CHAPTER 14

Damage control was already under way as Sasha and Hunter walked down the long corridor to her team’s temporary offices. The media spin would be that two fighter pilots crashed when they collided during a night training mission—hence all the fire and explosions. The ammo wasn’t supposed to be live; some poor grunt made a mistake. Sasha raked her fingers through her hair. When was it going to end?

Hunter held her elbow just as they got to the door. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t their fault. It was tragic—no more, no less.”

She nodded, glad to be able to look into his intense brown eyes. There was a level of calm there that she required now. A steadiness that she couldn’t wrap words around but that mattered very deeply.

“Thank you,” she said in a quiet voice, still numb from watching two human beings die for no good reason. She stroked Hunter’s cheek with her knuckles. “There was a time when it was all so simple. A Dragon terrorized a village for a bit, and then some hero came along and slayed it. A demon-infected Werewolf might ravage a country town, until the locals got up enough nerve to go hunt it down with pitchforks and torches, and behead it.” She smiled, loving the way she’d coaxed a smile out of hiding on his somber face. “Then there was always that one really over-the-top Vampire viceroy, who got staked in broad daylight after the locals got tired of him bleeding out their daughters. What happened to simple, Hunter?”

“Technology killed it,” he said, giving her a hug. “Seems like everything is moving faster.   problems are bigger. Before, one brave knight could solve it all and go down in history for a century or two until the next monster reared its ugly head.”

“You’re making fun of me.” She kissed his neck quickly and then pulled back.

He nodded and smiled. “Yes. I am. It was never as simple as was recorded in legend.”

“I know.” As her smile faded she touched his cheek again and reached for the door.

“But I wish it was, Sasha.” He held her arm. “For you.   I so wish it was.”

“For you, too,” she whispered, and then turned back to the door and opened it. There was no time to preserve their private moment.

Her team members were on their feet the second they saw her enter the lab.

“Good to see you, Cap. To say it’s been a madhouse around here is an understatement.” Winters shook his head and looked up from the screens. “Good to see you, too, Hunter. But, seriously, I think we lost a coupla jets, even though I can’t confirm it. They got all need-to-know-basis on me and wouldn’t let any of us into the situation room without you.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” Woods asked, pacing between Winters’s computers and Clarissa’s medical testing equipment.

“You know we’re locked and loaded, but who can fight what we can’t see—especially if the brass is keeping us in the dark, ya know?” Fisher pounded Woods’s fist as he passed him.

“There have been some awful losses,” Clarissa said, hugging herself. “I can feel it.”

“Was it the Erinyes?” Bradley asked, his worried gaze falling on Sasha and Hunter and remaining there.

“Okay, okay, people, here’s what’s up,” Sasha said, moving to the center of the room. “The Seelie are really pissed at having lost sixty innocent members of their community to an outright butchering by the Vampires. So they sent in for reinforcements from Europe. Real cowboys—the Dragon-riding kind.”

“Holy molie,” Winters said, slapping his forehead.

“Are you serious?” Woods just stared at Sasha for a moment and then shook his head. “Don’t answer that.”

“I wish I wasn’t.” Sasha gave Hunter a sidelong glance. “The Fae opened up some kind of magick transport portal or whatever over Lake Pontchartrain tonight to bring their guys in before dawn.”

“Needless to say, it’s going to get hectic come the dawn.” Hunter glanced around the room. “There will be blood. The two pilots that went down tonight foolishly fired on a Dragon squadron that was in the air. That squadron took the action as an invitation to war. Probably the only reason the rest of the pilots weren’t wiped out was because Sasha had the foresight to know how the Air Force would respond and asked Garth and Silver Hawk to try to open a channel of telepathic communication with the Seelie.”

“Is the government aware of the fact that World War Three is about to happen over the residential district of New Orleans tomorrow morning?” Bradley wiped his palms down his face.

“Just sayin’.  ” Winters looked around the group. “Because if they came in over the lake, and are hunting highfalutin’ Vampires, they won’t find them in the graveyards anymore. Just a hunch.”

“Right,” Sasha said in a weary tone. “After losing top viceroys, other VIP Vamps have most likely gone underground beneath their mansions.”

“Then there’s the clubs,” Winters said, ticking off possibilities on his fingers. “The casinos. Any Vampire holdings in the region.”

“Which means if the Fae destroy Vamp establishments, or any fronts that also cater to humans, they will go after the Finnegan’s Wake bar, The Fair Lady, Dugan’s Bed and Breakfast, the list is endless.” Bradley’s eyes were wide behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “This could get insane.”

“Correct,” Sasha said. “Which is why we have to find out what the Erinyes connection is and try to prove to the Vamps that this wasn’t the Fae. Problem is, at this juncture, the Fae are poised for retaliation.”

“We could do a séance and call one of them up,” Bradley hedged, and then looked around the group.

“Dude, are you nuts?” Winters was out of his chair and had bolted across the room. “Call up a demon? Be serious!”

“It can be done,” Bradley said with more resolve. “Then you send it back.”

“And do what?’ Winters dragged his fingers through his hair. “Ask it why it’s pissed off?”

“Precisely,” Bradley replied. “It’s a last-ditch effort, and we’re definitely running out of time.”

“Okay, let’s keep that as an ace in the hole, Brads,” Sasha said in a skeptical tone. “Because from what I heard about demons, when you bring one up and get it to do something, you seriously owe it—and generally it wants a human sacrifice.”

“Right. ,” Clarissa said slowly. “But wasn’t that part of the deal that got very messy with the Vamps?”

The room became still as all eyes focused on Clarissa.

“Baron Geoff Montague made a deal with Queen Cerridwen’s court member Kiagehul,” Sasha said slowly. “That Vampire rat bastard Montague cut a deal with a turncoat Unseelie, Kiagehul.   who used Lady Jung Suk—a Were Leopard—to do their dirty work.”

“Lady Jung Suk had vengeance in her heart against her nephew, Shogun, and was willing to become disembodied to temporarily possess poor Amy,” Clarissa said, walking toward Sasha. “Wasn’t the deal supposed to be that Amy’s soul would be lost, thrust out of her body and given to the demons, and Lady Jung Suk would take over the poor young woman’s body?”

“Yes,” Hunter said in a faraway tone. “But during the battle in the bayou, the girl never died. We cast the demon spirit out of her.   and from what we learned tonight, many of the Were traits were left in Amy.   much to my brother’s good fortune.”

“So the demons got played twice,” Sasha said, grabbing Clarissa by both arms. “First by whatever spell and promise had to be made to them by whatever Lady Jung Suk and Kiagehul cooked up.   and then by whatever part the Vampires played in trying to use that demon essence of Lady Jung Suk to make the wolves go to war.”

“And not only didn’t it work, but they got nonhuman deaths—or sacrifices, for lack of a better term.” Bradley looked around the room. “Nobody who died owned a soul.”

“Elder Vlad suicided his own man,” Fisher said quickly. “Damn, this is gonna make me start smoking.”

“Yes. Right in open UCE court,” Hunter said. “Baron Montague’s story was found wanting, Elder Vlad was furious, and he butchered his own man right on the spot.”

“Just like Queen Cerridwen literally iced that crazy bastard Kiagehul.” Sasha shook her head. “And we trapped and offed Lady Jung Suk in the bayou.”

“But they all had outstanding affairs with the demons,” Bradley said. “The ‘they’ being the Unseelie Fae, via Kiagehul, and the Vampires—unwittingly so, via the late Baron Geoff Montague.”

“Yeah, but what about that other crazy bastard, Russell Conway?” Woods glanced around the team and pushed off the desk he’d been leaning against. “Seriously. Like didn’t he come to town dragging a demon, too?”

“He did, but that was a personal deal forged years ago. He was to give that demon his human soul when he died, and he did. Case closed,” Bradley said, folding his arms.

“And it took a squad of Marines, a garrison of Fae, and a bunch of wolf enforcers to put Conway out of his misery, too..   Sheesh.” Sasha glanced around the team again. “Where’s Doc?”

“Looooong story,” Winters said. “Crow came to town, needed to talk to Doc. They went for a walk on the base. Bear Shadow escorted Crow Shadow’s new wife back to the Uncompahgre, because Crow said it wasn’t about not doing their job. But to be sure Jen was gonna be all right, Bear had to get her tucked in with the she-Shadows, or you know, they might not accept her.   which could be messy, if tempers flared.”

“Okay,” Sasha said in a clipped tone, dropping the subject at that. She didn’t want to even think about her brother’s pregnant wife possibly being pack-rejected during a potential time of war. Part of her understood, but part of her was annoyed beyond words. If Crow Shadow had just listened to her and stayed in Vegas with Bear Shadow, far away from the pack, until things blew over.  

“They are warriors and pack enforcers, Sasha,” Hunter said in a quiet tone. “They could no more stay out of the battle than you or I could.”

She knew that, but it only mildly helped stem her annoyance. More than anything, it just added one more group of people to worry about, more lives that could be lost, and more potential tragedy that could wreak havoc on everyone’s emotions.

“We’ve definitely narrowed things down, then,” Bradley said, breaking the tense silence. “The serpent-like demon that overtook Conway isn’t in the same category as the Erinyes.”

Grateful for the return of focus, Sasha paced to the lab table and sat down hard on a tall metal stool. “Okay, so, if we put two and two together, and I’m no demonologist or anything, but it looks like the Erinyes are now playing both groups that conjured them up against each other. That’s just my layman’s take. You’ve got the vamps that owe them and the Unseelie that owe them.   and both the Vamps and the Unseelie were trying to make the wolves go to war.”

“Exactly,” Bradley quipped, and opened a big, black textbook on the lab table beside Sasha. “So, they are making the Vampires and the Unseelie suffer the fate of the spell they’d been conjured to perform—since the Vampires and Unseelie essentially used the demons to perform said tasks, but the demons were not paid for their services.”

“Ergo why the Erinyes are involved,” Sasha said in an exhausted tone as she closed her eyes and waved her hand in the air as though conducting an orchestra.

“Yes, precisely,” Bradley said, reading over the tops of his glasses.

“But wait,” Winters said, frowning. “I thought the Vamps and the Unseelie dude were the ones who didn’t pay up.   so these righteous vengeance demons wouldn’t be trying to avenge Baron Montague or Kiagehul.”

“Out of the mouths of babes come words of wisdom,” Clarissa murmured.

Bradley glanced at Clarissa and nodded. “The dead that was righteous, I guess, as demons probably would see it, and who was escorted to Hell under protest was Lady Jung Suk. She gave up her body—for an evil cause, true, but she did. She was supposed to get a new body out of the deal, and she didn’t. And basically went down—and since she’d probably given away her soul years ago for whatever.  ”

“If I know Shogun’s aunt, she’d negotiate with the Devil and find a contractual loophole in eternal damnation.” Hunter returned his attention to Sasha. “Which is why it will be imperative to keep Amy and her family safe until this is over.”

“Maaaan..  ” Sasha jumped off her stool. There were just too many loose ends to tie up and something was bound to fall through the cracks.

“Look, I know how you feel, Pop, but I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.” Crow Shadow walked away from Doc Holland and sat on the desk that was on the opposite side of the room.

“No, Son,” Doc said in a quiet, stern voice. “You don’t know how I feel.”

The two men stared at each other until Crow Shadow looked away.

“I have lived the trauma of being a human with a wolf trapped inside me, never knowing why. My own father walked away from my mother and left her to go insane—”

“And that’s why I couldn’t leave Jennifer!”

“I’m on your side,” Doc said, losing patience. “You don’t have to raise your voice to make me understand. If I had known your mother was pregnant with you, I would have never left her side. And knowing your mother, she would have killed me if I’d tried.”

“I know you all didn’t get along, but damn, Pop.   you didn’t have to go there about my mother. She is still my moms.”

Doc nodded, but his expression held no apology. “It wouldn’t have been personal. It was about the survival of the fittest. Your mother didn’t want to be put out of the pack or have her reputation tarnished for falling for a half-breed like me. But as much as she hated that the child she carried was a quarter human, she couldn’t make the decision to terminate you.” Doc looked away toward the window. “I guess just like my poor mother couldn’t, no matter how my father treated her. So, there you have it.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, man. There you have it?”

“Yes,” Doc said calmly. “There you have it. My father walked, your mother hid, and they were both full-blooded Shadow Wolves. Now you’ve come back to the pack dragging a full-blooded human wife thinking that everyone at home is gonna be singing ‘Kumbaya’ and will treat your baby—my grandchild—like a full-blooded Shadow Wolf.”

Doc used the silence to make his point and gave Crow Shadow his back to consider as he slowly walked to the window to stare at the moon. “I’m getting too old for this bullshit. I wish it would be right for you, Son. Wish I could make heartache and prejudice just disappear, just like I wished I could save your sister, Sasha, from all she had to endure. But I’m just a man. An imperfect being. I’ll always love you. So will your sister and, I suspect, her husband and team..   But the Shadows are creatures of staunch tradition. I don’t even know if Silver Hawk will be able to get them to welcome you and Jennifer with open arms.”

Getting to the Chens was priority one. Sasha and Hunter raced through the dense shadow land mist but began to slow down as the cavern became darker and darker and the indisputable smell of sulfur stung their noses.

“I don’t understand,” Sasha whispered, taking her sidearm out of the holster.

“Something’s definitely not right,” Hunter said in a low tone, his gaze scanning the barren terrain.

Suddenly a ragged splinter of pitch-black darkness ripped open before them and a howling wind blew them backward. They hit the ground with a thud, stomachs and chests exposed to the onslaught of gargoyles pouring out of the disturbed border. Covering their faces and curling up into tight balls to protect vital organs, Sasha and Hunter hunkered down as leathery wings and scaly legs bumped and pushed past them in what seemed like an aerial stampede.

Although reflex made her want to fire on the beasts, gut hunch told her that they were focused on getting out of the demon doors, through the shadow lands, and out into the night. Their flight pattern seemed disoriented. As they battered and bumped her and Hunter’s bodies, the one question that continued to assault her mind was, why didn’t they attack? Gargoyles were the pit bulls of the old-world Vamps. She and Hunter were fresh meat. And what the hell were these things doing coming through protected shadow lands?

The answer came quicker than she’d expected. Just as the last of the flying stampede exited through the shadows, three huge demons leaped out of the tear between worlds.

Mesmerized, Sasha lifted her head, but Hunter pressed her face down quickly and turned his away.

“Don’t look at them,” he warned through his teeth. “This is not our fight.”

He could feel their eerie presence pass over her; their cold, massive bodies sent a shudder through her as she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. But curiosity made her peep at their retreating forms.

Massive talons had replaced what should have been human feet. Their legs were covered in scales, and muscular spaded tails bullwhipped the air behind them. Serpents hissed and struck out from the thorny crowns they wore, and their muscular blue-gray arms terminated in vicious claws. Their backs were a sinewy network of corded tissue that worked in unison to move huge bat wings to lift them in flight.

The moment they were gone, the sulfur cleared and the black rip that hung in the air sealed.

“Twenty bucks say the Vampires called the gargoyles,” Sasha said, slowly lifting her head and placing her gun back in its holster.

“I’ll raise you ten that anything called up by the Vampires is no longer welcome to use the demon tunnels,” Hunter said, dusting himself off and pulling Sasha to her feet.