A Sacred Magic Read online

  “How old is she?” If she was a minor, it would probably be better to show up at her door and ask permission from her parents to talk to her.

  “Nineteen. It says here that she’s a student at Winter Hall Academy. Her address belongs to one of the campus apartments.” Talia looked so hopeful that I had to agree.

  “All right, since she’s of age we can talk to her. Go ahead and give her a call. Be sure and explain who we are. Tell her we look into dangerous situations like this. Don’t let on that it was a liche, though, unless she mentions it first. We don’t want a panic to erupt through the area. There’s enough of that already, thanks to the Tuathan Brotherhood.”

  “Right. Good point.” As Talia made the phone call, I watched her.

  The situation with Lazerous mattered more to Talia than she let on. She was good at remaining unreadable when she wanted to be, but this was too personal, and she couldn’t hide her desire to destroy the creature who had effectively crippled her. I didn’t blame her. I had felt that way about my grandfather, and he had just tried to drain me of one side of my heritage. If he’d accomplished his mission, I wouldn’t have just killed him, I would have made him hurt.

  Viktor returned from taking a plate of food out to Angel, who was watching over the reception desk. We couldn’t close up every time we wanted to snack, and it simply wasn’t a safe idea to leave the elevator access open when no one was guarding the front desk.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Talia has a lead on Lazerous.” I picked up my plate and headed out to join Angel. She was sitting at her desk, flipping through a magazine when I showed up, and she glanced up with a guilty smile.

  “Reading on the job, eh?” I laughed, pulling up a chair. I set my plate on the opposite side of her desk. “I know Herne’s only been gone a couple hours, but I’m nervous. I keep thinking, what if the Tuathan Brotherhood finds out that we’re on to them before we can get to Nuanda?”

  “You can drive yourself crazy doing that,” Angel said. “You’ve got to let it go, and let what happens, happen. Besides, I have a good feeling about this. I think we’ll be able to find him.” She paused to take a bite of her maxi-fries, then asked, “How’s Talia?”

  “I think she’s okay,” I said. “But I can tell you that finding Lazerous matters to her a lot more than she’s letting on. We did find a lead. She’s checking it out now.”

  “I never even heard of a liche before we met Talia,” Angel said. “In fact, half of the monsters that we’ve encountered, I never even knew existed. It’s a scary world out there.”

  “It sure is,” I said. “How are your martial arts classes coming?”

  Angel was learning how to fight—both hand-to-hand and with weaponry. She had been attending classes regularly at Herne’s request, and she went twice a week. But we hadn’t really talked about how she was doing.

  Angel gave me a brief shrug. “I think I’m doing okay. My instructor says I’m fine. In fact, he said that I have a natural bent for it, if I could just get over my reluctance to fight back. But I wasn’t brought up that way. Mama J.—well—she hated violence of any kind. She raised me to be a pacifist. Oh, she taught me to stand up for myself, but she didn’t want me getting into any fistfights, or anything like that. To be honest, at first she trusted that you would keep me on the straight and narrow, but after a while she began to fret that maybe your love for adventure was going to rub off on me and that I’d get hurt.”

  I had never known that Mama J. was worried about me hanging out with Angel. The thought made me sad. “When was this?”

  Angel flashed me an apologetic smile. “After you came to live with us. She was worried that your anger at whoever killed your parents would spill out. That you might join some gang or something like that.”

  I snorted. “As if any gang in high school would have taken me. She needn’t have worried about that, but I will say this: Mama J. didn’t know half of what was going on out there. I think she did you a disservice when she stopped you from taking self-defense courses in high school.”

  “I suppose.”

  I paused, then asked, “So, I know you still retained some of your pacifistic views until we joined the Wild Hunt. How do you feel now? You’ve been taking classes for about three weeks. Do they make you feel uncomfortable?”

  Angel blushed. “I have to say, I’m actually enjoying them more than I thought I would. They do make me much more able to stand my ground. Granted, I don’t know a whole lot yet, I’ve got a lot of practice and working out to do, but learning to defend myself is one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done. I’m really grateful to Herne that he was able to find me a place that’s both comfortable to work in, and a trainer I trust.”

  Angel was in no way prepared to join Herne and me at the gym when we worked out, so he had found her a beginners’ class for martial arts, and a good trainer who would ease her into her workouts. She was starting with tai chi and karate, and she was working out at the gym twice a week with a physical trainer who could help her at the skill level she was at.

  I dug into my fish and chips, grateful that Angel had remembered how much I liked them. She had ordered in tacos, maxi-fries, fish and chips, pastries, fried rice, egg rolls, and pot stickers.

  I leaned back in my chair after I finished off a third piece of fish. “Do you ever worry about living up to someone else’s expectations?” I asked, slowly raising my gaze to meet hers.

  “Well, that’s a change in subject. What’s going on?”

  I bit my lip, not entirely sure of what I wanted to say. “Herne tells me he loves me more than he’s ever loved anybody. I’m not sure if I can actually believe that, but it sounds true when he says it. But I’m concerned about meeting up to his expectations. He believes in me so much, how can I live up to that? I’m not even sure I believe in myself as much as he does.”

  Angel reached across the desk and put her hand on mine. Her fingers were warm, and gentle, but I could feel the edges of calluses on her fingertips. She definitely was getting her hands dirty in the gym.

  “You can’t control what anybody else thinks of you. How many times have you told me that?” she asked. “Herne sees the real you, I guarantee you. He’s not blinded by love. The gods don’t usually get blinded by anything…unless, I suppose—it’s their own greatness. Or maybe another god or goddess.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not a goddess, that’s for sure.” I nibbled on another french fry.

  After we finished, I carried our plates into the break room and put them in the sink. Then I wandered down the hall to the office that Talia and Yutani shared. I peeked in to see Talia working away on her laptop, and Yutani on Nalcops’s.

  “Have you made any more headway on those files?” I asked.

  Yutani glanced up, nodding. “Page after page of potential targets. I have yet to find a schedule of anticipated dates for them, but I did pull up the members list. I printed it out, and I figure we can give it to the cops. We don’t have the wherewithal to track them all down, but I’m certain that if Herne distributes it to law enforcement agencies around the country, they can take care of that. Or maybe to the FBI.”

  “How many are on the list?” I was hoping he had been right in his assessment that it was only a couple hundred or so.

  “Would you believe there are only about two hundred members? Actually one hundred ninety-eight, if you don’t round up. And at least ten of those are Nuanda’s crack squad that he surrounds himself with. So really, it’s not nearly as bad as we feared. At least forty percent of them are located in our area. Which again makes sense when you think that TirNaNog and Navane are here, and those are their primary targets.”

  Yutani pushed his chair back, crossing one leg over the other as he stared at the screen.

  “Honestly, if I divorce myself from what they’re doing, I have to admit, I admire Nuanda,” he said.

  “You what? How can you say that, dude?”

  “Look at what he’s accomplished. He’
s managed to capture the nation through fear. He’s managed to pit an entire government against one of its own members. And all this with not even two hundred members behind him. He’s made it seem like this is a nationwide Fae phenomenon, when really, the membership is incredibly small. He knows how to breed terror. I’m not saying he’s a good role model, just that he’s good at what he does.”

  Yutani’s dark eyes gleamed. He was an attractive man, and a smart one at that. But I also knew that he was so far from vanilla that even if I had been single, I wasn’t sure I would have braved a relationship with him. He was always on edge, though that might have been because of his coyote shifter nature. And given he was the son of the Great Coyote, he carried a lot more chaos in his nature than his brethren.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” I said, “but I can’t bring myself to find any admiration for Nuanda. I won’t underestimate him, don’t worry about that. I know he’s dangerous, but he’s also unstable. But he doesn’t give a flying fuck for anybody’s life but his own. I wonder, do you think he’s more lucky than smart, when you really get down to it?”

  “He’s unstable, but he’s not mentally ill. You and I both know that true evil exists in this world, and I’m pretty sure that Nuanda is an apt embodiment of it. He’s smart, and cunning.” He paused, then added, “I find it interesting that the gods of the Tuatha de Dannan accepted Lugh into their order, and yet the people who follow him refuse to accept someone with Fomorian blood.”

  “Nobody ever said the Fae learn by example. Look at me—I’m full Fae. I just happened to be from both sides of the fence. And they don’t accept me. They don’t even want to admit that people like me exist.” I shrugged. “I’m only now beginning to admit that the Fae are my people. I don’t like to, because of what they did to my parents and the way they’ve treated me, but I can’t deny my blood any longer. That doesn’t mean I agree with them.”

  “Right.” Yutani shook his head. “Well, I’d better get back to the files and see what else I can find. I hope to have more information for Cernunnos by the time Herne returns.” He glanced over at Talia. “Have you found out anything more about Lazerous?”

  Talia swiveled in her chair. “I talked to the girl—her name is Claudia. She gave me an approximate location where they were hiking. Every ounce of her magical powers has been stripped away from her. She might as well be human. That’s not a bad thing per se, but for her, it’s a traumatic loss. She was in her first quarter of studies at Winter Hall. Now, she’ll have to drop out.”

  Winter Hall Academy was a school for gifted students of the magic-born. The academy accepted pupils from between the ages of sixteen to twenty-four, and only those who were of magic-born blood could attend.

  Yutani grimaced. “That had to hurt. And tuition is steep there. I hope they give her a refund, considering what happened.”

  Talia shook her head. “The opposite, actually. She was chastised for her foolishness. Apparently, the students were warned that the area where she went hiking was dangerous. There have been five other attacks out there. Students were told to stay away. It’s all been kept very hush-hush. The headmistress doesn’t want it getting out that students have been targeted. After all, the school isn’t too far away from where the attacks have been taking place.”

  “Well, crap. Okay, five attacks. We need to talk to the headmistress of Winter Hall as soon as we can. Maybe we can get some useful information from her. But this is shaping up to be something we’re going to have to plan our way on. We’re not going to be able to charge out there and take care of him in a day or two. My guess is that Lazerous has made a tidy nest for himself and he isn’t going to be easy to find, even though we have a specific area in which to start hunting.” I jotted down a note to find out who the person in charge was, and give her a call.

  “I agree, unfortunately. Luckily, though, given he seems to have found a ready source of energy, he’s not likely to leave anytime soon. So we have time. It’s just a matter of how many more victims are going to fall prey to him.” Talia handed me a piece of paper. “I figured you’d want to know who to talk to, so here’s the name of the headmistress. Let me do a little more research on her before you contact her, because you know that she’s not going to want this to be brought out into the open, and she may not be that willing to help us.”

  I carried the paper out to Angel’s desk. “Start a file, would you? One for Lazerous. Talia will give you the notes on what she’s found out about him. Meanwhile, find the number for the headmistress of Winter Hall Academy. And here’s her name.”

  “Why do you need to talk to her?” Angel pulled out a file folder and began typing in a label for it. She printed out the label and stuck it to the folder, then put an active sticker on the side. One thing that we both liked about Herne’s setup, while a lot of our business was conducted electronically, we always kept hard files to back up the information. Herne had confided to us that the Wild Hunt and other agencies like it had been cyber-attacked more than once in an effort to take them down.

  “Apparently, there have been a number of attacks up near the academy, similar to the one that Talia found. Winter Hall has been keeping fairly closemouthed about it, probably to protect its reputation, but students have been killed. It’s something we need to look into.”

  “How powerful do you think this liche really is?” Angel asked. “And what kind of powers can he strip away?”

  I sat down across the desk from her. “Liches are incredibly powerful. I didn’t know much about them before we came to work here but when Talia told me her story, I decided to do a little research. You know that they were powerful sorcerers when they were alive, right?”

  “Yes, actually that I did know.”

  “Well, apparently there’s an archaic spell, known to very few. We’re talking the world’s strongest mages and sorcerers, like those belonging to the Force Majeure. It’s often used as a curse on another sorcerer, but there are times when one decides to use it on themselves. For example, say a sorcerer knows they’re going to die and they have the time to prepare the spell. Well, they can bring themselves back to life. Timing is crucial. If they don’t have the spell set up just right by the time they die, it won’t work. And their body has to go untouched through the process. That’s probably why there are so few liches in existence. But once the sorcerer returns as a liche, they feed off energy.”

  Angel frowned. “They look like zombies, right?”

  “Not exactly. The way I understand it, their skin dries over their corpse during the process, so they’re more like mummies without the wrappings. Their bodies are desiccated. Their eyes look like they have flames inside of the sockets. To continue to exist, the liche needs to feed on magical energy. But the energy doesn’t just sustain them—they actually absorb it and grow stronger as time goes on.”

  “If Lazerous stripped Talia of her powers that long ago, that means he’s had time to feed on a lot of people between then and now.” A horrified look crossed Angel’s face. “He must be incredibly strong, Ember.”

  “Yes, incredibly so. I don’t know how often they need to feed, but it’s been…I don’t know how many hundreds of years since Talia was attacked. I can’t imagine how much energy that Lazerous has accumulated during that time.” I paused, another thought crossing my mind. “I wonder what the hell his endgame is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I paced, crossing to the elevator to stare at the doors. “Does a liche exist simply for the experience of existing? I can’t imagine Lazerous attempting to seek power in a structured format, like in government, for example. He’d never be accepted. And he’s not powerful enough to take over the country, obviously. But what does he want? What’s his end goal? Or is he just obsessed with staying alive and gaining power, like Midas was with gold?”

  “I don’t know,” Angel said, shaking her head. “But I’m pretty sure that we’re going to find out before we’re done with the case.”

  At that moment, the ele
vator doors opened, startling me. Herne stepped out, his messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

  “You’re back quicker than you thought you would be.”

  He gave me a quick kiss, then said, “Right. Gather everyone in the break room. I have news. And everybody is involved.” As he headed into his office, I turned Angel and raised my eyebrows.

  “Well, let’s get moving.”

  But as Angel stood, a queer look crossed her face. “Ember, promise me you’ll be careful? I had a sudden premonition that you’re in danger. Very great danger. It swept over me like a wave as Herne walked by. I can’t sense it now, but it came in on his shoulders.”

  Angel’s premonitions were usually right on track. Suddenly feeling like I had a target on my back, I could only nod as we headed for the break room to find out what Herne had to say.

  Chapter Twelve

  Herne came striding into the break room. “Everything go okay this morning?” He wasn’t wasting any time.

  I nodded. “We found out more about Lazerous, and I really think we need to take on this case. Talia discovered—” I was about to launch into what we knew, but Herne held up his hand, stopping me in mid-sentence.

  “Fine, I trust your judgment. Get the files prepped and the info tucked in there. But we’ll have to tackle it later. Right now, we have marching orders from Cernunnos.”

  The fact that he didn’t even want to hear about Lazerous told me that Cernunnos had given him a priority assignment. Which wasn’t surprising, given the situation. As we gathered around the table, Herne looked around at the remains of our impromptu food fest. He arched his eyebrows.

  “I can see that you had a lot of fun while I was gone.” Then, before we could take it the wrong way, he added, “I hope you left something for me.”

  Talia scrambled to bring him a plate of food, and a cup of coffee. Herne accepted it with a soft Thank you, looking more solemn than I had seen him in a long while.