I was out for my morning run when the next disruption in the ley lines occurred. It was around noon, and I was only a couple of hundred yards away from home. I normally ran along the creek behind my apartment building, and a ley line ran along the creek—the same line that ran under Rosie’s.
Since that first disruption, the lines had returned to normal, and I had almost forgotten about it. Ley line magic surged, and it felt as though I was hit by a flood. One moment I was running along, and the next moment, I lurched, stumbled, and fell. My stomach rebelled, and all I could do was curl up and ride it out. The nausea and dizziness weren’t as bad as the first time, and they didn’t seem to last as long.
When the line settled down, I crawled to my feet and dragged myself the rest of the way home, wet and cold. March weather in Oregon wasn’t much different than it had been in February.
I crawled onto my couch and lay there shivering and sweating, gulping air and trying to keep my breakfast down.
Fifteen minutes later, an earthquake hit. A real earthquake. The building swayed and rolled, the furniture shook and moved around, and the dishes and food in the cupboards rattled. A glass sitting next to the sink fell and broke. I wondered if the building was going to collapse but was powerless to do anything. Touching the ley line for the power to cast the spell for my personal shield almost caused me to throw up.
The ley lines were total chaos. Instead of the orderly flow of power like a river, it felt like I was sticking my mind into a washing machine. I quickly withdrew.
Without the magic flowing through the ley lines, I was reduced to a half-trained and not very powerful witch. That could be deadly if I needed power, even a personal shield, at a time when the ley lines were unstable.
After I cleaned up the broken glass, I checked my phone and found that a six-point earthquake was recorded in California near a major nexus of three ley lines northeast of San Francisco. The shaking was felt all the way to Seattle. Experts were baffled, as the fault that slipped was supposedly stable.
I called Lizzy and got her voice mail, so I left a message.
Next, I went to the closet and I pulled out The History of the Illuminati. Since it required using ley line magic to open the warded magical box in the corner of the closet, I discovered that I could work with the chaotic magic, although it made me dizzy and I felt like I wanted to throw up the whole time.
The rest of the afternoon, until I had to put the book away and go to work, I spent poring through it to try and find anything that might provide some answers to the disorder occurring in the ley lines. I couldn’t find a single mention of the phenomena I had experienced. I couldn’t imagine such phenomena not being recorded if it had happened in the past. But the records I was scanning were only five hundred years old, so such events might have happened before that.
I did find a couple of spells that could be used on mages to block their access to the magic of the ley lines. The Illuminati used those in preparation for torture and executions. Lovely reading. Storing those spells away in my mind for further study, I locked up my apartment, reset my wards, and drove to work.
When I entered the bar, one of the first things I noticed was that business was very slow. There were plenty of witches and a couple of dhampir but almost no mages. I checked on Sam, who was in his office, and he didn’t look good—pale and unsteady, but he said he was fine. Steve Dworkin, the head cook and a pyromancer, shuffled in almost an hour late. He was never late. Another of the cooks called in sick.
The TV in the back room was tuned to the news, which was dominated by coverage of the earthquake in California, one in Chile, and one in Japan. A tornado had hit downtown Houston, coming out of a clear sky.
Late that evening, Detective Sergeant Cindy Mackle dropped in with Shawna. Both looked a little harried.
“Dinner?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s been a long night, and I haven’t had anything to eat,” Cindy said.
Shawna ordered some uncooked blood sausage, which was about the only thing we had that was close to her normal diet.
“We’ve got vampire hunters in town again,” Cindy said after she ordered. “We found three decapitated vamps this evening, and there were two more earlier in the week.”
That wasn’t good. Westport had had that problem twice in the past. Once, ex-colleagues of mine in the Hunters’ Guild had caused major difficulties among the supernatural communities in the city, including vampires and werewolves. The second time was during the vampire war of succession, when Gabriel Laurent had allied himself with anti-vampire mages.
“We’ll be going over to the Wolf’s Den after we leave here to give them a heads-up,” Shawna said.
“We haven’t heard of any shifter deaths,” Cindy said, “but figured we should put the word out to be careful.”
The rest of the night went pretty quietly, but I was surprised when Shawna walked into the bar after midnight smelling of smoke and smudged with soot.
“What happened to you?” I asked as she sat down.
“Cindy gave me the rest of the night off,” she said. “Double vodka.”
I poured her a drink, and she said, “Remember that bar I took you to after Porgy and Bess?”
“The one the Hunter tried to torch?”
“Yeah. Someone did a better job of it tonight. Blocked the doors and tossed fireballs inside. We found twelve bodies after the fire department hosed it down.” Those would be human bodies. When a vampire burned, only fine ash remained.
The bar she was talking about was an upscale vampire hangout downtown, with a mixed clientele—vampires mostly, but some had human dates the night she took me there. If I stretched the definition of date, I would probably fit in that category.
She tossed off her drink, slammed the glass on the bar, and said, “Another.”
I poured it but said, “Are you sure you should be drinking that much?”
“No, but I’m off duty. I’ll probably get sick as a dog, but it can’t kill me.”
I stuck out my hand, and she handed me her keys. Vampires could get drunk, but their metabolism didn’t handle alcohol very well. Drunk and sick together didn’t contribute to safe driving.
“Any idea who?”
She shook her head. “Bailey said it had to be mages.”
“Some people hate vampires.”
“Yeah, some of the old guard here in town hate vamps and shifters,” she said. “The only good vampire is a twice-dead vampire, you know? They call us demons from hell.”
“You guys do have a public image problem.”
“It’s all those crappy movies. We’re actually really sweet and cuddly.”
After three doubles, Shawna started slurring her words, and then she started singing. That wasn’t a problem, since she was a classically trained opera singer before she was turned. When I got off work and steered her out the door, the entire bar gave her a standing ovation.
We walked out of the alley and turned left toward the nightclub a block away where I parked my car. That was when three men wearing black uniforms with silver piping and a silver cross on the left breast converged on us. Although I had never seen them in the flesh, I recognized the uniforms as those of the Order of Knights Magica. A glance over my shoulder showed three more of them behind us. What in the hell were they doing in Westport?
“Oh, goodie,” Shawna said. “I’ve been wanting to kick the shit out of someone all night.”
“They’re mages and they’re shielded,” I said, drawing my main gauche from inside my coat and pressing it into her hand. “This might penetrate their shields, but don’t count on it. Stay behind me and keep your back to the wall, okay?” If she followed orders, I could probably protect her from any magical attacks.
I drew my sword and felt a bit of satisfaction when the men in front of me hesitated.
“Hot damn!” Shawna said from behind me. “That’s a cool trick.” She held up her cop badge and ID card above my shoulder. “Is there something we can help you with?” she called out to the men.
“Demon lover,” the guy nearest me said with a sneer.
“You shouldn’t believe all the rumors,” I said. “I do humans sometimes, too.”
Shawna giggled.
The Knight drew his sword, and the others followed him. I had never faced a Knight before, but I recognized their swords. Slightly curved with a basket hilt, the first six inches were double-edged and the rest of it was single edged. Sort of like a cross between a rapier and a katana, they were an adaptation of the sabers their ancestors had used fighting from horseback.
I had been taught that the Knights’ swords were spelled. Although their spells weren’t as strong as the null-magic spell of a Hunter’s blade, they still could penetrate a weak shield, and eventually, beat down a strong shield. Theoretically, I had an advantage, but against that many opponents, it would be foolhardy to count on it.
“Officer Kincaid, isn’t there a law against carrying a weapon like that?” I asked.
That didn’t seem to concern the Knights, and three of them spread out and moved toward me.
“Just cover my back,” I muttered under my breath, too low for the Knights to hear. I held my sword in front of me in a two-handed grip like a katana. That gave me the choice of going to either my left or my right, depending on which opponent moved against me. If I had been alone, I would have gone on the attack, but I couldn’t leave Shawna defenseless.
On the other hand, if it had been me and two other Hunters on the other side, we would have moved already. The Knights were giving me far too much time to study them—how each of them held their swords, the positioning of their feet, their body language, and their facial expressions. I got the feeling that none of them wanted to be the first to jump in.
One of the guys in the back grew impatient and tossed a fireball at me. It lit up the night as it splashed across my shield.
“Thank you,” I muttered. I had been waiting for one of them to make the first aggressive move so that I could legitimately strike back. I hit the three guys closest to me with a burst of ley-line energy that rocked two of them back on their heels and knocked the third man off his feet. The pyromancer behind them launched another fireball at me, and I fired a ley missile at him, then two more at the men closest to me.