Vesik 3 Winter's Demon (2 page)

“Christ, you’re big.” His eyes trailed from the wingtips at the ceiling down to the armored boots on their feet.

“Sometimes we are, sometimes we are not,” Aideen said. “Regardless, we must heal your daughter.”

“Yes, enough talk. Stand aside, Damian,” Cara said.

I nodded and Sam released my arm. Cara leaned in and pulled Sam’s shirt up, exposing the gash beneath. It was smaller, but not by much. Cara let the blood-soaked fabric fall back onto the wound, and placed one hand on Sam’s shoulder and the other over her heart.
“Socius Sanation.”
The incantation was only a whisper, but the explosion of white light was a sun that burned away every shadow in the room.

When I could see again, Sam was standing. Cara had Sam’s shirt pulled up enough to reveal my sister’s flat, muscled stomach, free of wounds and blemished only by unwashed blood.

Aideen swabbed away as much of the blood as she could with a white kitchen towel and nodded to Cara before dropping the bloody cloth into the sink.

“My god,” Dad said as he stood and stepped toward Sam. “It’s really true.”

He didn’t even seem to notice as Aideen and Cara flashed into their smaller forms, only a few inches tall, in a burst of white that emitted no luminescence. His hand brushed the scraps of Sam’s shirt to the side. Her black eyes glanced to me and I shrugged. Who knows what runs through someone’s mind after surviving a supernatural hailstorm like that? Dad’s mind was an open book as he reached out and crushed Sam in a bear hug. Tremors shook his body and I didn’t need to see his face to know he was crying. Sam looked shell-shocked for a moment before tears started down her own cheeks.

We stayed still for a while, destruction and death all around us in our childhood home. Cara and Aideen perched on the owl-shaped salt and pepper shakers at the edge of the table and Sam whispered into Dad’s ear.

“We’ll get her back.”

CHAPTER TWO

D
ad stood abruptly and the whiskey glass shattered when it fell from his hand as he reached for his shotgun.

“Don’t shoot him!” I said.

“What the hell?!” he shouted when Foster materialized in the living room, roaring a battle cry from Happy’s back, sword drawn and rage twisting his face.

Sam rewarded the fairy with a snort from the couch. “They’re all dead. Calm down.”

Foster blinked, looked around the room, and then sheathed his sword with a sigh. His wings drooped a little as he slid backwards off the panda. Happy trundled over to Dad and nosed him in the face. Sam laughed as Dad jerked back.

“He’s not exactly a ghost,” I said. “You can pet him.”

The expression on Dad’s face—one raised eyebrow and an uncertain smile—raised a small chuckle from the group. He reached out and scratched Happy behind the ears.

“You may go, Guardian. Find Cassie,” Cara said. “Tell her danger is coming.”

Happy backed up a few steps and bumped me with his hip. He chortled before vanishing with a quiet, hissing pop.

“What the hell?” Dad said again. He was much more reserved about it this time as he lowered himself back into his chair.

“Cassie has the Blessing again?” I asked. “Is it at the History Museum?”

“Of course not,” Cara said. “Don’t be daft.”

Sam smiled and then bit her lip. I’m sure she was keeping her sibling-insulting impulses in check.

I rubbed my face. “Where do we find her?”

“We don’t know,” Aideen said. “Zola had an idea for hiding the Blessing, but she only told Cassie. Cassie is hiding it somewhere even Zola won’t know about.”

“Damn that woman likes her secrets,” I muttered.

“And only Zola knows where Cassie is,” Cara said. “Cassie is more friend to your master than she ever was to us.” She paused and looked at her hand as it curled into a fist.

Something in Cara’s voice struck me as odd. She sounded disappointed, or regretful. I suspected there was a history there I didn’t know.

Foster shrank and glided over to sit below Aideen. He fluffed his wings and scratched his head. “That’s great. Philip doesn’t know who has it. He won’t think Cassie has the Blessing again. He’ll come after all of us, pick us off until he finds out who really has it.”

“That’s why he took Mom,” Sam said. “Isn’t it?”

“What?” Foster said. “He was here? He took Andi?”

“It wasn’t Philip,” Sam said. “It was three necromancers. Two of them I’d never seen before, but the other was a leftover from Stones River, Volund.”

“Where’s Zola?” Cara asked.

“At the cabin,” I said. “I’ll call her.”

I flipped out my cell and called my master. She picked up in one ring, but was silent. In the background, I could hear the low, gravelly growl of rocks speaking.

“Dark times, Adannaya. They drew on much power in the city today.”

“Hey, Aeros!” I shouted into the phone.

“Dammit, boy. Ah’m hard enough of hearing,” Zola said with a snap in her old world New Orleans accent.

I could hear Aeros’s rumbling laughter in the background.

“We have problems,” I said with all humor gone from my voice. “They took my mom. They’re after the Blessing.”

The string of curses that erupted from the phone would have sent a demon running for a bomb shelter. “I’m coming.”

The phone went dead.

***

I heard the rumble of Zola’s car two hours later while it was still half a block away. I was standing in the dim night when the motion-activated floodlight over my parents’ garage lit up her flashy, blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air. She steered past my car, into the driveway, and stepped out. Her gray cloak lifted briefly in a cold breeze and her gnarled hands contrasted sharply with the pale knobs on her old cane.

My eyes widened as Edgar Amon stepped out of the passenger side with a bowler tucked under his arm. He was dressed to the nines in a black three-piece suit.

“Oh, shit,” Foster said. I looked toward his voice and saw him perched in one of the shattered windows.

Edgar glanced at the overturned SUV and rolled his eyes.

“Hey, Eddie!” I said cheerfully as I affixed the best fake grin on my face I could muster.

“You litter the streets with corpses, destroy a prized sculpture, burn an entire city to the ground, and let’s not even start on Stones River.”

I was fairly certain he wasn’t talking about the mess we’d made during the battle at Stones River. I was pretty damn sure he was not-so-subtly referring to the soulart I’d destroyed Prosperine with.

Edgar looked up and met my eyes. His own were black pitch in his sandy face and close-cropped hair. “And now you drag this catastrophe into your parents’ home.”

My false grin faded into a snarl.

Zola put a hand on Edgar’s shoulder. “Enough, Amon. That is enough. The Watchers can’t win this battle without us, and we can’t win without you. We are past this petty nonsense.”

Edgar closed his eyes slowly and took a deep breath. “I forget myself. My apologies, Damian.”

My jaw was still hanging loose as he walked by and followed Foster into the house, back to the relatively clear living room.

I grabbed Zola’s arm and whispered into her ear. “What’s he doing here?”

She glanced at my hand, plucked it off with the strength of a bodybuilder, and narrowed her eyes. “He’s a friend of the best sort.”

“What does that mean?”

“Once he was an enemy, many years ago.”

I shook my head. “How long have you known him?”

“Long,” she said as she stepped into the house and we picked our way into the kitchen through the carnage.

“My god,” Edgar said. “They struck like this in daylight?”

“Sunset,” Dad said as he held out his hand and shook Edgar’s. “We were sitting down to a late dinner when these things came in.”

Edgar leaned down and studied a few of the headless zombies. “You are a surgeon with a shotgun, Dimitry.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

“I am a Watcher. It’s my job to know things. Has Damian not spoken of us before?” Edgar flipped the bowler onto the glass stovetop with a flick of his wrist, not waiting for my dad to respond. He turned one of the kitchen chairs toward the living room. I was half irritated and half glad he didn’t want to get into it with Dad.

I sat down next to Sam on the old, blue corduroy couch as she finished wiping most of the blood off her face. Some still trailed down her neck. I watched her for a moment as she brushed her hair back, revealing the darker patch of skin where a vampire named Dale had ripped out her throat. I’d turned him into confetti and used the leftovers to stitch Sam back together with a soulart.

I ran my hand over the tightly woven bumps of the fabric on the cushions. We used to sit on that couch as kids, back when Saturday mornings were still reserved for cartoons and Fruit Loops.

I stared at the floor and muttered, “How the hell did we end up here?”

Sam smiled and squeezed my knee, as though she knew exactly what I meant.

Zola sat down on the dark leather recliner while Dad took up a post at the edge of the kitchen, within arm’s reach of his shotgun, a fact I don’t believe Edgar missed. The fairies formed a loose circle on the surprisingly intact glass coffee table.

“Where is Cassie?” Cara asked.

“She’s with the Piasa Bird,” Zola said.

Edgar rubbed his face and sighed. “Never boring around you people, is it?” Everyone ignored him but Zola. She shot him a smile.

“Just wait, Edgar. Just wait.” Zola’s quiet laugh was utterly unnerving.

“You mean the painting on the bluffs?” Sam asked. “Over in Alton?”

“Yes, that’s where she is, but within the cliffs, in the lair of the bird.”

“That thing is real?” I asked.

“It is one of the last of its kind,” Edgar said. “There were many more, in darker times. A hybrid of Native American lore and twisted Fae magics.”

“Hardly,” Zola said. “You know what he is.”

Edgar frowned and glanced at the fairies.

“Does Philip know about the Piasa Bird?” Foster asked.

Zola rubbed her chin on her shoulder. “He may.”

“There are no Ways into that lair,” Cara said.

“There is one,” Aideen said.

Cara shook her head. “Anyone appearing in front of that creature would be devoured in an instant.”

“So we get to travel by car?” I asked, unable to keep a little edge of glee out of my voice. “No nauseating ride through the Warded Ways?”

“What are we waiting for?” Foster asked.

“The hour is late,” Edgar said. “It would be better to travel tomorrow morning, after some rest.”

“Enough,” Cara said. “It is already tomorrow and Andi is missing. Load up, we are leaving.”

CHAPTER THREE

“H
ugh?” I asked as soon as someone picked up the line.

“Damian, your call is welcome brother. What do you need?” Hugh—River Pack Alpha, and all around Native American werewolf badass—had inducted me into the pack in the summer, after our battle with Philip and Prosperine the Destroyer. Now he’s my Alpha too, in a way, but I don’t turn furry.

“I have some Indian questions for you.”

“I don’t know much about Indian questions,” he said, with a particular emphasis on Indian.

“Ah, right. No disrespect intended,” I said. “I have some questions about a Native American legend. Or possibly myth? Maybe creature? I’m not sure.”

“That seems to be the usual reason for calling me. I begin to wonder if your sister was correct. Perhaps I should employ a secretary?”

Sam snickered from the driver’s seat of my ’32 Ford Victoria. It felt wrong to call my car Vicky anymore, now that the little ghost had taken the name. I studiously ignored Sam as we started across the bridge over the Mississippi River. Huge swaths of cabling draped across the center towers of the bridge and out to the edges on either side, creating skeletal sails against the cloudy blue sky.

“It’s a quick question, I swear.”

Hugh sighed. “Very well.”

“What’s the Piasa Bird?”

“A quick question? That is a very complex question. It has many meanings to many people.”

“But what’s the real bird?” I asked.

Hugh paused. “That is a dangerous question with a perilous answer my friend. Why do you need to know such things?”

“We’re on our way to meet it.” I heard a strangled cough from Hugh. “Cassie is staying with it and we have to find her.”

“The fairy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That is good. You may avoid being eaten. It would be better if you did not venture out in situations such as this without the help of the pack.” He sighed again, and I could practically see him rubbing his eyebrows. “Very well, the Piasa Bird may seem an enormous bird to your eyes, but it is not. It is balance, and a force against the underwater panthers of the Mississippi.”

“The what?” Sam asked. I didn’t think my phone was turned up all that loud, but Sam could hear Hugh well enough.

“The Mishupishu, underwater panthers,” Hugh said again, with his voice raised a bit higher in volume.

“That’s what I thought he said.” Sam shook her head.

“The panthers are many, dragging hunters and animals alike to their doom. Without the Piasa Bird, humans would be cut down before they reached the river’s edge. At first glance, you may see a bobcat, or a cougar, but focus on the panthers long enough and you will find horns, scales, and claws long enough to gut bison.

“The Piasa Bird eats underwater panthers. I do not know all the stories. Many are kept by the Society of Flame.”

“Koda’s group?” I asked.

“The same,” Hugh said. “The Fae guard the Piasa Bird, but it is not theirs to control. Be wary my friend. You deal with powerful beings. I must greet the pack.”

“Thanks, Hugh,” I said as he clicked off the line.

“What’s the Society of Flame?” Sam asked.

“Best I can tell, they’re keepers of lore,” I said. “I’ve spoken to a ghost of the society off and on since I was a teenager. His name’s Koda, one of the elders Hugh knew. Koda told me about a time when necromancers were celebrated. ‘Gifted with the ability to speak with ancestors,’ he said. That’s sure changed, hasn’t it?” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.