. Fire trucks are good. Daniel knows all this,’ I said, but then remembered Daniel was dead. And who knew how the chain of command for reporting things worked when you were dealing with government organizations that weren’t supposed to exist? Someone should have known, through Daniel, that water was a weakness for the Red and the White, but obviously they didn’t. Considering Trevor’s words to me, I was pretty sure there were all sorts of territorial disputes within this secret unit, and Daniel had been as involved as Trevor.

‘Fire trucks,’ I repeated, ‘and those crop-duster planes might work, although the Red would probably just swat them out of the sky. Maybe drones could be rigged with water?’

I was talking out of my ass by this point, having no idea what a drone could do other than what I’d learned on the nightly news.

‘We’ll look into it,’ Trevor said, his chubby fingers texting furiously. ‘Maybe we can hold her back until we figure out what she wants.’

‘Wants?’ Anyan asked, rounding on Trevor. He’d been quiet for our walk, taking everything in his usual way. But I could see some of that old barghest spirit rising in him. ‘She doesn’t
want
anything. She just wants to destroy everything she can. That’s what she wanted before we killed her lover and brother. Now, there’s nothing she wants that we can give her, as we took the only thing she loved. All she’s got left is revenge.’

Trevor stopped texting, raising his eyes to Anyan’s. A flash of fear went through them at the idea of an enemy who genuinely wanted nothing. We may not understand the mindset of a terrorist, for example, but we could learn about them and make guesses about what they wanted. Hell, they usually made videos telling us in great detail what they wanted. And even if their demands seemed illogical or impossible, their desires were there for us to mull over.

It was rare to have an enemy who genuinely wanted nothing except to kill. Rare and horrifying, as there was suddenly no room for negotiation.

Hiral started feeling up my leg again, but this time he was tugging on my jeans like he wanted me to walk forward. I cleared my throat, meeting my crew’s eyes carefully before again addressing Trevor.

‘We want a few minutes to look around. Alone.’

Trevor looked uncomfortable. ‘I’d prefer you had some of my men with you. For safety.’

I arched an eyebrow. There was nothing his men could save us from, quite frankly, no matter how big their guns. I forced my brow back to normal before speaking, keeping my tone carefully modulated.

‘Trevor, let’s not kid ourselves. You and your people are here as a favor. We’ll let you play with the big dogs, but don’t think for a minute we couldn’t be out of here the second we wanted to. You know what we’re capable of.’

I saw Trevor’s Adam’s apple bob as he absorbed my not-quite-entire truths. The fact was the creature could poof only one or two of us out of there, especially after all the mojo it had expended helping create the stone; and then getting Anyan back had necessitated an enormous output of energy. It couldn’t keep up this pace forever, any more than we could.

But Trevor didn’t need to know that. I’m sure he already knew we had the ability to appear out of nowhere before, and of the Red’s sudden disappearance in Hong Kong. If he thought such occurrences were normal, we’d be a lot better off…

‘Yes, well, if you’re certain you’ll be safe…’ the little man said, his voice trailing off when his words were met by my contemptuous little smile.

‘We’ll call you if we need you,’ I said drily, moving forward and motioning to my friends to follow.

We walked forward in a tight knot, following the cordon placed around Westminster, along streets that normally would have been full of tourists but were now eerily empty.

‘Hiral?’ I asked when we were out of earshot of any of Trevor’s cronies. We kept walking as we talked.

‘Here,’ the gwyllion said, letting his rotten-toothed smile appear, floating in front of us, just for a second, like that of the Cheshire cat.

‘What’s up?’

‘I’m off, just wanted to let you know that. Figure we need a set of eyes in the enemy camp.’

I felt relief wash over me. ‘Good. Because this can’t last, the random attacks.’

‘She’ll want more than random revenge soon,’ Anyan said. ‘She’ll calm down enough to make a plan.’

‘Then we’re really fucked,’ said Ryu.

The gwyllion’s voice spoke from the empty air. ‘I’ll find her people; see what they’re working on. The Red and the White were never the most practical buggers, so I imagine she’s got advisors working on something horrifyingly modern in terms of destruction.’

We all cast each other looks as we continued walking, thinking through all the doomsday scenarios possible when dealing with a supernatural creature willing to use the human world to exact vengeance.

‘Don’t miss me too much,’ was Hiral’s parting shot.

‘Good luck,’ I said. The gwyllion had become a more important, courageous ally than I’d ever imagined he would be, and I deeply regretted my first assessments of him. Even if he was smelly and unpleasant, he was loyal and fierce and incredibly skilled.

We continued walking as I addressed Caleb.

‘How’d your work on the plane go?’

Caleb’s face was pensive, as it had been since we’d disembarked at Heathrow. Considering the circumstances, a little gloom and doom was probably called for, but I was worried there was something more. The satyr had, after all, been translating the rest of Theophrastus’s poem, comparing it to the journal article he’d found and trying to figure out what the last stage of killing the Red would entail. For we couldn’t just repeat what we’d done with the White. The whole process of alchemy was about building on stages of development, so the White got one ritual (the stone’s transmutation into silver) and the Red got her own (the stone’s changing from silver to gold).

‘It’s … going,’ he said eventually. ‘I need a little more time…’

‘Is it something bad?’ I asked sharply. ‘Because if it is—’

‘I don’t know yet,’ the satyr interrupted. ‘But bad or good, I’ll let you know whatever I discover.’

There was something about Caleb’s tone that worried me, like he knew something more than he was saying, and it wasn’t going to make us happy. But I had to trust him – if he wasn’t sure what he was talking about yet, there was no point in getting worked up.

Not that I had a tendency to get worked up or anything.

So we kept walking, stretching our legs and getting a good view of the carnage. Anyan swirled a powerful glamour around us, so that the occasional teams of workers or soldiers we passed wouldn’t notice our presence and try to stop us. In general, the streets were almost entirely empty of anyone resembling a civilian, and that fact combined with the smell of smoldering ash lent the whole scene a very post-apocalyptic feel.

When we turned back to rejoin Trevor and his team, Ryu spoke up.

‘So what do we do now?’

Anyan and I both shrugged as if on cue. I gestured to him to answer.

‘Nothing we can do except wait out the Red. Try to stop her if she attacks again. Hope that Hiral discovers something we can use.’

‘What if she doesn’t make another appearance?’ Ryu asked. ‘What if she’s done venting?’

‘She won’t be,’ Iris said. ‘Not until she’s about to do something bigger. Right now she’ll wreck havoc until either we stop her or she forms a plan for some ultimate revenge.’

I gave the succubus a questioning look, and she shrugged. ‘I know anger,’ was all Iris said. It was enough.

‘Well, if she does lay low for a while, we can always try to find where she holes up. Take the fight to her,’ Ryu said, but he was wasting his breath.

Running toward us, as fast as his little legs could carry him, was Trevor.

‘It’s her. She’s at the London Eye.’

Anyan snapped to attention. ‘Get as many fire trucks as you can on deck and ready to roll. We need water. Jane can use the Thames, but if there’s any way you can help pump some water…’

‘There are fireboats out already. But it’s probably too far to reach the Red…’

‘All she needs is water in the air. She can handle getting it to the Red.’

I nodded at Anyan’s words, letting Trevor know the barghest was right.

Trevor nodded, calling up contacts on his cell even as we ran back to the waiting vehicles.

It was show time.

When we arrived on the scene, we found the Red had invented a new game: throwing the London Eye around like it was a Frisbee.

‘Extreme Destruction?’ I muttered to myself, giving the new game a name.

‘What was that?’ Anyan asked, turning to me.

‘Nothing. We need a plan.’

The barghest frowned, watching the Red fly. She hadn’t seen us yet, as we’d parked in an unobtrusive place behind some low-lying buildings. I watched with curiosity as Anyan took a power stance, then moved his head right, then left, stretching his neck muscles. At the same time, he pulled power from the earth, sending it out in a tight but very strong shield in front of us.

He’s warming up
, I realized.
Making sure he’s ready.

When he was finished, he turned back to me. ‘Okay. I’m good.’

‘Ryu? Caleb?’ I asked. They both nodded. Iris was staying back with the car. She had her own strengths, but kick-assery was not one of them. I turned to Trevor.

‘Fire crews are in place, as are the fireboats.’

‘Tell the fire crews to stay put till we need them. Tell the fireboats to start getting that water in the air.’

Trevor spoke into his phone and immediately I felt the effect. I could feel the Thames a short distance away, but now the water was arcing up. There I caught it, holding it high in a net of my own making. I kept collecting it, keeping the swaths of water low so the Red wouldn’t see them from where she was flying. While I worked on the water, Anyan spoke to the others.

‘Somewhere around here have to be the Alfar and the supernatural rebels. We lost our main contact with them when we lost Gog and Magog, but I’ve no doubt they’ll be following the Red’s movements and planning their own counterattack. When they show, try to work with them.’

Ryu and Caleb nodded, but Ryu was looking skeptical.

‘So, do we have a plan?’ he asked.

I looked at Anyan, who shrugged. So I went ahead and made a plan.

‘The plan is to keep her busy and feel out her strength. The Red and the White were always a unit; now half of that unit is gone. We have no idea what we’re dealing with out there.’

‘Will you use the stone?’ Ryu asked.

I shook my head. ‘I think it’s best we keep it out of sight for now. Unless Caleb’s had a breakthrough with the poem?’

The satyr wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘I think I’m close, but not quite there. It’s … complicated. I’m not sure exactly what you need to do yet.’

It was obvious that there was something up with the poem, something that Caleb didn’t want to tell us.

‘Right, then. As I said, it’s best we leave the stone out of it till we know how to use it. For now, I think our main focus is figuring out what the Red is capable of on her own. Better yet, we need to get her out of London and make her think twice about showing her ugly mug here again.’