Pride and Poltergeists

“I don’t know, she manifested all kinds of shit out of the air. I thought it was a fairy dust perk,” Knight shrugged.

  Now Christina looked really confused. “No, it isn’t. Fairies can’t do that and, besides, even if I could do that, my magic doesn’t work in the Netherworld, remember?”

  Knight stared at her blankly. “What do you mean fairies can’t do that?”

  Christina groaned. “We can’t just make something out of nothing! Fairies can make plants grow and heal wounds, but that’s about it. Fairy dust is just positive, celestial energy that fairies pull out of the air to amplify their own willpower, for things like stitching skin or knitting bones back together. That’s why we have such an intensely sexual pull in the Netherworld—fairy dust becomes the most potent there, almost like a conscious morphine high. But we can’t just make shit. That’s not how it works.”

  “Christina, I’ve seen Dulcie do it,” I said slowly. “She can make or summon things with fairy dust. Just by imagining them.”

  “First time we worked together, she manifested leather pants and a red, flouncy shirt from nothing,” Knight added, nodding at me.

  “I do recall that,” Dagan said wistfully. “Good times.”

  We ignored him.

  “Then she’s not a fairy,” said Christina, sighing. “Which I know isn’t true because I’ve met her, but guys, I don’t know what to tell you, except that fairies can’t do that. Do you have any idea how many laws of physics and arcana would be broken? Alchemists can transmute one thing into another, but you can only use up the matter you have, and it has to be the same mass and basic chemical makeup …” She trailed off, biting her lip. “What the hell? How could you even do that?”

  Knight and I looked at each other. We’d both seen Dulcie do it a hundred times. And we never met another fairy until Christina—since they were so very rare—so we never had any reason to think Dulcie was different. Hell, now that I thought about it, I’d never even seen Christina use her own dust.

  “I don’t know what creature they could have pulled it from,” said Ezra, “but this is undoubtedly another side effect of Melchior’s experimentation.”

  Yeah, thanks, Sherlock, we already got that far, I thought, but the word “experimentation” sent shivers up my spine. I didn’t want to think of Dulcie as the lab rat of a mad scientist and his manic vampire friend—that spelled trouble in a lot of ways. Enhancement was one thing, but they were trying to turn Dulcie into a fusion of the races, somebody to rule the old world when Meg was done with it. Experimentation implied a more fervent degree of uncertainty—not only the attributes of other races, but new powers we didn’t even have categories for. Like spontaneous materialization.

  “I was under the impression we had a president to save,” Bram said. “Perhaps we can discuss this later?”

  “Um. Yeah,” I said. “Right. Everybody just keep that in mind. Dulcie will have a lot of unknowns in her arsenal, so be ready for anything.” I offered Knight an apologetic smile. “We’ll just buy you something to wear or maybe we can find a curtain somewhere or a pillow case or something.”

  “A curtain or a pillowcase?” Knight repeated.

  “Just trying to be helpful,” I said.

  “Well, please stop,” Knight replied.

  “I mean, that’s if we even find the time. There’s a really good chance when we get to Odyssey, something catastrophic will happen and you’ll have to save the world … naked or not,” I finished with a laugh. Everyone else, minus Knight, also laughed at it.

  “If we’re lucky, we can get there before Meg does something inflammatory,” Casey started. “And put Odyssey somewhere safe, play an ally card, and get an unbiased body of people to sort through Meg’s agents.”

  Shouldn’t be too hard, I thought. The vast majority of Meg’s personnel had the cumulative intelligence of a Fabergé egg.

  “Sounds like fun,” said Judy. “How we gonna get there?”

  Silence. Crickets chirping, cold night wind blowing. Everybody looked between each other, waiting for somebody else to solve the dilemma with a brilliant idea.

  “Dagan,” I finally said, groaning.

  He smiled innocently at me, knowing what I was about to ask and thinking about what he would ask for in return. “Yeeeesss?”

  “Could you make a portal that can transport us to DC?”

  “Where in DC, madam?” Dagan batted his eyelashes, clasping his hands together. I almost slapped him.

  “Pennsylvania Avenue,” I answered, resisting the urge to be equally glib.

  “Ask me nicely,” he said.

  “Please.”

  “There, was that so hard?” Dagan flourished a bow, his shirt billowing in a nonexistent wind. “Of course. It would be my pleasure.”

  Not something you want to hear from someone who thrives on other people’s pain. But, you know, we suffered from a distinct lack of more attractive options.

  “Relax, Knightley,” Dagan said. “As I’ve already explained to your colleagues—I would really prefer not to be confined to the Netherworld forever.”

  “Just do it,” said Knight, crossing his arms.

  Dagan spun his hands through the air, his eyes shut tight, muttering to himself. First came the address, then a slew of words in a demonic tongue I didn’t recognize, and a modified dematerialization spell I did recognize. More complicated this time, probably because the portal generator topside was so big, we had to rip a hole in the dimension barriers. That was one thing. Traveling through the in-between places to get somewhere other than the exact mirror-reflection spot of where you are now, is another. And the District of Columbia and its beloved leader were very, very far off.

  Or maybe he was just killing time to irritate me.

  Dagan went quiet before he snapped his fingers, and sparking, orange lines materialized in the air. This time, the portal appeared as a tornado, a swirling mass of fire and wind, spun from the vacuum created between here and there. It was the kind of entry you can only get when you’re asking the universe to bend in really uncomfortable ways.

  “After you,” said Dagan, waving his hands at it. I eyed the portal dubiously, and he sighed.

  “Darling, if I wanted to kill you, I simply wouldn’t have saved your life the first time around,” he said. “Go on. Time’s a-wasting, as they say.”

  Not wrong. Not reassuring either, but not wrong. “Whatever,” I said before taking a flying leap into the little, red storm.

  ###

  The experience was only slightly more miserable than I thought it would be.

  We swam through a vast swathe of oppressive emptiness for the better part of three-and-a-half seconds, invisible hands twisting our skin and pulling our organs, before becoming liquid in the airless, deep space. We sought the half-world of the under-places where the bigger, badder creatures lived and worked, weaving their chaos through the material world.

  And then with a hop, a skip, and some muffled shrieking of the damned, we landed on blackened grass. We found ourselves behind the brick and steel of a crushed gate, surrounded by smoke. Everything was lit up red in the dark, and shadows were writhing on the walls. I could hear lots and lots of screaming.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  I stood, jumping sideways when Casey and the rest started coming through the portal one-by-one, stumbling and cursing as they recovered from the shadow plane. The city was wreathed in fire, choking on smog that was black and blue and green, while rippling with magic. Lightning spun across the metal rails and exposed the cording, winding up the walls like ivy.

  And everywhere I saw hordes of blind-furious supernatural creatures—werewolves in full form, vampires tearing through civilians with a red-eyed blood frenzy, dryads and naiads and nymphs, all ripping through the concrete and glass with their massive roots, tearing the covers off manholes and fire hydrants, directing the water with shaking hands into cars and windows, burrowing into the ground with the force of a crashing plane, and making everything shake violently. Th
e National Guard, shouting in their heavy gear and carrying big guns, were on every corner, doing battle with the various monsters. Every ten seconds or more, one would fall, shrieking, its skin fizzing as dragon’s acidic blood spread throughout its system. Every fifth soldier was glowing. The Siphons were drawing on their mediocre power to electrocute, burn, and shatter the creatures too weak to resist them.

  In front of us stood the White House, its noble face reflecting fire and shadow and smoke. The gate was smashed in. Armored cars peppered the lawn, smoking and burning. Soldiers in full fatigue and security officers in suits and Kevlar vests were sprawled out on the fire-scarred grass. None of them were moving.

  The ANC wasn’t anywhere near here, and there was too much smoke in the sky, not to mention all the congealed magical energy everywhere, to know if it had been destroyed as well—but it was probably fair to assume it had. Meg’s people were fighting out in the open, so, clearly, whatever hostage situation they’d been maintaining before was now no longer the case.

  We landed in the middle of a war zone. Probably one of many since I couldn’t imagine this was the only venue for an uprising.

  “Jesus,” Casey said, standing up with his gun in his hand. I could barely hear him over the din. “What’s happening?”

  “Meg’s already here,” I answered. It was too noisy to be another distraction. Odyssey would have been taken to a bunker the second the noise began—if this riot stood for anything, it was for making a statement. A formal declaration of how badly the supernatural community detested humans, capped off with Odyssey’s death. This was Meg’s final game, flooding every possible street with what anyone on the ground would have assumed were certified ANC employees. “We need to move. Now.”

  The White House, itself, seemed in modest condition, but if Meg had planned a nationwide riot, she probably would have cut the power, too, jamming all the signals, turning the whole city dark … Then again, Meg wasn’t operating under human standards. All her offense was magical, any jamming would prevent the ANC survivors and Siphons from casting spells—which she clearly hadn’t done. In fact, we seemed to be at exactly the same point where all her concise planning came to a screaming halt.

  Nobody had seen us yet, and I didn’t suspect they would for a while unless one of them blundered over to the front of the building on their own. They were smashing, burning, electrocuting, ripping, and eating their way through the street, but every creature seemed disconnected from the rest—as though their only orders had been to wreak havoc. Were they allowed to roam? Perhaps, since not a commanding officer could be spotted among them. I wondered if that were deliberate—if Meg intended to leave her people to rot after she’d done the deed—or if this were an example of her grip slipping. A herald of the steady decline of a leader’s control.

  Maybe this is where we get lucky, I thought.

  Or trampled by that draconian alchemist who was riding a giant, orange, armadillo-looking beast and currently taking a large bite out of a downed mannequin from some poor boutique.

  “Dulcie will be in there,” Bram said. “I can’t imagine Meg would leave her behind for something like this.”

  Dulcie, I thought, my heart panging, and feeling more than hollowed out. Glacier cold, tight as a collapsing star. Dulcie’s in there.

  What if she’s turned permanently? I heard the words echoing through my head. What if she’s beyond the point of saving? What if the real Dulcie is already dead and gone?

  The questions slammed into a wall, turning into static, and refusing to develop any further. The answer was: we might not be able to stop her—and she might have to die.

  “I’m going back to the DC office,” Silas said. “See if I can get you some eyes on the inside.”

  “Do you see this?” Casey said, gesturing to the everything. “You’ll never make it.”

  “Would you rather I go blundering in there with you?” Silas pointed to the White House, scowling. “I’m not a field agent, man. I can do you more good from the console. I have access to every camera in the building.”

  Casey drew a hand over his face, sighing, as if he were about to protest again.

  “I can accommodate him,” Dagan said, sparks dancing at his fingertips. Becoming all grim and quiet, a dark look shadowed his face. He was suddenly down and devoted to the business of saving our little corner of the world. “The Preternatural Division, I assume?”

  Casey hesitated another moment, then nodded. “Fine. Marcus, go with him. And don’t let him touch anything.”

  “So much for not separating,” Knight said with a frown at Casey.

  “I will return as soon as I deliver Silas,” Dagan announced.

  “Just go,” said Casey.

  “Any address, my friend?” said Dagan.

  “Seven blocks south of here,” said Silas.

  Dagan nodded, spinning his hands before he ripped a portal open in the air—and a second later, they were gone.

  “Uh. Guys,” said Judy.

  “What?” I said.

  “I, um.” She swallowed, staring out into the city. “I think I know what happened to the Netherworld’s LA.”

  We followed her gaze. There, digging its claws into the crystal walls of a skyscraper, its wings casting mountain shadows and tail lashing back and forth in the air, something was dragging itself through the torn steel beams and electric wires. Wreathed in fire and lightning, it was screaming thunder. Scales glinting green, bright as glass.

  “Dragon,” I whispered.

  “Kin I blow it up?” Kent asked, glancing down at his grenade.

  “You’re welcome to try,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dulcie

  “Go,” Meg said to her people at the party. “You will know when it is over.”

  They all nodded and departed at once. Those who could dematerialized immediately, letting their wine glasses drop and shatter on the floor. Most of them formed a line to pay their respects to Meg personally before they departed for private portals and anchored wormholes. The werewolves bowed, and the vampires who stayed behind kissed my hand. The drakes had a very particular way of showing deference that involved using their tongues and the tip of the other person’s nose. Meg leaned into it readily, fully expecting it. I smiled and tried not to flinch because it was, in a word, gross.

  When they all left, Meg sighed contentedly, staring into her empty glass. Antoine swept up the glass debris and the bones of several small animals that sadly wandered in from the forest and became midnight snacks.

  “Finally,” she said. “After all this time …” She smiled widely, hideously, nodding with sweltering pride. Then she turned to face me. “But now is not the time for a monologue, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I said.

  Meg grinned. “We are so close,” she said, appearing on the verge of tears—tears she couldn’t shed. Her tear ducts had calcified centuries ago, along with every other organic part of her body. But her face still remembered how to receive a hard-won triumph. So she smiled and laughed, setting her eyes someplace far away. “When it is over … when we are done …” She clenched her fist, breaking her glass.

  “Done with Odyssey?” I asked innocently.

  Meg looked up and patted my head. “Yes, darling. With Odyssey.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  She smiled at the we. “We,” she said, “are going to kill her and take back everything she stole from us.”

  “Don’t we have everything already?”

  “Almost, my princess,” she said. “But … not quite.”

  She got down on her knees, tossed away the glass, and took my hands. “Are you ready, my dear? My darling Dulcie?” She was talking to me like I was a teenager, getting ready for my first big dance. As if I were nervous, and she thought it was cute.

  Her eyes pulsated and glowed, dragging me under a sea of liquid steel, cold, alive … hungry …

  Fight it, Dulcie! I told myself. Resist her powe
r!

  “Yes, Mother,” I said, pulling myself back, away from the precipice of Meg’s authority, and her power. “Yes. Of course.” My head was swimming, throbbing. Hopefully, it didn’t show.

  “Good,” Meg said, and her smile was genuine. Excited, she displayed the eagerness of a child at a theme park. “Good, Dulcie. Come, then.”

  I thought I would get a moment alone to change clothes, and ask for a gun, and say goodbye to Sebastian (and sneak in to see Knight), but Meg grabbed my hand. She whispered a single word, and the room around us disappeared.

  The air contorted, turning grey and black and blue, blurring, sputtering cold wind—the essence of dematerialization, the kind that spins you through the shadowy dimensions where the really nasty things hibernate between the apocalypses. It lasted for a fraction of a nanosecond, and then I was on the ground again, but dizzy as a top.

  Standing in a smallish room with curving walls and powder-white couches, the shelves were full of books, and I saw side tables with black lamps. Flowers, a boorishly official, brown coffee table, and doors concealed in the walls. The legislative seal was stamped into the beige and blue carpet.

  Meg stuck something in her pocket—a smallish, red thing about the size and shape of a can opener. Bram’s portal ripper!

  “Where’s the party?” someone inquired.

  I turned and found a woman sitting at the desk. Hands folded in front of her, she was flanked by flags and two bodies, bleeding from their throats. Dark hair pulled tightly in a bun at the nape of her neck, she was staring at us. And absurdly calm.

  “President Odyssey,” Meg said with a sneer. Odyssey only adjusted her posture slightly. Meg noticed and smirked. “It is a pleasure,” Meg continued, flourishing a bow. Blood stained her fingers and her mouth. It was from the officers she’d just killed, slitting their throats in less than a nanosecond. Faster than light. “My name is Meg Vogahn. This is my daughter, Dulcie.”

  I curtsied and felt clumsy.

  “Dulcie,” said Odyssey, putting no inflection into the word. She turned to look from the security officers to me with a blank expression. “Pleased to meet you. Lovely dress,” she said, her words slightly tighter now. Did she recognize me? At least, she knew my name.