Don't Rhine on My Parade

  Chapter Twelve

  I giggled. I really couldn’t help myself. After all, what woman doesn’t dream about being propositioned by a gorgeous man?

  “I’m so sorry. I’m married,” I said demurely and received a kick under the table from Cecily.

  Just then an alarm bell rang through the building. A voice sounded over the loudspeakers, “General Assembly will be called to order in ten minutes. All members please make your way to the North Hall. General Assembly will be called to order in ten minutes. All members make your way to the North Hall.”

  The two men had already left the table. Cecily was staring after them with a bemused look on her face.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “That was Kethudrim, Elder of the Seelie Court. I did not recognize his companion, but he was definitely a were.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “The Seelie Court and the weres are both on the Synod, right?”

  “Yes,” Cecily smiled. “Perhaps your luck is changing, my little slurpee. We shall see. They will probably try to contact you again after the General Assembly.”

  “Should we be going?”

  “Yes. It’s down a level and going to be packed. If we want any kind of good seat we will need to hurry.”

  Everyone else in the Center had the same idea and we let ourselves be carried along with the flood of bodies moving towards the North Hall. Inside the hall, a tall stage was set up on one end. Row after row of chairs filled the rest of the room. At a glance, I would estimate it could seat thousands and thousands of people, and it was packed.

  “Where did everyone park?” was my first thought. I hadn’t seen that many cars in the lot.

  “You don’t have to drive to use a Zipline. There’s one set up on the second level,” Cecily whispered as we took our seats. “Now, try to stay awake. This may take a while.”

  Of course, now that she said that, I yawned deeply. It wasn’t that late, but the moments of terror, confusion, and awe were beginning to wear on my energy. They could ride dinosaurs into the hall at this point and I wouldn’t blink an eye.

  On the stage were two large wooden tables centered on a carved podium in the middle. I couldn’t read the name plates in front of each seat at the table, we were too far away. On either side of the stage were gigantic screens that were currently displaying the USB logo.

  The room stilled as a man took the central podium and raised his hands. He was huge, muscled, and, like the Bast’s guards, bare-chested.

  “What is it with guys around here not wearing clothes?” I whispered to Cecily, who hushed me.

  His head was shaved bald except for a long black queue which hung braided from the crown of his head. His facial hair was cut into a pointed goatee and mustache. Again, like the guards, he wore large gold clasps around each wrist. As he passed between the end of the table and the podium I could see that his lower half was swathed in some sort of loose billowing trousers that were clasped at the ankles. Once behind the podium he seemed to grow even larger as his face and chest were displayed thirty feet high on the projection screens. It was then that I noticed the most shocking thing about his appearance.

  “Uh, Cecily?”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s green.”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought everyone was supposed to look human. Humans aren’t green.” I looked down at my skin to check, just in case I’d missed something all these years.

  “He’s a djinn. They can look however they want. Since he’s the Lord High Moderator he’s allowed to appear green.”

  “Lord High What?”

  “Lord High Moderator. He’s the head of the General Assembly.”

  I sang quietly to myself, “Behold the Lord High Mo-der-a-a-tor/ A personage of noble rank and title/ His skin is green his chest is muscular/ But his position is particularly vital,” I had to slur the “But his” together to make it fit, but I was rather proud of my off the cuff Gilbert and Sullivan-ing. Cecily elbowed me before I could get to the “defers.”

  “Cecily?” I thought of another question.

  She rolled her eyes, “Yes?”

  “What’s a djinn?”

  She sighed. “A djinn is a demon. Have you seen Aladdin?”

  “The Disney one?”

  “Yeah, that was a djinn. A weak one. Most of them are far too strong to be captured in a lamp.”

  “Didn’t he have ‘phenomenal cosmic power’?”

  “Yes. You don’t mess with the djinn.”

  The meeting dragged on and I was getting bored. From what I could tell, without bugging Cecily for more answers, each species and sub-species had a representative at the table. For example, the selkies, skin-walkers, and werewolves were all part of the Were-creatures group but they each had a representative to speak for them. The representative was the only person allowed to talk and each of them was moderated by the djinn.

  Apparently the topic at the moment was of magic power taxation. Each group was taxed according to the number of beings in it and how their powers were rated. The current debate was between the incubi, the demons, and the vampires. The incubi were petitioning to remove their status from the demons, who had, in the incubi’s opinion, ridiculously high taxes, and move their membership to the vampires, who had agreed to tax them less. Since an incubus draws its power from feeding on human emotion, the vampires were arguing that it was similar to the way they feed and therefore the incubi should be under their jurisdiction. The demons were understandably reluctant to lose the magical revenue.

  There was great pontificating, yelling, insults, and even a physical altercation that had to be broken up by the Bast’s guards. I could tell it was a good thing that the Bast prevented everyone from using magical powers, because the djinn looked like he wanted to blast the entire table to slag. As exciting as all this was, it soon began to get old. If you took out the magical element, they sounded just like every other politician using ten words where two would suffice.

  The audience began to get restless. The representatives on stage who were not involved in the heated debate between the demon and vampire representatives were also losing interest. Finally the WAND member jumped to his feet and shouted, “Enough! We have more important things to discuss!”

  “Here! Here!” shouted a tiny voice. I had previously thought that some seats were empty, but now could see that at least one was occupied by a tiny figure with hummingbird wings.

  The djinn banged the podium loudly. “I too am bored with this debate. We shall table it and move on.” There was a loud cry of outrage from all the vampires and, I assume, incubi in the audience. Since the djinn was also a demon, I wondered how impartial that decision was.

  “We will now look at the petition of Piper Cavanaugh,” the djinn said. The entire room hushed and all heads swiveled in my direction. I sank lower in my seat.

  “Piper Cavanaugh,” boomed the Lord High Moderator. “Please come to the podium.”

  Cecily gave me a helpful shove. I stood up and made my way up the aisle to the front. It seemed to take forever. Talk about uncomfortable, as I passed each row I could hear a whispering start behind me. I tried to tell myself not to worry. My mom always used to say that most people were too busy thinking about themselves to have any time to think about others. Ha. In this case, they were definitely thinking about, talking about, and critiquing me.

  I made it up to the podium without tripping or otherwise embarrassing myself and stood awkwardly beside the green djinn. He was even larger up close. Probably a good seven feet tall. I stood up straighter. He made me feel petite and dainty.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically to my way of thinking.

  No one had told me what I was supposed to say at this point, so I briefly hoped there was no special wording that was important. “I wish to join the United Supernatural Beings as a human,” I said loudly. My voice was amplified and carried over the whole room
.

  “Objection!” screamed the bored witch from earlier. “Humans are not allowed!”

  “That’s why she’s petitioning, you goat worshipper!” yelled someone else.

  “This is totally against precedent!” another voice chimed in.

  “She has magic! She should be allowed to join!” That was the vampire representative.

  “I’m surprised you’re not forcing her to join as a vampire! You greedy bloodsuckers!” responded the demon who obviously was holding a grudge about the incubus debate.

  “How do we know she has power? We’ve never encountered magical humans before.”

  “For that matter how do we know she’s human?”

  “Throw her out!”

  “Let her join!”’

  “Vote!”’

  “Vote!”

  “Silence!” the djinn’s voice was so loud that I heard ringing for a couple seconds afterwards.

  “We cannot approve or deny her application,” he continued calmly after the hubbub had died down. “The question is whether her application has enough merit to forward to the Sentinel Synod.”

  He cast his gaze down the tables, meeting each representative’s eyes. “Are you ready for a vote?”

  The witch raised his hand. I was now close enough to see the nameplates on the table. His read: Pravus-Witch. “I wish to address the assembly.” He glared at me and I had to plant my feet to keep myself from hiding behind the djinn.

  “You have two minutes.” The djinn sounded bored.

  Pravus stood and collected himself. “Fellow representatives, we all know why the vampires have dug this human out of the gutter and brought her before us. Do they think we are gullible? Do they truly believe that we will see this human as an example of her species? No! We all know that humans are cattle. Food for our power. This frail creature is an aberration. An insult to Gaia herself! We should not shame this assembly with even the thought of allowing such an abomination to sully our membership. I call for the immediate execution of this animal. It is wrong for us to allow it to exist.” He sat and my jaw dropped open.

  “Why you little—” I cried in a voice strangled with anger. The djinn laid a massive hand on my shoulder.

  “The witch has asked for a new vote. First we must vote on the issue currently on the table. Then, if his vote is still applicable I shall consider it.” He sounded pleased that he could tick off the witch, whose face was turning bright red with suppressed anger. “Does this application have enough merit to forward to the Synod? Yea or Nay.”

  “I object!” Pravus screamed. He looked ready to have an apoplectic fit.

  “Overruled.” The djinn smiled with sharp green teeth. “I call for the vote.”

  “Yea.”

  “Yea.”

  “Yea.”

  “Yea.” It went down the table until it reached Pravus.

  “Nay!” he yelled predictably.

  “Yea.”

  “Yea.”

  I think a couple others might have voted Nay, but it was overwhelmingly in my favor. I let out a shaky breath, suddenly aware that I had been holding it for quite some time.

  “The yeas have it,” the djinn said maliciously, leering at the witch. “Piper Cavanaugh, you will be contacted with the time and date of your hearing before the Synod. Your sentence of death is suspended until further notice.”

  Oh, good. I didn’t know that was still in play. I tried to smile regally, made him a small bow and took my shaky legs down the stairs and back to my chair. I fell into it and gave Cecily a questioning look.

  “Perfect,” she grinned.

  “Except for the part where the witch almost executed me,” I hissed.

  “It didn’t work,” she said coolly, like someone whose life had not been on the line.

  “Yeah, lucky for me,” I grumbled. “What is it with those people?”

  Cecily shrugged, “They’re afraid they will be lumped in with the humans. Some of us can feed off witches as easily as humans.” She grinned a toothy grin.

  “So what happens now?”

  “Now, you can go home. We’ll be contacted when to show up again for the Synod meeting. It could be tomorrow. It could be next week. Since this is such an important issue, I imagine that they will find time to see you during the conference.” She craned her neck to look around the hall. “Let’s go.” She stood up quietly and made her way to the exit.

  “That’s it?” I asked once we climbed the stairs back up to the second level. “Now the Synod votes?”

  “After interrogating you, yes.” Cecily was walking pretty fast. I stopped to grab a bottle of water from a large bucket of ice and then had to jog to catch up.

  “What happens if they vote no?” I panted.

  “I’m not sure.” Her pace quickened.

  “Where’s the fire?” We were almost running now.

  “We really need to get out of here quickly,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Why? What’s going on? I thought he said that my death sentence was removed?”

  “Suspended. Not removed. And if you were paying attention you would have noticed that several of the WAND left the hall at the same time we did.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder. “You’re trying to scare me right? The Bast said that I was safe here.”

  “In here, yes, but we have to leave the building to get you home. I’m hoping we can get to the car before they set up an ambush.”

  “Shouldn’t we like, get help or something?” I was getting dizzy trying to trot after her and still look in all directions at once.

  “No one will help. You are not a member, and many of the species do not want to see you become one. Asking for help from the wrong person could be fatal. Besides,” she slowed as we reached the entrance, “you have me. Stay behind me, walk fast, and if I say run, run.”

  “Okay,” I gulped. I slid my water bottle into my purse so as to have both hands free.

  We took the stairs two at a time and quickly made our way to the parking lot. There were lights everywhere so it didn’t seem that dark out. The parking lot had filled since we had entered the Convention Center and I noticed randomly placed plants that I hadn’t paid attention to on the way in. They weren’t quite trees, and they weren’t quite bushes. I said earlier that I’m not much of a botanist so when I say that the bottom looked like a bush, the middle like a six foot tall leek, and the top, a large orchidy flower, you’ll just have to trust me. I had never seen plants like this before. Then again, if I had seen them before I probably wouldn’t remember. There was something vaguely familiar about them and it bothered me.

  “Cecily?” I asked, “Did you see those plants on the way in?”

  “Not the time, Piper,” she said sharply, “Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”

  We continued to walk quickly through the rows of cars until I saw her Honda Civic a couple of rows over.

  “There’s your car,” I started to say when I was lifted from behind and thrown onto the hood of a nearby car.

  Everything happened really quickly after that. Cecily whirled around at my cry and flung my attacker into the side of a truck. She was grabbed from behind by a second man and did some sort of karate move where one minute he was wrapping her in a bear hug and the next she flipped over his back and kicked him hard in the back of the knees. He went down with a groan and tried to spin around to take her feet out. I had a great view of his face as she spun-kicked and neatly impaled the sharp heel of her shoe deep into his eye socket. It made a wet sucking noise as she pulled it out before he slowly crumpled to the ground.

  I was still frozen on top of the car where I had landed, which was how I saw the plants moving. It looked like the jungle was closing in on us.

  “Cecily! The plants!” I yelled as the first attacker flung a ball of light through the air at her. She tried to dodge but tripped over the wiggling roots of the seven-foot plant that had sneaked up behind her. She rolled quickly and just barely missed being stung
by a vicious jab from the flower head. Each flower had a sharp spike at its center and they were all trying to spear her.

  Cecily was poetry in motion. She ripped a side mirror off a Suburban and threw it with deadly speed at the witch. I was assuming he was a witch since the mirror crumpled when it hit the blue sparkling force field he put up around himself. Cecily was being surrounded by the strange plants and having a hard time avoiding their stings. She managed to wrench the flower head completely off one of them and it let out an inhuman shriek and thrashed about on the concrete.

  Two of the plants broke off from attacking her and came towards me. I scrambled quickly off the car and slid underneath a truck. The plants couldn’t bend enough to reach me with their stingers but their roots were blindly groping, trying to grab my arms or legs.

  I started fumbling in my purse. It’s a rather large backpack style since, as a mom, I need both hands and arms free to keep track of little children. I also need to carry diapers, wipes, clean underwear for Megan, snacks, etc. I dumped everything out on the ground and kicked away a grasping root. I could hear grunts and crashes from where Cecily was still dealing with the attacking plants and with the witch who was remaining out of range and throwing balls of energy at her. I saw one connect with the stalk of a plant and it just disintegrated in flash of smoke. I hoped Cecily managed to avoid them.

  The car shook as one of the plants tried to flip it over with its roots to get at me. Whatever I was going to do, I needed to do fast. I found my keychain light and flicked it on, quickly searching through the pile of detritus from my purse. Aha! It does pay to never clean out your purse! I still had two packets of soy sauce from the last time we ate at Panda Express. I ripped off the top of the water bottle and squeezed the packets inside.

  Rolling out from underneath the car, I shook the bottle violently and then squirted it at the nearest plant. If I was wrong this was going to be really embarrassing for about the five seconds it took them to sting me to death. Fortunately, I would then cease to feel embarrassed as I would be dead. I aimed right into the center of the flower. It let out that awful shriek and fell to the ground.

  “Yes!” I screamed and aimed at the second flower. “Take that!”

  “Piper!” Cecily sounded muffled. I turned to see her floating in the air grabbing wildly at her throat. It looked like an invisible hand was shaking her by the neck. The final plant was moving in for the kill, stinger ready to plunge into her chest. The witch was standing quite a ways away with his hand in a Darth Vader sort of grasp. I had no doubt who was responsible for choking Cecily. I made the quick choice to deal with the plant first. If it stung Cecily then it wouldn’t matter if the witch let her go. Hopefully she could hold her breath a little longer. I squirted the rest of the bottle straight into the center of the flower and kicked it as hard as I could away from her. I expected to be blasted at any moment.

  There was a deep snarl behind me and the biggest wolf I have ever seen plowed into the witch and ripped his neck so far open with one slash of fang, that, when the witch fell, the jolt tore the head completely free from the body. It rolled towards me with a look of shock frozen on the face. I guess he hadn’t seen the need to keep his shields up while choking Cecily.

  She fell to the ground gagging. Finally the parking lot fell quiet except for the sound of crickets and other city noises. I slid down the side of a car to sit carefully on my heels. I looked around, the wolf had disappeared and the plants were dissolving into a foul smelling goo that I really didn’t want to get on my clothes.

  Cecily got slowly to her feet and stared down at me. “You saved me,” she said in shock.

  I grinned big. I couldn’t help it. The adrenaline was still rushing through my body. “I kicked butt.”

  “You did,” she agreed. “What was in that bottle?”

  “Soy sauce,” I started to giggle.

  “Soy sauce?”

  “Yup. Soy Sauce.” I was hopelessly laughing now.

  “But what—” she couldn’t even think how to phrase the question.

  I had tears streaming down my face I was laughing so hard. “Those were Triffids.”

  “Triffids?”

  “Yeah, you know, Day of the Triffids, Howard Keel? They’re allergic to salt water. Soy sauce is very salty.” I tried to get a grip, but it was just too much. I was either going to laugh or cry. Then I looked over at the body of the first witch. He was face down, crumpled on the ground with a pool of blood growing under his head. The second witch’s head was still facing me, eyes and mouth wide open. I fell over on my knees and began to throw up.