Black Wolf (52 page)

"This is not a
fucking acid flashback, all right? Something is wrong!"

"Calm down,"
Liam said. "No one said we don't believe you. I'm not picking up
anything. Nick? Sonja?"

Sonja shook
her head. "But I'm pretty low-sense at the moment."

"Jesse's
right," Nick said distractedly. "Something's not balanced... Oh,
damn, it just felt me searching..."

Something tall
and inhumanly skinny, with a long heavy tail, stalked menacingly
out of the shadows between two buildings.

"That's a
demon," Liam whispered. "It has to be. Oh, gods."

The demon
bared finger-long teeth in a grin. "Meat. Coven of wolf and witch
and healer and gifted. My meat."

Evaline
snarled, ears back and tail low, crouching defensively between the
demon and her horrified coven.

Jess stepped
around her, to place
himself
between the demon and his
friends. He heard Sonja cry out, and heard Liam say softly, "Wait.
Let him go."

His heart felt
like it was pounding three times its normal speed, the adrenaline
rush was powerful enough to make him light-headed, but on some
level he knew with crystal clarity what to do.

The demon
laughed shrilly. "More meat, wolf meat, tastiest kind."

"Back off.
You're not killing anyone."

It had to look
ridiculous, a slender youth in black magesilks, standing calmly
before a creature twice his height and so well-armed.

The demon
paced back and forth, angrily, but didn't try to get by him. "My
meat!"

"Go back to
where you belong!"

"No! You are
alone, a child, you cannot win." It made a dash to the right,
clearly intending to go around him.

Jesse moved
sideways, and it scrambled to keep from hitting him. While it
fought for balance, he changed and advanced, hackles raised,
growling.

It hesitated,
spun towards the four watching frozen.

Jesse gathered
himself into a tightly-wound crouch, lunged at its back, and
knocked it sprawling on the street. He tore savagely at it, while
it twisted around, trying to reciprocate. Claws raked down his
side, across the fading scars from the construct-wolves, and they
hurt worse than predator claws, but it left its throat open.
Relentlessly, Jesse bit down. It struggled and shrieked, thrashed
madly, vainly seeking to escape the merciless grip.

He felt the
spine crunch, and the demon vanished.

Jesse
stumbled, and changed, panting.

"Nobody ever
tell you wolves can't fight demons?" Nick asked weakly.

"Guess not.
Can somebody check this? It's too far back for me to see."

Liam
immediately came close to examine the freely-bleeding cuts across
Jesse's lower back. "They look okay," he reported. "Three lines,
none of them very deep or long." He laid a hand over them, and the
wetness slowed.

"Jess, by
rights you should be in small pieces all over the street, and the
rest of us with you." He hadn't seen Evaline shift to human, in her
blue and silver magesilks. She hugged him, and he leaned against
her, grateful for the support—with the adrenaline rush fading, he
wasn't sure he could stay on his feet without help. Gradually, his
heart was slowing to its normal rhythm. "How did you do that?"

"I don't
know," he told her. "I smelled it and something in the back of my
head told me what to do." The world tilted sideways, and his
stomach turned inside out; the area around the cuts felt so cold it
burned, and it was spreading, slowly. "I don't feel so good."

"I'll go get
the van," Evaline said, and raced off on four feet in the direction
of Winter's house, not far outside the village proper. Sonja took
Eva's place at Jess' side, helping him stay on his feet. Other
voices that felt rather far off but probably weren't, all talking
at once, they couldn't have missed that scream; Liam, calmly
suggesting that it had simply been a particularly reckless and
foolish predator. That wasn't going to last past the wolves
catching the scent, Jess thought vaguely, but it seemed to
ameliorate some of the chaos for the moment, which was probably
good enough, until Evaline returned with the van.

In the safety
of the warm bright living room, Sonja coiled herself into a chair,
shivering; Nick perched on the arm and hugged her, but whether for
her comfort or his was an open question. Nick's new familiar Malta
scrambled up onto Sonja's lap so both she and Nick could reassure
the frightened young cat—gift from Sam though she was, and likely
as uncanny as Alfari, the grey-and-white ball of fur and purrs was
still not entirely out of kittenhood.

Jess paid
little attention, more intent on the fact that he could curl up on
the couch, rest his throbbing head on his arm, and not move
anymore. "It's poison... isn't it," he asked, hearing the words
slur.

Liam knelt
beside him, and laid a hand just above the cuts. "Looks like," he
agreed after a moment. "Your body's a bit freaked by it, but it's
starting to fight back now. Know something, Nick? You wanted proof
that Alessandria had a seventh child that was half demon? Proof is
lying here getting wolf blood and demon blood all over the couch,
and reacting no worse to demon poison than any wolf to predator
poison. That's the only explanation I can think of, because
otherwise this is not possible."

"Does that
mean if I fall asleep I'll wake up?" Jess wondered.

"Yes."

"Good, 'cause
I'm really really tired... Only if I sleep here I'll be in the
way."

"That's okay,"
Evaline said, one hand stroking his hair gently. "You can sleep if
you want."

Gratefully,
Jess closed his eyes and surrendered to the exhaustion, not even
the slowly-fading pain enough to keep him awake.

50

Kevin laid his
book beside him on the loveseat, and got up to check on Shaine. He
and Jess and Gisela had been taking turns keeping an eye on him,
waiting for him to wake up; over two full days and heading towards
the third, and this was starting to feel endless.

Nothing like a
little déjà vu.

No change,
other than that Shaine had been thrashing around again and had the
blankets tangled. Kevin had done what he could to ease the
psychedelic dreams that often came with psychic damage, as he had
with Jess once, but there were limits on how effective it was.

Gently, he
straightened the blankets, freed them from one hand that now showed
delicate webbing between long fine fingers, reaching all the way to
the first knuckle—he'd love to know how Shaine had managed even
minor physical shapeshifting, and whether that was a natural talent
of the children of water.

He'd done it a
dozen times; this time, however, Shaine stirred, and opened his
eyes, blinking in the sunlight.

"Good
morning," Kevin said softly.

"Where's
Jess?"

Kevin stifled
his sigh. "He's at Coven Winter's house, he was there overnight."
I'm not going to tell you he's sleeping off demon poison from
that fight last night that Liam called to tell us about.
"It's
late Sunday morning, the healers don't think you did any permanent
damage." And they were more familiar with over-extended mages than
they were with forcibly-awakened wolves, so they should be
right—even if they were familiar only with mages of fire, not
water. "Gisela called Bryan, you're off sick until a healer tells
him otherwise. Healer's advice is that you're to spend the next few
days inside the walls so you're shielded, and you're to rest and
eat a lot."

Shaine rolled
over, and contemplated one hand resignedly. "Damn. I don't even
know how I made myself human the first time, there's no way I can
do it again. Just what I need to make life a complete mess."

"You have to
be the most pessimistic person I've ever met." Kevin sat on the
edge of the bed, and leaned back against the foot-bars. "Turn it
around the other way and look at the bright side. There's no more
reason to hide."

"No, now I get
to be a fucking freak. The only meren who could never figure out
why mass murder was better than being discovered."

"Unity," Kevin
said softly. Liam had offered, along with a report, a rather
interesting hypothesis, involving Jess, Sam, Alessandria's seventh
child, demons, the children of water, and a mysteriously-destroyed
village that smelled of unfamiliar wolves but no elves or dryads
and resisted all investigation attempts.

"I don't know
what name they called it. North of here. They took a couple of
years to build it, it had less than a year, then they got too
close. Are you absolutely totally sure nothing else has gone after
Jess while I've been out?"

"Jess is
fine."

"That isn't
what I asked." Shaine twisted around, sat up. "Tell me," he
demanded.

Kevin didn't
hide this sigh. "Coven Winter had a demon set on them last night.
Jess killed it. He's sleeping off poison after-effects, and Liam's
keeping a close eye on him, but apparently his body's dealt with
the poison already."

"Oh, shit."
Shaine closed his eyes, and cold despair flashed across his face.
"He is one. And they found him. They'll kill him."

"Who
will?"

"The demons
who helped kill everyone else. They made a deal, the mereni-mages
would take care of about sixty wolves that the demons had a problem
with, and use that blood to call three demons and give them enough
power on this plane to kill all the rest of the village. They found
Jess and they're going to keep trying until they kill him."

"You know as
well as I do, Jess is hard to kill."

"He'll lose
this time. You tell me. The nastier sort of demons who like to fuck
around on this plane, are they going to be real thrilled that
anyone can stop them? I don't hardly think so."

"Liam," Kevin
said, choosing words carefully, "is very good at putting together
pieces the rest of us miss. He noticed that three things happened,
all in April and May six years ago: a village called Unity, where
there were apparently wolves but no dryads or elves, died, Jess'
memory ends, and Samantha showed up with nothing except what she
was wearing."

"Her too. I
think. She's been just waiting for me to hurt Jess so she can freak
out all over me. Try asking her anything else. I just told you
everything I know."

"Do you have
any idea who might have sent that particular demon?"

Shaine hissed
impatiently. "Probably not a meren, I can't see them thinking it's
worth much effort after this long. Only reason I can think that
Lew'd get involved at all is that one of the demons convinced them
Jess might remember something."

Lew,
presumably, would be the mage they'd fought by the lake. "Why would
a demon bother?"

"Think about
it. Easier than trying to act directly on this plane. Less risk for
the demon, too. If Lew killed Jess, that would be the end of the
problem, no longer matters if Jess can kill demons or not. If Lew
died, oh well."

"Got it. But
that failed, so they tried something more direct. You said there
were three."

"Sure, but
whatever Jess killed last night was almost definitely a minor one
meant just to test him and find out if he'd give himself away to
protect friends. Anybody's guess who actually summoned it or
whether it slipped through alone. It doesn't much matter. Three
demons in particular want Jess dead, I'm sure they'd be happier if
it's before he can leave any little demon-killing wolves behind.
Take out the summoners, and it'll slow them down until they find a
new puppet, but they'll be back."

Kevin chewed a
thumbnail thoughtfully. "Sure. Problems never go away that easily.
But maybe if we can buy Jess some extra time, that phenomenal luck
of his will kick in and bring something new into the picture." The
term demon-luck, for improbable fortune both good and bad, had a
whole new dimension now.

"You're really
reaching," Shaine said sceptically.

"Better than
letting the wolf-cub die because we don't think we can do
anything."

"Can you
seriously take that mage we messed with in the city in a fight
under any conditions?"

"Well, I
thumped him good the first time, but the second time he would've
thumped me just as soundly if you hadn't been there. The constructs
he set on Jess have to have taken a huge amount of power, and
worse, a lot of skill, which is a bad sign. He's definitely spent
more time on offensive stuff. I never got into the heavy combat
techniques even at my worst. Unless I could duplicate the
circumstances of the first time, which I doubt, then about the best
I could hope for is daylight or a lot of moonlight, and then I
could at least hold my own without him shredding my shields on me
like he did last time. I couldn't let a little thing like minimal
light stop me when he wanted to hurt Jess, now could I?"

Shaine gave
him a wry smile, which was reply enough.

"We do have
another likely factor as far as summonings. Sam thinks Coven
Whitethorn, the ones who set the trap before, are screwing around
with demons, and she doesn't think they've gotten in deep. So if
they aren't expecting it, maybe we can deal with just them and not
with demon backup. Moira, the Whitethorn mage, I'm fairly sure I
could wipe the floor with, but that would still leave the rest. Sam
asked us not to attack them head-on, and I can see her point, I
suppose we'd probably have to try to take all of them at once to
keep anyone from having a chance to escalate things, which sounds,
well, tricky, and I don't know what we'd have to do to stop them
permanently. I wonder if there'd be the slightest point in my
trying to talk to Rebecca. This other mage, now..." He fell silent,
thinking, then shrugged. "I'll call a meeting, as soon as everyone
can get here, and we can think about him. The more brains the
better, andt here seems to be more brains in this family all the
time."