Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

“So they can get in and out to work on it, which they mostly do at night.”

“They really are working hard to . . . hey, what’s that?”

“What?”

“Up there.” Julia pointed at a patch of sky between them and the house. “See where the air is all wavy and funny?”

“YOU’VEseen the greenhouse, the store, and the rec center,” Isen said. “Shall we visit the babies now?”

Hardy’s face lit up. “‘You are my sunshine,’” he sang. “‘You make me happy when skies are gray.’”

Isen chuckled and turned down the path to the clan’s day-care center. “Babies do that for me, too.”

He had learned quite a bit about his unusual guest today. Some of it was obvious. Hardy couldn’t use words normally, but he understood them just fine. He had a vast repertoire of songs and commercial ditties from before 1975. Most likely, then, he’d been hurt in 1975, or close to it.

Isen had also learned that Hardy loved dogs, chocolate ice cream, and hot water. That last item was probably not a pleasure he could indulge in often, but he certainly had this morning. He’d been in the shower a full hour. He also knew that Hardy had a bad knee, a child’s curiosity, and a clear and flexible mind. Humans might not notice that. Without language, Hardy wouldn’t think the way they did, so sometimes he would baffle them, or vice versa. But Isen was accustomed to new wolves who’d temporarily lost language . . . and old wolves who didn’t always bother to put words to their thoughts.

He might be the most nearly fearless man Isen had ever met.

Not completely without fear. He’d been anxious about the message he wanted passed on to Lily, but otherwise he lived in the moment, sunny and untroubled. Certainly lupi didn’t worry him. Once he understood the nature of his hosts, he’d been fascinated. At Hardy’s request—rather elliptically posed, but Isen had figured it out—Isen had Changed in front of his guest. Hardy had watched intently, then he’d grinned and sung out that God had “you and me, baby, in His hands”—a clear proclamation that Hardy considered Isen one of God’s children, even when he was four-footed. Interestingly, he’d assumed that Isen would still understand him.

Hardy also walked with angels.

That was how Hardy thought of it, at least, and who was Isen to say he was wrong? They’d had a good conversation about it. Hardy didn’t actually see the beings he called angels, but he felt their presence. Sometimes they spoke to him, and the way they . . .

What was that? Isen stopped, all his senses alert.

Hardy grabbed his arm and sang so quickly that the words all smeared together. “Running-just-as-fast-as-we-can!”

The mantle in Isen’s gut twisted as some part of Clanhome ripped. Isen looked toward that breach and felt the wrongness and knew precisely where it had occurred—the node halfway up the rocky slope of Little Sister. He pulled hard on the mantle, tipped back his head, and bellowed, “Fighters—to me!”

SEVENfloors up at St. Margaret’s Hospital, Benedict pushed to his feet. He didn’t suffer from claustrophobia the way his brother did. He had a touch of discomfort in very tight, enclosed spaces, sure, but almost all lupi did. Nettie’s room was small, and at his insistence, it lacked a window. But it wasn’t small enough to trigger that response in him.

So why was he on his feet, pacing?

Arjenie looked at him over the top of her laptop. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Go run the stairs again.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re restless and anxious and sick of this room. You’re also accustomed to a lot of physical activity, and you haven’t been getting it.”

Benedict stopped to smile at his mate. “Know me pretty—”

Thud.

He froze.

“What is it?” Arjenie whispered.

He made the sign for silence and listened keenly. Then he spun. Quicker to take the bed with Nettie in it than to disentangle her first from the various tubes. He pulled his hunting knife from the sheath on his calf. “We’re evacuating. I’ll get Nettie. You get her IV.”

She didn’t hesitate. She put her laptop on the floor and hurried to the IV stand.

Thud.

She must have heard it this time, too. Her eyes widened.

“Bill, Tommy!” he snapped. “Get in here. Rearguard!” He laid the knife beside Nettie and shoved her bed, aiming for the door, which opened to admit the two guards. Arjenie kept pace with the IV stand. “Something’s on the wall outside. Something big. It—”

Thud, thud, crack!

“—wants in.”

LILei Yu woke suddenly, sat bolt upright in her borrowed bed, and did something she never did. She yelled. “Rule! The children! Run! ”

“IT’Sa gate!” Cullen cried. “It’s a goddamn gate!”

“Weapons!” Lily snapped at the guards, drawing hers. “Fielding, go get backup. Lots of it, with the most heavy-duty weapons you’ve got.”

“But we don’t know if—”

She shoved him. “Go!”

He ran.

“Hold your fire,” Lily called, “until we—”

Something leaped through the gate twenty feet in the air, nearer the street than the building. It was big and squat and looked like the ugliest centaur ever—only someone had substituted “bug” for “horse” in the thing’s ancestry. Segmented like a caterpillar and armored like a dinosaur, it was a mottled dun and gray with a barbed tail at one end and a gorilla’s chest and arms at the other, and way too many legs in between. As it twisted in midair Lily got a glimpse of a face like a demented gargoyle.

“Dworg!” Cynna screamed.

The guards opened fire.

The creature landed on the roof of a Suburban. It was damn near as big as the Suburban, and metal crunched and crumpled beneath the impact. Instantly it leaped off, as quick and easy as if the bullets had all missed—leaped and landed on pavement with that muscular tail held curled up over its back like a scorpion’s. And raced straight at Lily and Cynna.

Fast. Ungodly fast for such a large creature. Lily had her weapon out and aimed. She squeezed the trigger twice.

It kept coming.

Cynna hurled something at it. Something invisible.

It stumbled and grunted what sounded like words—God, did it speak ?—but recovered immediately.

A wolf with fur the color of cinnamon landed on the armored back. Another one, gray and black, darted in to clamp his jaws on one rear leg, and that at last got the creature’s attention. It stopped abruptly, sending the wolf on its back tumbling to the ground. Those gorilla arms ended in claws like a bear’s, and the thing twisted to rake at the fallen wolf with those claws while its tail whipped out at the other wolf.

It was so damn fast! But so was Cullen, who’d already danced aside. She couldn’t see what had happened to the black-and-gray wolf—and couldn’t stand around watching.

“Cynna—come on!” She scrambled onto the nearest vehicle, a Ford just like hers, and Cynna vaulted up there with her. Lily jumped to the next one—a shiny black Mustang. Cynna landed beside her and together they scrambled onto the small car’s roof so they could vault over to the minivan beside it, while behind them wolves snarled and José shouted a quick stream of orders: “Joe, Steve, Santos—keep it busy—”

Lily jumped to the next car, an old Dodge Colt. “You sure that’s a dworg?” They were like a cross between a troll and a demon, Cullen had once told her, only meaner and harder to kill. Of course, he’d also said they all died over three thousand years ago. But Cynna remembered things from three thousand years ago—