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I’d seen a lot of warehouse complexes while doing this sort of work. They had a lot of qualities that made them appealing to the aspiring evil overlord; they were cheap and easy to rent, had a lot of open space, and it was much less likely that your unsavory activities would attract attention than in, say, your average residential neighborhood.

 

It was no wonder that I’d seen so many, really. And by now, I’d seen enough to be something of a connoisseur.

 

I had not, however, seen one quite like what the Lighters had taken over. It was a gated complex, with the actual warehouses behind a concrete wall. I hadn’t seen a similar layout in the past, though I wasn’t sure whether that was just because I was used to a more low-brow sort of warehouse or this was genuinely unusual.

 

By the time I showed up, the werewolves had already installed themselves around the district. They were loitering in nearby streets pretending to be dogs, eating in cafes, in one case even standing next to a stalled car at the side of the road. A handful of them with firearms experience were waiting with large, heavy rifles in places with good views, positioned to have someone looking over the scene from every angle. That had required a bit of finagling–I’d had to buy a freaking ship to get one of them out on the river, and even for someone who could afford to throw a million dollars at a problem without really thinking about it, buying a container ship on short notice was not cheap.

 

But, again, money just wasn’t an issue anymore. Besides, I was confident Tindr would figure a way to turn a profit on the whole thing. Probably just by selling it at a profit, although I supposed it was possible I’d end up being a shipping magnate on top of everything else.

 

I debated walking right in the front gate, since it wasn’t like their security system could even slow me down. But while that idea had a certain dramatic appeal, it seemed…imprudent. This was more of a fact-finding mission than anything, and while I highly doubted the Lighters had anything capable of stopping this crew, they might be able to delete some vital scrap of information if we gave them warning.

 

I walked around a ways to a quiet spot out of sight of the gate instead, and then just jumped the wall. It was ten feet tall, the kind of wall you put in when you really took your privacy seriously. I vaulted it cleanly, not even touching it on the way past.

 

Elijah was only slightly more hindered by it, putting one hand down to give himself that last bit of height to get over the wall. Snowflake cleared it easily, and then the ghouls and jötnar started clambering over it. I never saw Antonio actually jump the wall, but when I glanced around I saw him standing on the same side with the rest of us. He was sucking on what smelled like a cherry lollipop, and smirked at me when he noticed me looking.

 

Show-off, I thought, then glanced around to make sure that everyone had made it. It seemed like we were all present and accounted for. The wall had taken us, at most, thirty seconds to get past.

 

A ten-foot concrete wall was a decent defensive measure. But it was…rather insufficient here.

 

I knew that the Lighters had their headquarters here somewhere, but the information hadn’t extended to actually saying which of the warehouses they were based out of. Greg hadn’t been able to narrow it down at all–not without taking more time, at least, and I wasn’t willing to wait any longer than absolutely necessary. I’d been planning on figuring it out here, if necessary sneaking into the buildings myself to take a look before bringing the horde in.

 

This turned out to be unnecessary. I’d forgotten that I was dealing with…well, people, as opposed to the things that I’d gotten used to. They were normal humans in most respects, with everything that implied. And as such, they’d made a choice that would normally be a perfectly decent one, but which in this particular case was very much not.

 

They had guard dogs.

 

I could feel the presence of the animals from across the lot. There were nineteen of them spread between a pair of large warehouses on the other side of the complex. It seemed implausible that there would be quite that many dogs in a warehouse for any good reasons, but I took a moment to check just in case.

 

It only took a second for me to slide into one of the dogs and look around through her eyes. At a glance, it looked like the right place. There were some people standing around with guns, and they smelled like magic to me, but it was very much on them rather than in them. It seemed like the usual Lighter base. Good enough for me.

 

I was in for a nasty surprise when I returned to my own body again. Namely, I didn’t exactly have one. The body I’d built for myself out of ice and darkness was already collapsing by the time I got back, both in the sense of falling down and in the sense of falling apart.

 

Oh. Of course. In the past, when I’d occupied an animal’s mind, I’d been able to rely on autonomous bodily functions to more or less continue in my absence. Now, I didn’t exactly have those anymore. I was, on some level, nothing but mind, and when I wasn’t occupying my body, it ceased to be a body.

 

I caught myself before I actually fell, and took a moment to piece my body back together. Some of the people with me looked concerned, but none of them were actually freaking out, and none of them asked questions.

 

“This way,” I said, before they could change their minds on the questions, and then started across the lot. I wasn’t too terribly concerned about being spotted–I was even less scared of the security guards here than of the Lighters–but I stuck to more shadowy areas on the way regardless. It wasn’t too hard, anyway; it was almost sunset.

 

The two warehouses were detached, maybe ten feet of open asphalt separating them. I was suspicious that there was a more direct connection underground, but I wasn’t certain; none of the dogs I’d felt had actually been below ground.

 

In any case, that left two entrances to cover, and we couldn’t really afford to do them sequentially. I was reasonably confident that we still had the advantage of surprise, but I was expecting that to end the moment we opened the door. That being the case, giving one of the warehouses time to get ready would kind of negate the whole point of being sneaky about this.

 

“You take the team and clear that one,” I said to Kyi, pointing at the warehouse on the right. “Antonio and I will take the other.”

 

“We will?” Antonio asked. He sounded vaguely amused.

 

“You wanted to see me in action, didn’t you?” I asked. “Well, here’s your chance.”

 

And, more importantly, I wasn’t at all confident that I wanted him around my people. I was guessing that probably everyone knew that was the real reason behind how I’d divvied the teams up, but they wouldn’t call me on it. It was a courtesy thing.

 

Kyi wanted to argue. I could tell. But she wouldn’t show any disobedience in front of outsiders. She nodded sharply instead, and turned towards her assigned target, her one eye hard and cold.

 

I started toward the other, with Antonio slouching along beside me. He was still sucking on that lollipop, or possibly another one; I hadn’t been paying that much attention. Snowflake came with me as well, which was some comfort.

 

I thought about being subtle and picking the lock. I really did.

 

I justified kicking in the door by telling myself that it was marginally quicker, and they’d know they were under attack when we walked in anyway. And if it really had more to do with me feeling a lot of generalized, pent-up frustration and wanting to express it physically, that didn’t make the justification any less correct.

 

It was a tough door, heavy and bolted shut. Most people would probably have had to batter at it for a while with a ram to have any chance of getting through.

 

I managed it on the first kick, and walked in while the echoes of the crash were still ringing in the air.

 

Inside, things were…well, a lot like I’d expected from the raid in Colorado Springs. The room was very clean, very bright–it looked more like a lab or a supermarket than an evil lair. That impression was reinforced by the contents, which looked a lot like an office. There were several long Formica tables, each of which was a white so blinding that it had to be scrubbed daily, if not hourly, and a few large metal cabinets stood at the back of the room. Maybe twenty people were sitting at the tables, each of them sitting at a computer and wearing a headset. A similar number of armed guards were spaced out around the walls, along with another nine that were specifically there as dog handlers.

 

The dogs, really, were a brilliant touch. There were a lot of supernatural critters out there that could have walked right through this crowd and never been noticed. But dogs were harder for most people to hide from, between having better senses and being different enough mentally that most mental magic would have a hard time affecting them. Add in some cameras to cover those more susceptible to less biological mechanisms–and they had cameras, I could see them–and you had about as good of a security system as a normal human could manage.

 

I had to appreciate the thought they’d put into it. They’d done a really decent job of setting this up.

 

I could not, in all honesty, blame them for not realizing the weakness they’d built into their system by doing so. There really weren’t all that many people in the world who could exploit it. It was just their bad luck that one of them had happened to show up here.

 

I didn’t want to take any time over it, and I really didn’t want to have to take the time to piece myself together again. So rather than do anything fancy, I just sent a quick wave of magic out, and every dog in the room collapsed, instantly and very deeply asleep. Snowflake wasn’t affected, whether because of her resistance to mental magic or because she wasn’t exactly a dog or because I didn’t want her to be. It probably had something to do with all of the above.

 

If they hadn’t realized that shit was hitting fans before, that definitely gave it away. A couple of the dog handlers tried to get their charges to wake up for a few seconds before realizing that it was a lost cause. Otherwise, the guards mostly went for weapons, while the rest of the people opted for more of a “duck and cover” response.

 

Again, I had to respect the speed and precision of their response. The Lighters had a ridiculous name, but their training was solid. It was probably only two seconds after I’d kicked the door down when they had guns trained on the doorway. That was a pretty fast response time, as such things went.

 

Considering what they were up against, it was two seconds too slow. In that time, Snowflake already had two of the guards down and bleeding, and she was jumping on the third.

 

I followed her in at a slightly slower pace, going the other direction. It was still faster than they’d anticipated, and mostly their shots went well wide of me. A couple did hit, but they were using small-caliber weapons–the sort that was designed for use in places where you didn’t want bullets flying for miles, or going through walls. Birdshot and hollow-point nine millimeter, for the most part, I thought. It was still dangerous–hell, a .22 caliber could be lethal under the right circumstances. But that kind of ammunition just wasn’t suited for the kind of massive damage that it took to put me down. Long before they’d done enough raw physical damage to do the job, I was on them.

 

They had body armor–magically reinforced body armor, probably, based on the equipment these nutters had used previously. But I had Tyrfing. Even discounting my raw physical strength, that wasn’t a fair contest. The first few went down hard and fast, and didn’t get back up.

 

Apparently they realized just how badly out of their depth they were at that point, because the ones on my side of the room fell back, dropping or holstering their guns.

 

Then one of them grabbed a grenade off her belt, and I realized that what I’d taken for a retreat was really just a change of tactics.

 

I was quick enough to catch the grenade in a web of air and darkness before it could reach me. An instant later, though, it burst into intense, highly localized flame. I managed to keep it at a distance from me, but it was hot, and even as far as I was from it, the front of my body still started to melt.

 

I started to move, thinking that I could close the distance to them enough that they couldn’t really afford to use that sort of weapon, but there was already another incendiary headed my way, and I couldn’t afford to just take that hit. I caught the other one as well, but holding both of those magical constructions steady took all of my focus; I couldn’t really move at the same time. It was looking very much like I’d have to come up with another body–irritating, particularly in such a bright, sterile environment. There wasn’t a whole lot here to work with.

 

Then Antonio, very clearly, said, “That’s enough.”

 

An instant later, something seized control of the darkness I was holding in midair. I was pretty sure I could have stopped it from taking control pretty easily, but there wasn’t any particular reason to, so I let him have it.

 

He used it to flick both of the incendiaries back towards the Lighters, angled in a way that knocked the third one back with them before it could even get near me.

 

There was some screaming then, and the next grenade didn’t come.

 

I ran in a wide arc to avoid the fire, jumping from one of the tables to the next, and circled around behind the Lighters. Once again, they weren’t prepared for me to move that fast, and I hit them before they could adjust to the change. I’d learned my lesson, and now I didn’t stop to give them a target for the weapons that could actually hurt me. I just kept moving, taking one out and then continuing without pause.

 

I was fast, and with Tyrfing I was pretty much guaranteed to kill these guys in one swing. I could make very effective use of hit-and-run tactics, here, and they just didn’t have enough people to take long enough to figure out a response.

 

Less than a minute after I walked into the room, I cut the last of the guards on that side of the room almost in half, and turned to see how the rest of the fight was going.

 

Snowflake had done a comparable job on the other side. Her armor could shrug off small caliber fire just fine, and she was just too fast for things like those incendiaries to be viable. Every one of the guards over there was lying on the ground, most of them visibly mangled. None of them was going to be getting up again.

 

None of the other people in the room–the ones who’d been looking at computers when I came in–was doing a thing. It took me a moment to figure out why.

 

They were all staring at Antonio, a flat, fixed stare. And they were breathing in sync.

 

I could smell his magic, now. And it did not smell human. Oh, there was a bit of human to it–enough that I was sure human was a part of what he was. But the dominating tone was something else entirely, something sour and greasy, sulfur and foul, sickly-sweet rot. I’d never smelled anything quite like it, but it was familiar enough that I could make a decent case what it came from.

 

“How stable is that?” I asked, nodding at the crowd of mesmerized humans.

 

“Not very,” Antonio said absently. “I have to concentrate to keep them like this. It’s delicate.”

 

“Okay. Let me tie them up first, then.” I’d brought a pack, since I was rich enough that replacing it if I had to abandon this body wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t have a whole lot, but I did have some heavy duct tape, and now I took it out and started gathering up the Lighters.

 

“Not killing them?” Antonio asked. He sounded vaguely curious.

 

I shook my head as I started taping them up. It wasn’t a great job–I wasn’t really any good at this–but I was standing right there watching. It really just had to slow them down enough that I’d have a chance to react before they could do something stupid. “They might know something important,” I said. “Can’t afford to kill them until I find out.”

 

“Makes sense,” he said. “Though I think you already got lucky. Those cabinets at the back are server farms. I’m guessing there’s a lot of data there.”

 

“I’d rather not take chances,” I said, and then nothing else until I was finished taping them up.

 

Antonio blinked then, and that foul magic that had been throbbing in the air faded. The humans started to shake it off, and their breathing went back to normal. It took a moment before they realized that they were bound and gagged, seemingly. The dogs were still asleep, and even if they woke up I wasn’t too concerned. Dogs were not a threat to me.

 

“Fascinating,” Antonio said, looking at me. “You look somewhat…melted.”

 

“Oh, right,” I said. “I can fix that.”

 

He nodded. “When you said that they killed you, and it just didn’t take. This is what you meant?”

 

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not something that I want to advertise too broadly.”

 

“I’ll not tell anyone, then,” Antonio said. “You don’t have to worry about me spilling your secrets. I respect you too much for that.”

 

“Why?” I asked.

 

He pursed his lips. “I suppose you’re something of a role model. You’re one of the few people that’s managed to really make it work.”

 

“I guess I can see that,” I said. “Oh, while we’re on uncomfortable topics. You’re a cambion.”

 

“A what?”

 

“A cambion,” I repeated. “The child of a demon and a human.”

 

“Ah,” he said, with a slightly twisted smile. “That. How could you tell?”

 

“You smell like Hell,” I said simply. “I’ve had some dealings with them. Enough to recognize the smell. But you’re not a full demon.”

 

“Interesting,” he said. “I’ve never really had much interaction with them myself. Though I’m told that I take after my father more strongly than most…cambions? That’s a good word.”

 

“How did you get this kind of power without even knowing what you’re called?” I asked.

 

Um, Snowflake said. Maybe not antagonize the half-demon warlord quite so much?

 

Don’t worry, I sent back. He’s…not harmless, exactly, but I don’t think he’s that much of a threat to us.

 

“I figured some things out,” Antonio said, shrugging. “And honestly, a lot of that power is just bluffing. I picked those first few fights to favor me, heavily. What I’ve got makes me decent at defending my home turf, so once I established myself, it wasn’t too hard to keep. Got lucky a few times, and I’ve mostly been coasting on that reputation since.”

 

I laughed. There wasn’t anything inherently funny about it, but something about it was…I had to laugh. It was contrast as much as anything, I thought. I’d gotten so used to people being a hell of a lot scarier than I initially gave them credit for that having the opposite happen was strangely amusing.

 

“Okay,” I said. “This is dealt with. You know how long we have before the cops show up?”

 

“Doubt they’re coming,” he said. “One of the things I can do is mess with sounds. I muffled everything in here, and the other building went down quiet. Shouldn’t be anything to tip off the police, and if somebody does file a noise complaint, they’re too busy to follow up on it.”

 

“All right, then,” I said. “Guess this is it, then. I think you’re entitled to a question.”

 

Antonio nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I want to know…is it worth it?”

 

I paused. “That…is a very open question.”

 

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’ve never really…done the cambion thing, to speak of. Got my position, but I’ve been sitting on it ever since.”

 

“I saw the people you had with you earlier,” I said dryly. “Seems like they’d disagree if they could.”

 

He laughed. “I hire them by the hour. I pay well, and I’m told the experience is actually quite pleasant. A mild high, something like laughing gas, from how they describe it. It’s easier for me to hold someone the more time I’ve already had them for, so it works out fairly well.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve never really done the cambion thing much. I’ve got a lot of potential, everyone I’ve asked says so, but I haven’t followed up on it. And I figured I’d ask your opinion, since you have followed through on your potential, you know?”

 

I nodded slowly. “I’d have to say it’s not worth it,” I said. “Every step I’ve taken on that path, I’ve regretted it. But…ultimately, we can’t change our nature. We can only be what we are. And in hindsight, it would have been less painful for everyone involved if I hadn’t tried to fight that. Take that for what it’s worth.”

 

“I see,” Antonio said thoughtfully. “Well, thanks. That answer was…more honest than I was expecting, actually. Good luck with the Lighters.”

 

The cambion stuck another lollipop in his mouth and sauntered out into the night, leaving us alone with a lot of prisoners, a lot of computers, and a whole lot of bodies.

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Philadelphia smelled wet.

 

I knew that was in my head, most likely. The city wasn’t even technically coastal; the port was on the river, not on the ocean. But that was still the first impression I got after stepping out of the portal that one of my hired mages had opened for us. It smelled wet.

 

A small swarm of minions followed me out, leaving the alleyway packed with semiconscious forms. There were a few giants, a few ghouls, a couple of mages who specialized in things that were useful at the moment. I hadn’t brought the snipers, for reasons that were more political than practical. I was hoping to come up with some local assistance by framing this as, essentially, a human-nonhuman conflict. That meant that for once I was better off by seeming as inhuman as possible.

 

Which was…well, it shouldn’t give me too much trouble at this point. But it did mean that having plain human soldiers with me might be more problem than benefit.

 

Selene, being Selene, had already made arrangements for me to meet with two important people in the city. One of them was the Alpha of the local werewolf pack, a man called Elijah Carpenter. It should be fairly easy to convince him, I thought–this group had, after all, been attacking werewolves around the world, even going so far as to attack a high-level Pack meeting. I was counting on that to do most of the persuasion for me, and counting on his wolves to provide the bulk that I would normally have in the form of human mercenaries and werewolves.

 

The other was…well, something else. None of the people we’d talked to had really been able to provide any better picture than that. Antonio–no last name given–had gone out of his way to be an enigma, to leave people without a clear understanding of what he was or what he could do. Apparently he’d walked into town about ten years ago, taken out a handful of the midgrade powers in the city, and consolidated their territory into a fiefdom for himself. Since then he’d held it against all contenders, more or less by himself.

 

I was…not looking forward to that meeting. Nobody got that powerful while also being that mysterious unless they really went out of their way to stay mysterious, and nobody did that without some kind of a reason. It was, on the whole, ominous. To say the least.

 

I was supposed to be meeting with the werewolf first, though, which meant that I could at least put that off a little longer.

 

There was a guy in the alley when we showed up, apparently a homeless dude that lived there. He stared, and then I stared back, and he got up and started backing away slowly. He made it around five feet before he turned and bolted.

 

I let him go. Why not? It wasn’t like anyone would believe him. And even if they did, so what? This stuff wasn’t a secret anymore. The normal people still didn’t know about it, but it wasn’t really secret. I couldn’t get in trouble because someone saw something they weren’t supposed to.

 

I put on a more human appearance while the others were waking up and getting their bearings, since wandering around the city without it would probably attract a bit too much of the wrong kind of attention.

 

I didn’t bother with trying to figure out where we were within the city, or keep track of where we were going. Elijah had sent a driver to pick us up, as part of the arrangement Selene had made, and he presumably knew his way around the city well enough that I really didn’t need to worry about it.

 

Like most of the werewolves I’d been around, the Philadelphia kept a large van on hand for just such occasions. It takes a lot of cargo space to haul a bunch of werewolves in fur, and while it’s not often necessary, it’s worth keeping something on hand just in case.

 

This one, which was illegally parked in front of the alley entrance, was a little more obviously sketchy than most. It was painted solid black, and rather than tinted windows, it had gotten around the issue of someone looking inside and seeing something they weren’t supposed to by having no windows beyond those that were strictly necessary for driving.

 

The driver didn’t do much to mitigate that impression. He was leaning against the van, and everything about his appearance gave off a very clear “societal reject” image, from the piercings in his face to the leather jacket and combat boots. All of which was, of course, fairly mainstream these days, but he managed to wear them in a way that evoked the times when someone looking like that was practically imprisoned on sight.

 

“You’d be Winter, then?” he said. He tossed a casual, almost mocking salute my way. “Nice to meetcha. What are you here to talk to the boss about?”

 

I stood there silently for a few seconds as the minions opened the van and started climbing into the back. The seats had been removed to leave a large, open cargo space; it would be a squeeze to get them all in, but not impossible. I was fairly confident that it was technically illegal to have them riding like that, but as usual, that just wasn’t something that we really cared about, necessarily.

 

“War,” I said at last.

 

The driver looked like he was about to make a joke. Then he met my eyes, and any trace of laughter died. He gave me a jerky nod, and got in the driver’s seat. I got in the other side, and once everyone was more-or-less secure in back, he started driving.

 

I didn’t say anything on the way to the meeting. There was nothing to say.

---

 

Most of the packs that I knew held their meetings in a large house or mansion. Territory was important for werewolves, and having a consistent location to act as the center of that territory mattered. It made it easier to focus those instincts and keep them from being a problem in daily life elsewhere.

 

Philadelphia, though, was a bit more of a major, old city than anywhere I’d lived, and property prices were correspondingly high. The pack here was also a little bit more…aboveboard than most that I’d seen. Between the two, the center of the pack territory here wasn’t a house. It was an office building, and more specifically the third to seventh floors thereof. The corporation the pack used as their front for official finances owned the whole building, as I understood it, but that was the portion that they actually used as their own headquarters.

 

Most of the minions stayed outside. Only Kyi came up with me to the meeting. I figured she’d better be there for it, since if this worked out she’d be the one acting as my proxy later.

 

There were a handful of people in the lobby, including a receptionist and a few security guards–probably redundant, considering the nature of the building’s ownership, but I supposed he had to keep up appearances for the less informed occupants. Not a one of them batted an eye as we walked through to the private elevator. Presumably, our guide was known here.

 

He was not, however, so well known as to actually be a part of the meeting. He showed us to a conference room on the third floor, but didn’t actually follow us in.

 

I would have been just fine staying outside with him, all things considered. But that wasn’t exactly an option, so I took a deep breath to remind myself that breathing was good, and went inside.

 

The conference room was…really, really nice. Not, like, otherworldly nice, but it was well appointed. Expensive furniture, some tasteful art on the walls. I was guessing it had cost several thousand dollars to decorate the room. Which, considering that it was used to host meetings of high-ranking business executives, made a fair amount of sense.

 

All of which, of course, paled in comparison to the people in it. Elijah Carpenter was no Conn, but he was still a werewolf Alpha, with all the meaning that carried. When you entered his conference room, he was what drew your eye. It was as inevitable as rocks falling when you dropped them.

 

He was, at least, more physically imposing than most such, making it easier for the uninformed to explain why he had such a presence. He was a tall man, lean almost to the point of looking drawn, wearing a suit that cost more than a lot of houses, with a neatly trimmed black beard and features that were just slightly too stern to call attractive.

 

“Elijah,” I said, inclining my head slightly and looking to the side. It was a very slight display of deference, the sort you might extend to an equal when you were in their home. Since that was, more or less, exactly the case, it seemed appropriate. “I’m glad you could find the time to meet with me.”

 

He was silent for a moment, then nodded. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, extending his hand.

 

Elijah had a stronger grip than Aodh. Well, not really–a werewolf was not the match of a champion of the Sidhe. But he gripped my hand more tightly than Aodh had, trying to make a point out of it.

 

I squeezed back. Not as hard as I could, I wasn’t trying to hurt the man, but enough to make him very much aware of who the strongest person in the room was.

 

He was surprised. He covered it well, but I could tell. He was surprised that I was stronger than he was. And also, probably, at how very cold my “skin” was. I was guessing that he was currently trying to figure out just how badly misinformed he was.

 

Somehow, I didn’t think he was going to reach the right answers. It was hard when you were working from a wildly inaccurate starting point.

 

“Please, take a seat,” he said, letting go and pulling a chair out himself. I sat opposite him, with Kyi next to me.

 

He hadn’t come alone, either. There were two other guys there, both of whom smelled like werewolves. They were obviously minions, though, and I didn’t pay much attention to them. This was a meeting of me and Elijah; the rest were, essentially, window dressing.

 

“I’m sure you’re a busy man,” I said. “So I’ll get straight to the point. I presume you’re aware of the radical pro-human group which has been attacking werewolves recently?”

 

“You mean the Light of Reason?” he asked.

 

I stared for a second. “Is that really what they’re calling themselves?”

 

“Evidently,” he said. “They’ve published a few pamphlets, and some documents online. Mostly a poorly-edited mess of logical fallacies, political propaganda, and scripture taken out of context.”

 

“What the hell do they even call each other?” I asked. “Lighters?”

 

“You’re likely putting more thought into it than they did,” he said dryly.

 

“Probably,” I said, then shook my head. “Anyway, the point. I’ve got reason to believe the…Lighters have a major base in Philadelphia. Maybe their actual headquarters, maybe not, but either way a major center of activity.” On cue, Kyi pulled out a copy of the information we’d gleaned on the place and handed it to him. The people I’d hired had gotten more while Selene set these meetings up, and all of it continued to point at the same location.

 

“Interesting,” Elijah said, leafing through the papers. “You’re here in person rather than just sending me these. That suggests you’re planning to do something about this yourself, correct?”

 

“Yeah,” I said. “Figured I’d clear it with you first.”

 

His lips twitched. “Clear it with me,” he said. “Really?”

 

“It seemed polite to ask before I killed a bunch of people in your city.”

 

“Right,” he said dryly. “And that’s all? Let’s not beat around the bush, Winter. You’re looking for help, correct?”

 

“You do have the numbers,” I said. “And you’re familiar with the city. I’m not. I was hoping you might be willing to have some of your wolves watching the area. Keep civilians away, make sure none of them manage to slip out, that sort of thing.”

 

“It’s werewolves they’ve been killing,” Elijah said. There was an undertone of anger in his voice, a very quiet and very intense current of rage. The other werewolves edged away from him slightly, without probably realizing it, and even Kyi looked like she wanted to cringe. “My people may want to take a more…active role in this.”

 

“If your people go in there, they’ll be massacred,” I said bluntly. “Think about it. The Lighters have a hate on for everyone that isn’t purely human, but like you said, it’s werewolves they’ve been killing. They’ll be ready for werewolves.”

 

“And they won’t be ready for you?” he asked skeptically.

 

“No,” I said quietly. “They won’t. They really, really won’t be.” I met his eyes for the first time.

 

I looked away first. I had to; he was the Alpha here, and making him lose face in front of his minions was an excellent way to lose any chance of gaining an ally I might have had.

 

But when I did look away, he was clearly a bit relieved. “It’s good tactics,” he said. “I’ll be going in with you, though.”

 

“Of course,” I said. It was, again, a status thing. The Alpha faced things head-on. It was a necessity of the role. “I have equipment if you need it. Rifles and such. Other than that, I can meet you there in an hour or so.”

 

“That long?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got…another appointment first.”

---

 

My next meeting was in…well, it was a very different neighborhood. Very different.

 

The werewolves, in Philadelphia, made their home in the nice part of town. They were in Center City, the business district, downtown. Their reach extended beyond that, of course, but that was the seat of their power. Or, at least, of the pack Selene had put me in contact with; there might be more than one, in a city the size of Philadelphia. I’d never really cared enough to check.

 

This was northeast of that, and it wasn’t the nice part of town. It was, to put it bluntly, a slum. It looked like the sort of place where you’d be justifiably afraid to go outside after dark, where a stranger might stab you just to take your shoes. A girl who looked like she couldn’t be much more than sixteen was turning tricks on the corner, a dog with a bit of ribbon around her neck sitting on the sidewalk beside her. The dog had a festering sore on her face, and a quick glimpse of her mind suggested that she was in constant pain, hungry and cold.

 

A quick glance sent a couple housecarls her way. It was, in some ways, a silly gesture. I couldn’t save every homeless kid with a dog. I knew that.

 

But hell. I could maybe save this one. And it made me feel better.

 

Our destination, here, was an industrial complex that had ceased to be industrial without actually becoming anything else. It looked like it had been sitting empty for a long time now–years, at least. This hadn’t been a good neighborhood even before the world went to hell in a handbasket. I didn’t think it had gotten better since, although I wasn’t sure it had really gotten worse either. More open about it, maybe.

 

The gate was padlocked shut, and it looked genuinely abandoned. Between the two, I wasn’t entirely sure this was the right place, but it matched the address, so I popped the lock and went into the yard.

 

The yard area also looked abandoned, the large overhead doors locked and rusted shut. One of the smaller, personnel doors was open, though, and there was a light on inside.

 

I glanced at Kyi, then shrugged and went in, once again leaving the rest of the minions to wait outside. One of the housecarls already had a flask out before we’d climbed the few steps up to the door.

 

There was a dim light on just inside the door, and I could see another down the hall. At the end of the hall, I could see more light coming from around the corner. Each pool of light was just barely in contact with the next, forming a sort of corridor. Outside of that corridor, in the rooms and even at the edges of the hallways, it was pitch dark.

 

The darkness held no terror for me. It had never been much of a problem, and with what I was now, it was none.

 

This darkness, though, felt more real, like something more than just an absence of light. There was a presence to it, and not, I instinctively knew, something that I had dominion over by virtue of my new role. I got the distinct impression that, champion of Midnight or not, I would be wise not to look too closely at the shadows here, or to stray from the lit path.

 

Following that lit path led us through what had once been the public areas, down a rather meandering route, and out onto what had once been the assembly line of the factory. It had been gutted, all the machinery hauled out to leave an enormous open space.

 

I was only dimly aware of that, mostly through my perception of how the air moved. It was dark here, too. Low ground lighting of the sort they used in theaters formed a dimly-lit path out into the middle of the room, where a spotlight shone down from the ceiling to illuminate the person we were here to meet.

 

He looked human, though I had my doubts as to the accuracy of that impression. He smelled mostly human, but there was a trace of something else in his power, something darker. I wasn’t quite sure what it might be–it was too subtle, too fleeting, to really identify–but I got the distinct impression that calling Antonio human was, at best, an incomplete statement.

 

There were a handful of people standing in the pool of light with him. But it only took me a moment to realize that they were…even less significant than the other werewolves with Elijah had been. Those had been minions; these were puppets. There was a blankness to their expressions, a total lack of any response as we approached, that gave it away. I wasn’t sure whether it was drugs or magic or something else entirely, wasn’t sure whether it was temporary or permanent. But what I was sure of was that these people were…barely even people.

 

Antonio himself was lounging on a throne that looked to have been assembled out of bits of machinery and scrap metal. It should have been hideously uncomfortable, but he looked as relaxed as a cat on a warm blanket.

 

He didn’t look our way at all until we were at the edge of the pool of light from the spotlight, at which point he pushed himself upright in his throne. “Winter!” he said cordially. “So glad you could make it. I’ve been wanting to meet you for years, you know, it just never worked out.”

 

That gave me a moment’s pause. “You…wanted to meet me?”

 

“Oh, yes,” he said. “You’re…well, quite an interesting person, by all accounts. And we are, after all, in somewhat similar lines of work. Though you claimed a whole damn city for your piece, and made it stick. Huge respect for that, by the way. I have a decent idea of how difficult that would be.”

 

“It sounds like you did something similar here,” I said. “From the account I heard, at least.”

 

“Not entirely dissimilar, yes,” he agreed. “But I only claimed a small piece of the city. Just one neighborhood, really. I’m not nearly so ambitious as you are.”

 

“But you’re ambitious enough. And I’ve heard about some of the people that tried to take this neighborhood. You managed to stop them all. Without, from what my sources said, even needing anyone else’s help.”

 

He smiled. His teeth were very white, and very even. “It seems we both know something about each other,” he said. “That makes it easier. For instance, I happen to know that you’re currently on the warpath.”

 

“How’d you find that out?” I asked, genuinely curious.

 

Antonio scoffed. “Winter, please. You’re not the only one who makes a point of keeping up on current events. Word gets out. Word always gets out. Now, why don’t you tell me how being on the warpath led you out here.”

 

“You’re familiar with the Light of Reason?”

 

“The extremist group?” he asked distastefully. “I’ve heard of them, yes.”

 

“They’re the ones I’m after currently,” I said. “And they’ve got a major base in Philadelphia that I intend to clear out.”

 

“Why are you after them?” he asked. “They seem a little…small-fry for you.”

 

“I’ve got a personal grievance against them,” I said, carefully leaving out any mention of things summoned from beyond the limits of reality.

 

He smiled again, a little wider. “Oh? Do tell.”

 

I considered for a moment, then shrugged. The direct approach had usually ended best for me. Or, more accurately, everything else tended to end so poorly that the direct approach looked good by comparison.

 

“They killed me,” I said simply.

 

“You seem remarkably alive for a dead man,” he commented.

 

“It didn’t take. But it still left me rather annoyed.”

 

“I know the feeling,” Antonio said. “But really. Why are you telling me this?”

 

“It occurs to me,” I said, “that someone of your obvious abilities could be of considerable assistance in clearing out the Lighters. And you know this city a hell of a lot better than I do.”

 

His lips twitched. “That I do. But why should I assist you?”

 

“Self-interest,” I said promptly. “Think about it. Do you really think that they won’t try to take you down eventually?”

 

“So your answer is that I should fight now to avoid a fight later,” he said dryly. “Seems a bit…counterproductive.”

 

“Now you have me to help,” I pointed out. “And besides. An infestation is always easiest to dig out before it puts in roots.”

 

Antonio considered that for a long moment, during which time I noticed that all of the people-puppets were breathing in sync. Exactly. And they were all in time with him.

 

Well, that ruled out pretty much anything other than magic that I could think of.

 

“I’ll do it,” he said at last. “On one condition. After we’re done, you’ll answer one question for me.”

 

“I know a lot of things that I’m not permitted to share,” I said.

 

“That’s fine,” Antonio said. “If the answer touches on any of those, you can just tell me, and I’ll ask something else.”

 

“You aren’t concerned I’ll just keep putting it off indefinitely?”

 

“No. You have a reputation for dealing honestly, Winter. You keep your deals. I don’t think you’d risk that reputation to get out of answering one question.”

 

I nodded. “True. All right, then. Deal. You need the address?”

 

“No,” he said. “I know where to go. Run along, now. I’ve got…arrangements to make before we do this.”

 

I didn’t wait to be told twice.

 

Behind us, the lights went out one by one as we left them behind.

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The one and only time I’d seen Scáthach really fight, it had been a fairly straightforward deal. Terrifying, yes, but straightforward. She’d been all aggression, quick and deadly to an extent that very, very few people could ever hope to match. It had, essentially, been a manifestation of the ruthless, predatory nature of the Midnight Court.

 

But Aiko had never been that sort of person. Like she’d said, the aspect of the Midnight Court that she was most comfortable with was the deceptive, mischievous one. She was first and foremost a trickster, and that showed in how she manifested the power of her role.

 

So where Scáthach had been a straightforward and vicious fighter, Aiko was more of a presence. She’d always been good with illusions and deceptions. But that wasn’t even in the same world as what she was capable of now. I saw that very clearly when I climbed back to the top of the hill and got a good, bird’s-eye view of the battle.

 

At first, it wasn’t really obvious. That was the craziest thing about it. At a glance, it was hard to tell what was even happening. It was clear, after a moment, that the Midnight forces were generally prevailing, but it was hard to say quite why.

 

Once I looked closer, though, I saw the layers of potent, subtle magic drifting over the fight. Here, a strand of darkness obscured a blade at the critical moment, and the parry wasn’t quite at the right angle to stop it. There, a Sidhe warrior threw a burst of fire at the wrong targets, duped into thinking that a group of his own allies were Midnight gnomes about to fall on him with their knives. A troll placed its foot ever so slightly wrong, and brought a dozen other people to the ground with it when it stumbled.

 

Once I realized what I was seeing, I just stared in shock. It was…hard to process quite what was going on. Individually, none of this was beyond what I’d seen her manage before–particularly on the Otherside, where that sort of magic was so much easier than in my world.

 

But this wasn’t magic on the individual scale. This was juggling dozens of spells at once, every one of which was perfectly crafted and deployed at just the right moment. Moreover, she was using this magic on the Sidhe. They had a well-deserved reputation as masters of deception; this kind of thing was second nature to them. Before this, I would have said that fooling even one of them with a magical illusion would be a chancy endeavor for her, possible but not by any means certain.

 

Now, she was managing it on hundreds of them, at once, without any particular sign of difficulty.

 

The moment when I realized that was…well, it was sort of the same as when I’d seen the scale of this engagement. It was something that utterly redefined my image of the world and my place in it.

 

I’d always known that the Faerie Queens were far outside of my level, beyond anything that I was capable of even putting up a struggle against. But it was one thing to know that, and another entirely to see it.

 

And this was the weakest Queen of the Court, after having her power for a very, very short time. Just a handful of days. Relative to the other Queens, Aiko was pretty much a fumbling child.

 

As I watched, the Daylight forces stopped fighting, and started retreating. It was a neat, orderly retreat–the undisciplined mob had long since been slaughtered, leaving just the disciplined soldiery left. But it was still very much a retreat, very much a sign that they’d lost.

 

The Midnight army chased them up to the top of the other hill, to where they’d made their camp, and then stopped. Which made sense; following them past that point would be a dangerous move, one that would leave them exposed and probably surrounded. The fae were many things, but impatient was seldom one of them; immortality tended to do that to a person.

 

I wasn’t really watching that, though. I was mostly staring at the field behind them. And the bodies lying there.

 

There were…an awful lot of them. Hundreds, at least. Maybe a couple thousand. I wasn’t about to count them.

 

Aodh hadn’t been wrong. Watching this had been…enlightening. On multiple levels.

 

I suddenly realized that I should probably not be standing and staring like a moron, and jerked into motion again. I started walking towards the Midnight camp, slowly at first, then at a run.

 

As before, nobody tried to stop me. I got a few respectful nods as I passed, a few scowls. But nobody got anywhere close to getting in my way.

 

I found Aiko almost exactly where I’d left her. She was still surrounded by the elite troops of the Midnight Court, enough people that it would take a small army to even get to her. Which, going back to what Aodh had been saying, was probably more a political statement than anything. It wasn’t that she was worried about being assassinated; at this point, there couldn’t be that many people capable of murdering her if they wanted to, and anyone who could wasn’t about to be stopped by this.

 

But being surrounded by those people was a statement of power. It said that she had them available if she wanted to. On a more subtle level, it said that she could win this battle so easily that she didn’t even need to send her best troops. I was guessing that any one of these people could have taken a sizable chunk out of the enemy army, and there were dozens of them.

 

Snowflake was rather noticeably out of place, lying on the ground next to Aiko’s feet. She was panting, and her teeth were stained with fluids in a startling variety of colors. Through my bond with her, I could feel a tired, satisfied smugness from her.

 

“That went well,” I said.

 

“It did, too,” Aiko agreed, grinning. There was something forced about the expression, though I doubted I’d have realized it if I didn’t know her so very well. I’d realized fairly early on that a lot of her cheerful persona was a mask. And while that mask was very, very good, in that moment I’d have bet a fair amount that she wasn’t happy in the least.

 

But with the fae, appearances were a very real, tangible sort of power. The difference between what something seemed and what it was was, on a basic level, a blurry one. That was the whole point of this exercise; it wasn’t enough to be powerful, for her to fill her role. She had to be seen as powerful. That was why she’d had to be the one to win this fight in the eyes of the Courts, and that was why she had to seem like she enjoyed doing it. Anything else would be seen as another kind of weakness, in the Midnight Court.

 

For me to express sympathy or concern, even casually, would undermine that message. And that would just mean that we had to do this whole thing over again.

 

So I grinned back. “Shame I had to go so soon,” I said. “But I was…unavoidably detained.”

 

“Indeed,” she said. “Your opponent escaped you, I take it?”

 

“This time,” I said, feeling very conscious of the Sidhe watching. “Next time? We’ll see.”

 

“I expect we will,” she said. “In any case, today has been…productive. Now, I believe that our agents in the mortal world have found your next target. Go and confirm this. If you do find them…well, do what you need to do.”

 

I wanted to argue, to offer to go with her back to that dark castle and provide what comfort I could in the wake of the battle. But she hadn’t left much room for me to do so without, again, undermining her authority, which she wasn’t established enough to afford at this point. And she knew it, which meant that she wanted to be alone.

 

I couldn’t blame her. I mean, what was I supposed to do here? Tell her that everything was okay? That would be a blatant lie, and we both knew it. Faerie Queen was not a job you could quit once you started. Once you were in, you were in for life.

 

This was the reality we got. It was too late for us to change that. It was probably too late a long time ago. Nothing to do now but play out the hand we were dealt.

 

I opened my mouth, then closed it a moment later. There was nothing to say, even if we weren’t being watched. So I just nodded.

 

Aiko opened the portal, and Snowflake and I left.

---

 

I didn’t waste any time getting to the next part of the job. That would have meant time to think, and I didn’t want to think right now. The idea of being alone with my thoughts at the moment was…not appealing.

 

Aiko’s portal dropped us just out front of the mansion in Colorado Springs. Inside, things were a chaotic mess. Or, rather, a different sort of chaotic mess than usual. I’d gotten fairly accustomed to the throne room being slightly crazed, full of activity and people running around on various jobs. This was more or less the same, but everything was focused around a single task. Folders and notebooks were splayed out on tables, hard drives were attached to computer equipment several steps more complicated than I was capable of understanding, with people standing around and comparing notes.

 

“Tell me you’ve got something,” I said, as I walked in the door. People stopped what they were doing, and turned to stare at me. And then kept staring.

 

I realized, somewhat belatedly, that I’d forgotten to put a guise of flesh and blood on over the constructed body underneath.

 

Well, that cat was out of the bag. It was bound to happen eventually. Granted, I hadn’t expected it to happen quite this soon, but it didn’t really matter. As far as I could tell, my position was still secure, and even if they figured out what was going on here, most of my minions were unlikely to desert me on the basis of this.

 

Somewhat to my surprise, the first person to speak up wasn’t one of my usual minions. He was one of the computer nerds Selene had brought in to work on the encrypted files.

 

“We, ah, we’ve got something,” he said. “Still working on getting past some of this, they were fairly thorough. But the paper trail, the parts that they’ve decoded, it’s making a lot of reference to a headquarters of some kind. They don’t actually list an address, but some of the electronic records weren’t completely scrubbed, and–”

 

“Okay,” I said, interrupting him. “Let’s be honest, I’m not going to understand what you did here. I don’t have the grounding to appreciate your work, and I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise. Do we have a location, or not?”

 

He paused, then nodded. “We think we managed to piece together a set of latitude and longitude coordinates. I checked the paper files that they haven’t managed to decode, and the same numbers showed up a couple times there. Looks like a warehouse complex in Philadelphia, near the docks.”

 

“Cool,” I said. “Can you get me a picture? Satellite photography or something?”

 

“Already did,” he said, grabbing a stack of papers off a table. “Satellite photos, topo map of the area, and building blueprints for the complex. Also information on the companies that maintain warehouses in the area, partial records from the construction process, and some information on people who might be involved with operations there, although that’s highly speculative.” He handed the papers to me.

 

I paused before taking them, and would have blinked if that was a thing I did. That kind of initiative was…impressive. And the ability to dig up that much information, of course, but I was really more impressed that he’d taken the initiative to do so. “What’s your name?” I asked, taking the papers.

 

“Greg Baker,” he said.

 

I nodded. “You ever want a steady job, Greg,” I said, “you call me. I’ve always got room for skilled people.”

 

He smiled, a very thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes at all. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

 

“Do.” I turned, looking for Selene, and as usual she appeared next to me before I could do much more than glance around the room. “Get a team together,” I said to her. “And…crap. I guess I need some information on who matters in Philadelphia. So get that together, too.”

 

She paused. “When you say ‘who matters,’ what sense are you looking for?”

 

“Well,” I said, “if these people really are out to get anyone who isn’t pure human, it occurs to me that there are probably a lot of people in Philly who would be interested in giving us a hand cleaning them out.”

 

Selene smiled at that. It was a rather more…honest expression than Greg’s, I thought. “Excellent, jarl. I’ll start making inquiries.”

 

“Great,” I said. “Let me know when you’re done. I’ll be looking over this stuff.”

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I was torn as to what the appropriate response in that moment was. There was a part of me that said I should hesitate, maybe try talking to this guy. We were, after all, basically in the same situation. Not completely, but we had enough in common that we could probably have sympathized with each other to some degree.

 

Most of me, though, was still caught up in the fight, in the rote, mechanical act of killing. And since that was the part of me that was in control, the conflict didn’t really manifest physically. My mind might have been torn as to what the appropriate response was, but my actions seemed very certain. The instant I saw the man, I lunged for his throat with Tyrfing, moving fast enough that I wasn’t sure whether a human would really have been able to see me move as anything more than a vague blur.

 

Naturally, that wasn’t a problem for this guy. He was, after all, a Champion of the Sidhe, and thus only human in the most technical sense of the word. He certainly wasn’t subject to many human limitations. He was moving before I’d covered more than a fraction of the distance to him, and while that axe looked heavy and slow, he could whip it around like it weighed nothing at all. Which he did, batting my sword away before I got anywhere near actually hitting him.

 

I was still fairly satisfied with the outcome, though. If nothing else, I’d closed the distance without getting slaughtered. That, in and of itself, was a win in my book.

 

Or, at least, that was what I initially thought. I was then forcefully reminded that while I was physically stronger than the vast majority of people, this was one of the few that I couldn’t say that about. So when I got close to him, he didn’t panic. He just picked me up and threw me with his spare hand.

 

I’d noted that I didn’t weigh as much as a flesh-and-blood person of my build would have. I hadn’t fully thought about what that might mean with, for example, being thrown.

 

It was a pretty strong throw. This was, after all, a champion of the Courts, and as such a hell of a lot stronger than any human could really expect to be. But where a person my size might have been tossed back a bit, maybe gone far enough to crash into people and stop that way, I flew.

 

I had a long moment, hanging in the air, to look down at the battle raging on the ground below me.

 

There were a lot of bodies in the grass.

 

When I crashed to the ground, I’d left the fighting far behind. I was up into the hills on the Daylight side of the plain, a fair distance from their camp.

 

I caught myself with a cushion of thickened air. This, too, was easier with my decreased weight; with the density of my body so much lower, air resistance could stall my movement much more effectively.

 

I still landed hard, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. I hit the ground with a quiet crackle of breaking ice, but all the actual parts were still there afterward. It only took me a few moments to piece it all back together, and once I did it froze back together almost instantly, cords of darkness winding over it to hold it all in place while it did.

 

I’d stopped keeping up a human-ish appearance at some point during the fighting. I wasn’t entirely sure when. I wasn’t breathing, either, now that I thought about it.

 

Once everything was back more or less where it belonged, I pushed myself to my feet and started thinking about getting back to the fight. Running was still probably the best answer, I thought. Probably not the fastest, but it was simple and I knew it would work.

 

Before I could even start moving, though, a sunbeam bent and split, and the other champion stepped out of it.

 

I tensed, but he didn’t immediately start swinging. His axe was hanging by his side–still in position to defend himself if it became necessary, but not in an aggressive stance.

 

“You must be Winter,” he said. “Heard you’d taken the job. Aodh, nice to meet you.” He extended his hand.

 

I hesitated, then moved Tyrfing to my left hand and took it.

 

It was…just a handshake. He had a firm grip–hell, he could have crushed my hand to powder if he wanted to, probably–but that was all. No magical trap, no sudden attack.

 

He let go and stepped back a moment later. “Now, you seem to be under some misapprehensions as to the nature of your role,” he said. “And as I’m the only person who’s been doing it for any appreciable length of time, it falls to me to explain some things to you.”

 

I blinked. “What?”

 

“You heard me,” he said. “Look, there are certain things that anyone in this position will figure out given time. But waiting for you to catch on by yourself will just be inconvenient as hell, and I happen to have the day free, so I decided to come and educate you.”

 

“Okay,” I said. “Um. When you say you’re the only one who’s done this for any appreciable length of time…what does that mean?”

 

He shrugged. “Around three thousand years now. I stopped keeping track a long time ago.”

 

Three thousand years of this. Three thousand years of near-constant war. Three thousand years to practice with the kind of power that I’d had for a couple of days.

 

At that point, actually beating him ceased to be a possibility. It just…wasn’t a consideration. He was easily the match of Carraig, and while I’d gotten a lot better since I killed Carraig, I still wouldn’t bet on myself against him in a fair fight. Not remotely.

 

“All right then,” I said, taking a step back. “So…what did you want to say, again?”

 

He smiled slightly, in a way that made me think he knew exactly what I’d just been thinking. “Well, what it comes down to is this,” he said. “There’s a strong tendency, when people start out as champions, to think that the job is about winning fights.”

 

“And…it’s not?” I asked.

 

He shook his head. “No. It’s not. You see, Winter, there’s a secret, and as of now you’re on the inside of it. The Midnight Court doesn’t want to win.”

 

“It doesn’t?”

 

“No. Neither does the Daylight Court, for that matter.” Aodh shrugged. “Think about it, Winter. This war has gone on for four thousand years now. Do you really think that in all that time, neither side could have won? Do you think that there’s never once been an opportunity for one or the other to get an advantage that the opponent couldn’t recover from?”

 

I frowned. “I…don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.”

 

He nodded. “Most don’t. It’s a very good ruse. But that’s all it is. A ruse. The reality is that the war is convenient. It’s useful, to both sides.”

 

“Useful?” I asked. “How?”

 

Aodh sighed. “Now that is a good question,” he said. “And a few steps beyond the secrets that I’m sharing. Ask your Queen, and if she wants you to know, you will.”

 

“I’m not sure she knows.”

 

“If she doesn’t, she will soon,” he said. “It’s a part of her role.”

 

“That’s what I don’t get about this,” I said. “Role. If they don’t want to win, why do they have us? What’s the point?”

 

“We serve a purpose,” he said simply. “Purpose is the filter you need to think through. For example, what’s the purpose of this battle? The real purpose, mind.”

 

“Well,” I said slowly, “the purpose is supposed to be to take this scrap of land. But if I assume that’s a lie, I’d say…probably a chance for Aiko to establish herself. If both sides want to keep things stable, ensuring a smooth transfer of power is in everyone’s best interest. So she needs to show off in a fight.”

 

“Precisely,” he said. “Now consider. If you were to win here, by simply killing your enemies, what message would that send?”

 

I frowned. “I guess it would suggest that I was the one who won. Maybe even that she was relying on me to win.”

 

“You see?” he said. “Purpose. Had you kept on as you were doing, you would have actively undermined the purpose of this entire exercise. That would make my life more complicated, and I’m opposed to that.”

 

“This really isn’t how I pictured this going,” I said after a moment. “Aren’t we supposed to be…I don’t know, fighting or something? I mean, we’re enemies, aren’t we?”

 

“You could look at it like that,” Aodh said. “Or you could say that your job, here, was to remove a significant portion of the enemy’s forces. Which you did, in that you removed me from the field. The fact that we’re having a pleasant conversation rather than trying to murder each other is pretty immaterial, all things considered.”

 

“I…suppose so,” I said. “That seems like a weird way to look at it, though.”

 

“My advice? The sooner you break the habit of thinking that the rules of logic you’re used to apply here, the happier you’ll be.” Aodh grinned. “Now, I’m going to leave. I recommend that you go take a look at the rest of the battle. I think you’ll find it an…enlightening experience.”

 

Before I could respond he stepped into another ray of sunshine, and vanished.

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I’d never been in a battle before. A lot of fights, but not a real, full-scale battle. The closest had been that mess with the necromancer in Russia, and that wasn’t the same thing at all. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect what to expect from this battle, what might happen. The fact that it was being fought by beings I didn’t really understand, divided into factions along lines that I couldn’t really comprehend, was just icing on the cake as far as that went.

 

It started out more…simply than I would have expected. After an hour or so, Aiko woke up and got out of the snow. It hadn’t melted appreciably; of the three of us, only Snowflake had any appreciable body heat anymore.

 

Aiko went to get ready while I woke Snowflake. I didn’t really need to do anything myself; the only piece of equipment I needed at this point was Tyrfing, and it was always with me. Given that I couldn’t bring physical items with me when I transitioned between bodies, anything else would be more trouble than it was worth.

 

That was surprisingly upsetting. My ritual before a big fight had always been to check and recheck all of my gear, the weapons and toys and surprises that I might need. I’d spent hours on it, sometimes, and it had become a calming, soothing ritual. Now that I didn’t have that, I felt lost.

 

Aiko still used gear, though. When she came back she was wearing armor, elaborate armor that looked almost exactly like the set Loki had arranged for her, but which didn’t have any iron in it. I wasn’t sure how I knew that it had no iron, but there was no doubt in my mind at all. I just…knew. The blades were similar duplicates, although she wasn’t carrying a gun. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway; relying on chemical reactions and physical rules to work exactly the same on the Otherside as in the real world was a fool’s bet.

 

“You ready?” I asked, standing up. It was easier than it should have been, the snow providing resistance to push off of without me even having to think about it.

 

“Yep,” she said. “You?”

 

I shrugged. “As I’m likely to be,” I said. “Where to?”

 

“Just follow me,” Aiko said. “If anyone tries to make an issue out of it, bite them.”

 

I paused. “Are you talking about me or Snowflake here?”

 

She grinned and started walking to the door. “Both.”

 

It was still hard for me to grasp just how dramatically things had changed recently. I’d been expecting there to be more to it, some kind of hassle. I’d been expecting, at the very least, annoyance and bureaucracy.

 

Instead, that really was all there was to it. We walked out of the throne room’s dark and red confines, and directly into the courtyard. There were a few dozen things there waiting for us, clearly ready for war–Sidhe, trolls, a towering ogre, and stranger, nameless things. Not a one of them challenged us as we walked through the crowd. I thought a couple of them looked offended at the notion that they weren’t the ones standing next to Aiko, but if so it was quickly buried.

 

She opened a portal in the gate–the entire gate, an area far larger than I would even consider for a portal–with no evidence of any particular effort, and we marched on through.

---

 

The other side of the portal was…well, it was interesting. It was busy, even crowded, although there was a clear space where we came out. Beyond that, though, it was an active, busy camp, packed with every sort of fae creature I could name and a great many I couldn’t.

 

And it was enormous. I couldn’t really put a confident estimate on it, but I was guessing there were close to ten thousand of them there. Ten thousand things that were, individually, probably the match of five or six humans at least. Hell, there was a whole unit of ogres, easily a hundred of them, each a half-ton of muscle towering at least ten or fifteen feet tall.

 

And this was just one unit, one tiny part of the forces of one Queen of Faerie.

 

I suddenly felt very small, and like I’d fundamentally misunderstood my place in the universe.

 

Aiko didn’t even pause as we stepped out onto a hill overlooking the Midnight camp, and so neither did I. I absolutely did not at all want to be separated from her here and now. Oh, theoretically it should probably be fine–in principle, after all, I was at least equal in rank to every member of the Court short of the Queens themselves. In practice, though, I was somehow very confident that I would be better off not being on my own for my first encounter with the Court military.

 

The portal was very smooth, smooth enough that even Snowflake and the fae didn’t so much as miss a step during the transition. The lot of us walked forward, the bustle of the camp making sure not to do anything remotely resembling getting in the way, until I got my first look at the battlefield.

 

It was a broad, open plain, knee-high grasses waving in a gentle, inconsistent breeze. There was no sun, but the golden light had a strong quality of evening to it all the same, long shadows dancing across the plain. On the other side of the plain, maybe a mile and small change away, the ground rose into more hills.

 

In those hills, the Daylight regiment was waiting, their camp looking a very great deal like this one. The standards had brighter colors over there, as a rule, and the Daylight fae were somewhat different in appearance, but the size and layout of the two camps was almost identical.

 

There was no snow out there, I noted. No ice. There were shadows, at present, but they were limited, and around the Daylight Sidhe I was guessing they’d be effectively nonexistent. Even if the light and dark division was largely the produce of my mind, there was no denying that things tended to be bright around the Daylight fae.

 

I didn’t want to have to change bodies in this fight, then. Not unless I absolutely had to. And since I was guessing that light and fire would feature strongly in what the enemy was going to be throwing around, as far as magic went, that meant that I really didn’t want to take a hit. Dodging and hitting the enemy from odd angles was going to be the best option for me, I thought.

 

“Oh hey,” Aiko said. “We’re just in time.”

 

It took me a second to realize what she meant. Then I saw that, across the plain, the enemy troops were moving. It was hard to see at this distance, subtle, but they were getting into formation and starting out.

 

“Where do you want me?” I asked. It had to be obvious that I was obeying her, and not the other way around. This was, after all, primarily a political event, a way for Aiko to cement her position as an authority figure. For her to seem like she was taking instruction from her minion would be…counterproductive.

 

“You can hit them from the side after the fighting starts,” she said. “Wait for them to commit first, then hit them hard. Oh, and they’ll probably have some ridiculously powerful thing. After that shows up, you can deal with it.”

 

“Got it,” I said, as the Midnight troops around me started to form up and head down to the battlefield as well. They looked, generally speaking, to be impressively disciplined and coordinated. Then they started getting closer to the field, and I saw that that description didn’t apply to the front ranks. There, the discipline and coordination broke down into a jumbled, chaotic mass, less an army than a horde of armed lunatics who happened to be traveling in the same direction. Looking across the way, it seemed like the same pattern was true for the other side. The bulk of the force was tight, organized formations, but the front ranks were sloppy as hell.

 

They were cannon fodder, I realized. Inexperienced fighters, being marched out in front to absorb the shock of the impact when the two armies crashed together. They would get slaughtered, leaving the more experienced troops to actually fight.

 

I could understand it on a tactical level. Hell, on some level I’d made similar choices myself. When you were assigning people jobs, you had to base it on what they were capable of. There had been times when I sent people to a fight knowing that they might die as a result. That was the nature of violence.

 

But doing it so deliberately, on such a large scale, was something that I was…not entirely comfortable with. I’d faked it on occasion, but at heart, I really wasn’t a general. That kind of ruthless calculation wasn’t something that I was suited to.

 

But I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I should do about it. And before I could decide, it was too late. It only took a few moments for the cannon fodder to be cut down. I couldn’t have reached the front even if I’d wanted to.

 

Aiko and I just stood and stared as the two forces crashed together. It was loud, shockingly loud, with the clamor of metal hitting metal, metal hitting flesh, people and things that didn’t remotely resemble people screaming. It was like any other fight that way, but on a vastly increased scale.

 

I stared for a long moment, before Aiko glanced at me and reminded me that I had a job to do. I startled, then leapt into motion.

 

I couldn’t step through shadows here. It could be done–Carraig had pulled that trick in Faerie when I fought him, so I knew it could be done. But there wasn’t enough noticeable darkness to make it a viable tactic. I was better off just running, I thought.

 

I could run fast. Really, really fast. Even without magical shenanigans, I was faster than I had any right to be. I blew past the fae troops in a blur, sprinting past them in long, leaping bounds.

 

I didn’t go straight for the fighting, though. That would have been directly at odds with both my tactical awareness of the situation and my instructions from Aiko. Instead, I ran out in a wide arc, sweeping out to the side of the main engagement.

 

It was a larger fight than anything I was accustomed to. Huge, really. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that big. The battlefield was only around a mile across, I was guessing.

 

If you had to run it at a human pace, that was still a considerable distance. Several minutes’ travel, even if you were good at running.

 

For me it was a casual jaunt. Not even really something worth considering. It took maybe two minutes, or a little less. I wasn’t out of breath or tired afterward. It was just…a thing I did. Easy.

 

I stood there for a second, watching the battle. It showed no signs of slowing down, which wasn’t surprising. Two minutes was forever in a fight, but with so many participants fighting an old-school battle like this, the situation changed. There were people who were just now reaching the actual fighting, and plenty more behind them.

 

I watched for a second, then waded in.

 

There were fae beings that could put up a solid fight against me, still. There were some that could crush me like an empty can. I knew that; I’d met some of them.

 

These were not those beings.

 

Oddly, it didn’t feel much like a fight. Not really. There was no challenge to it, no element of uncertainty. It felt…well, more or less the same as running had. It was a mechanical exercise. The repetitive nature of what I was doing, combined with the lack of any meaningful risk or challenge, made it feel more like chopping wood than really fighting.

 

Some of them had magic, either classic fae-style trickery or more direct magic. Neither of them mattered, really. Trickery was only really useful when you were fighting someone who could be mislead or duped, and I was playing the role of the unstoppable force here. Clever tricks didn’t help much when the person attacking you was just cutting a broad swath into your ranks and ignoring everything else. Brute force defenses were useless for…well, pretty much the same reason. Nothing they could do could really stop me with Tyrfing.

 

Some of their attacks were closer to solving the problem. Fire and light were both as common as I’d expected, and either could plausibly have brought me down. Some of them had silver weapons, as well, which I found out the hard way. I wasn’t sure why, or even how, but apparently silver still really hurt.

 

Most of them I could dodge, though, and the rest weren’t enough. I was wrapped in enough darkness and cold to shrug off the magic, and when they did manage to get through with weapons they couldn’t do more than take chunks out of me. That didn’t really do much; it took massive trauma to stop me anymore, since anything short of cutting off a limb was just a mild annoyance.

 

I cut a broad path through their rear ranks, Aiko did…something, I was too busy to really pay attention to what…and on the whole the Daylight forces were definitely losing. We were progressing across the plain, and there were far more of their people on the ground than ours.

 

And then progress slowed, before grinding to a halt. The Daylight troops rallied and began to push back.

 

At first, I wasn’t sure why. It was hard to tell, in the thick of things, hard to get a broader perspective of what was happening. But I kept pushing, and they kept pushing, and eventually we met in the middle, as a pocket of space opened up to accommodate us. Nobody wanted to be near this, and I didn’t blame them in the least.

 

At first glance, he didn’t look like much. He was shorter than me, and plain at best, with ugly features and a scraggly beard. But he was wearing heavy mail, and carrying a heavy axe, and literally dripping blood.

 

And he was very obviously and very undeniably human.

 

Well, well. Seemed it was time for me to meet my opposite number.

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Getting to Faerie was always a fairly easy task. It was the closest part of the Otherside to the real world, on a metaphysical level, as a general rule. There were exceptions, and there were individuals who were tied to another domain on a level that left them more easily able to connect to that domain. Jötnar were a good example of that; they could find their way back to Jotunheim, generally, but anything beyond that was unlikely.

 

More often than not, though, some part of Faerie is the option of choice for staging areas when traveling through the Otherside. I couldn’t even guess at how many times I’d been through there over the years.

 

This was a bit different. It was easier, for one thing. I’d never been much good with portals; I’d gotten better over the years, with a great deal of practice, but it had been a slow process, and even then the results were limited. It wasn’t a magic that came naturally to me, and that showed. I’d been slow and clumsy at it, even with the focus I’d made for the purpose, and I didn’t have that focus now.

 

But at this point, going to the Midnight side of Faerie was easy. It felt simple, natural. It was just a matter of wanting to be back there, and letting the power flow out to make that want a reality. A pool of shadow deepened, became more real, and after a minute or so ceased to be a pool of shadow entirely, and became a hole in the world, the portal appearing so smoothly that I wasn’t entirely sure when it happened.

 

How much of the focus on darkness in the power I’d gotten was inherent to its nature, I wondered, and how much existed only in my mind? It seemed like it was probably the latter. The Unseelie Court wasn’t inherently dark, wasn’t really the Midnight Court except in the sense of having that title assigned to it by outsiders. Night had some thematic elements in common with it, some similar energies, but they weren’t at all the same. It was just such a pervasive element of how I saw the Court that it colored every element of how it manifested through me.

 

The second difference was something I noticed when I stepped through, and found myself standing just outside of Aiko’s new castle. I felt more coherent, more real, like the body I’d woven for myself had more substance to it.

 

It made sense, in a way. I’d noted in the past that magic, and especially more creative magics like building constructs, were considerably easier on the Otherside than in the world I was native to. Now that I was, effectively, dependent upon that kind of magic just to maintain my existence, I got a considerable benefit for being there. It was easier to put together a body, easier to maintain it, with the fabric of reality so much more amenable to being warped.

 

Snowflake still passed out, though. That was, in a strange way, almost comforting. I was so accustomed to being bad at portals it would have been more disturbing if it was a smooth transition.

 

I wasn’t in the mood to wait for her to wake up, though, and it didn’t seem prudent to wait outside anyway. I might be a VIP around here, these days, but that wasn’t at all a guarantee of safety with the Midnight Court. It just meant that killing me would be more of an event to celebrate, rather than just another day.

 

So I picked her up and slung her over my shoulder. The weight was negligible to me at this point anyway. She barely twitched as I did, and the only sign of her displeasure as she started to regain consciousness was a faint mental grumble, though I knew that once being moved so soon after a portal would have left her violently and messily ill.

 

We’d both come a long way. For better or worse.

 

In the castle courtyard, I paused and looked around, unsure which door I should choose. Then I shrugged and picked one at random. I was guessing whatever I chose would turn out to have been the right choice all along anyway, since this was sort of my place now.

 

The first room in was one which I hadn’t seen before, a sort of long gallery. Windows along one side provided an expansive view over the moonlit water, though there had been more castle there from the outside, and I was reasonably confident that side of the room shouldn’t have had a clear view out from the island anyway.

 

There were more people than I’d seen on my previous visits here. The room wasn’t crowded, by any means, but various fae things stood in small groups here and there, talking quietly in a language I didn’t recognize, or doing things I couldn’t grasp at all.

 

I walked past them without hesitation, and none of them questioned my presence. On the contrary, every one that I passed close to nodded politely in my direction.

 

The next room in was darker, though I could still see. The walls, floor, and ceiling all glittered with faint sparkles of light, giving the illusion that I was walking through an endless field of stars, and providing just enough light that a human could have barely functioned. I could just make out another door across from me, and walked in that direction. Snowflake prodded me when I was halfway across, and I set her down again with a gentle clink of armor on stone.

 

Past the next door, illogically and unsurprisingly, was the throne room. It looked much the same as the last time I saw it, dim and red and cold. Aiko was lounging on her ruby throne, and some Sidhe lady was standing in front of her. It looked like she’d paused right in the middle of some wild gesticulation when we walked in, giving her a rather comical look.

 

“Winter!” Aiko called out, sitting up a little straighter. “You have really good timing. Have I ever told you that?”

 

“Probably at some point,” I said dubiously. “What is my timing good for, specifically?”

 

“Well, I was just explaining to Sylfaenwe here that continuing to be an obnoxious pest was liable to have some detrimental effects in her immediate future,” Aiko said cheerfully. “But actually demonstrating my point myself might require me to stand up, which I’m not feeling terribly inclined to do at the moment.”

 

“Cool,” I said. “You want her dead, or just maimed?”

 

“Let’s go with maimed for the moment. It should be fairly easy to step that up to dead later if necessary.”

 

The Sidhe woman glowered, her eye twitching slightly. “I am hardly the only person who will object to this,” she said. “Do you intend to kill all of us?”

 

“I could,” Aiko said. “I mean, think about it. Who’s going to stop me? I’ve got the capability, and I’ll still be filling my role within the Court, which is all the other Queens really care about. You’re powerful, sure, and yes, you’re useful against the Daylight Court. But ultimately, you’re still disposable and we both know it. If I kill you, there are comparably powerful people who will be more than willing to take your place.”

 

Sylfaenwe ground her teeth, but didn’t actually disagree.

 

“Now, right now, you’re pretty annoyed,” Aiko continued brightly. “In part because, while we both know that this is the reality of your situation, outright stating it is gauche. And I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I’m aware of the implications, and I’m choosing to do it anyway. But believe it or not, I would actually rather not kill you, if only because doing so would make my life slightly more complicated. So what’s it going to be?”

 

Sylfaenwe glanced at me. I bared my teeth in what could charitably be described as a smile, and looked at the snowbank she was standing next to.

 

She looked back to Aiko. Her eye twitched again, so slightly that I doubted she was even aware of it, and she said, “What would you have of me, my Queen?”

 

“I would have you accept the reality of your situation, and stop struggling pointlessly against it. I would have you tell your friends, and those who owe you fealty, to do similarly.”

 

Sylfaenwe ground her teeth some more, but she bowed her head. “It shall be done,” she said, and beat a hasty retreat out of the room. I caught a glimpse of her face on the way past, and…well, if looks could kill, Aiko and I would both be getting sized for coffins. Ten years earlier, I might have actually been intimidated by it.

 

“About time,” Aiko said once she was gone, promptly standing up. “Took almost an hour for me to get her to agree to that.”

 

“What are you doing that they’re so opposed to, anyway?” I asked.

 

She shrugged. “It’s hard to put it into words,” she said. “Trying to…adjust how my piece of the Midnight Court expresses itself, I guess. Put more of an emphasis on the mischief and pranks, and less on the political scheming.” She collapsed loosely into one of the heaps of snow. “Come on, sit down. That chair is as uncomfortable as it looks, trust me.”

 

We joined her, me sitting in the snow next to her and Snowflake lying across our feet. “I don’t know that I would have associated mischief and pranks with the Midnight Court,” I commented.

 

Aiko shrugged again. “It’s a valid way to interpret the concept,” she said. “There are lots of stories about faeries playing tricks on people, causing mischief. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking harmless mischief here, this is still the Unseelie Court. A lot of those pranks have an element of real malice and danger to them. But they’re still pranks, and I’m a lot more comfortable with that than with politics.”

 

“But your minions don’t agree.”

 

“Some do,” she said. “Some of them are very pleased with the new focus. But the people that like political maneuvering are less than thrilled.”

 

No change makes everyone happy, Snowflake said. Not even a good change.

 

“I know,” Aiko said. “After a while, everyone should adjust to the new regime, and it’ll be business as usual again. The transition is just going to be a bit rough in some ways, since as far as I can tell Scáthach’s preferences were pretty nearly the polar opposite of mine.”

 

“I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to help with that,” I said. “But if there is, just ask.”

 

“Actually, your timing really was good,” she said. “I was going to ask whether you could come after I finished with that round anyway. You just showed up a little early.”

 

I paused. “Early for what?”

 

“Well, here’s the thing,” she said. “One of the things I’m supposed to do, as the Maiden of the Midnight Court, is do the whole fighting with the Daylight Court thing. It’s kind of an important part of the role. So here in a bit, I’m going out to lay a beatdown on them and prove that I can. And I’d kind of appreciate having you there, since this is, um…a bit outside of my comfort zone, I guess.”

 

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

 

Not for the world, Snowflake added. Really glad that I decided to tag along on this trip now. I was considering taking a nap instead, but this is much more fun.

 

Aiko snorted and curled a bit further into the snow, resting her head on my chest. “What about you?” she asked. “You find anything interesting?”

 

“Sort of,” I said. “Tracked that group back to their base and cleared it out. Seems like they’re being supported by the Guards.”

 

“What kind of support are we talking about here?”

 

I shrugged. “Hard to say on the grand scale until my people finish sifting through the data we got out of there. Locally, seems like it was quite a bit. They were based out of an underground complex that attached to the building the Guards took over. I think they were providing those nutjobs with logistical support and information too, but I’m not sure yet.”

 

“Using them as a weapon,” Aiko said. “Disposable, deniable assets. The Guards are human, so there wasn’t much chance of the human supremacists turning on them, and it would be easy to sic them on anyone that was getting inconvenient.”

 

“That’s my current assumption,” I said. “Yeah.”

 

“This is the same group that attacked that Pack meeting, right? I can’t imagine Conn will be happy about that.”

 

“No,” I said. “I don’t imagine he would be.”

 

I had a brief image of Conn declaring war on the Guards. Now that the unofficial ban on letting people find out about the world hiding behind the scenes was lifted, there was nothing stopping them from going at it openly.

 

It was not a pleasant image. It really didn’t matter who won that fight, it wasn’t going to be a good thing.

 

At the same time, there was a certain…satisfaction in the thought. They’d caused me so many problems, always with some excuse, always hiding behind that veil of secrecy, and I’d never had the power to do anything about it. Now that I finally had something solid that I could pin on them, the idea of taking the Pack and the Midnight Court and everyone else that I could convince to help out and just obliterating them was surprisingly tempting.

 

“It might be better not to tell him,” I said after a moment.

 

“You think it’s worth more as blackmail material?”

 

“That,” I said, “and also…the Guards have done some shady things. But they are still helping to hold things together. And at this point, we can’t afford to lose anyone who’s helping with that.”

 

Aiko was silent for a moment. “It’s interesting that you still say ‘we,'” she said at last.

 

“I know I’m not really one of them,” I agreed quietly. “I guess I never really was, but even less now. But I still like that world.”

 

“So do I,” she agreed. “And we’ve got friends there who don’t want the world to fall apart. I get that.” She paused. “Although we will have to find out how much they had to do with bringing that thing in from the void. If they were a part of that, you might have to revise that stance on whether they’re doing more to help or hurt.”

 

“If they were a part of that I’m prepared to kill every last one of them,” I said. “If they were dumb enough to get involved in that? Yeah, they’re done. That’s too dangerous to take any chances with.”

 

“Just so long as we’re on the same page there,” Aiko said. “Okay, so you’ve got nothing to do until that fight with the Daylight Court, right?”

 

“Nope,” I said. “Just waiting on people to go through all those files, and it sounds like it’s going to take a while. Some kind of encryption or something.”

 

“All right, then,” she said. “That’s not for another hour or so. I’m not in the mood to deal with more Court things in between, so unless you have a better idea I’m thinking I’ll just stay right here.”

 

This is a good plan, Snowflake said. It means I get my nap after all.

 

I snorted. “I’ve got nothing better to do,” I said.

 

True to her word, Snowflake was dozing in just a few minutes, and fully asleep in a few more. Aiko took longer, but it wasn’t that much longer before she was out cold as well, eyes closed and mouth slightly open with her head on my chest. Had anyone from Court seen her in such an undignified position it might have been detrimental to her reputation, but given that we were alone, it was harmless.

 

I did not–of course–sleep. But I didn’t get stiff, or tired, or even bored, as such. There was no reason to move, or even to breathe, so I didn’t. I just lay there on the snow, alone with my thoughts. They weren’t as happy as they should have been, considering the circumstances.

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Following the hallway the masked lunatics had come out of, at first we didn’t see anything special. There was a dormitory, full of empty beds, each neatly made, impersonal as a doctor’s examination room. There was a large kitchen, complete with a long table to act as a dining table, the sort of place that served enormous quantities of food that would sustain vital functions and not a whole lot more. There was a large office area, half a dozen computers set up on another large table without any partitions between them.

 

I’d want those computers, in case they’d stored any useful information on them. But for the moment it was more efficient to keep moving and leave the heavy lifting for the minions.

 

The hallway continued for a long ways after that, with just a couple of doors. Snowflake opened a couple of them, finagling the handles with her jaws or just shattering the latches by main force, always with the same result. The large–huge, really, far larger than they needed to be, even if the ceilings were rather low–rooms were empty.

 

Not just in the sense of having no people, either. They were literally, absolutely empty, not even any furniture. They were just empty space, waiting to be given a purpose.

 

Who went to the effort of carving this massive complex out of the bedrock just to leave most of it sitting empty?

 

I felt like there was something I was missing, some obvious detail that I just wasn’t seeing. But this was not a good time to be distracted, so I tried to push that feeling aside and focus on my immediate surroundings. Sharing Snowflake’s mind did a lot help with that; she’d always had a certain immediacy about her, like most animals. It was one of the few really animal things about her, actually.

 

Not that it turned out to matter that much. We didn’t see one other person on the way. Not a single one.

 

It was hard to believe that the group we’d dealt with earlier had been all the people here. A lot of this place was empty, admittedly, but we’d only killed around ten of them so far. There had to be more than that.

 

The only conclusion I could come to was that this compound had been abandoned, and that group we’d run into had been a rear guard of sorts.

 

It was getting old having people be one step ahead of me. I was getting really sick of being a day late and a dollar short.

 

Finally, the hall ended at a simple, plain lobby of sorts. The only feature was a large, stainless steel door with a white button next to it. It took a second for me to recognize it as a large elevator. It only took a moment longer for me to recognize it more specifically than that.

 

Damn it. I’d known it was too good to be true, but somehow I’d still wanted to think that they could be what I’d wanted them to be.

 

Hope springs eternal in the deluded breast, I suppose.

 

Snowflake went to hit the button, but I stopped her with a gentle reminder. If I was right about what was above us–and I was pretty freaking certain about it, it all just fit too well to be a coincidence–then we did not want to go up there alone. There’s confident, and then there’s stupid. Picking a fight with all of them at once, by ourselves, was solidly in the second category.

 

We turned around and went back to check on the minions instead.

 

I’d been half-expecting to find them all dead. It would fit with how well the rest of this whole project had gone. Apparently my luck wasn’t quite that bad, though, because they were still working on searching the place, seemingly unharmed.

 

They were efficient. I had to give them that. They already had most of the complex ripped open, papers and computers dragged out into the hallway and stacked neatly in a pair of heavy-duty black duffel bags.

 

The corpses had been stripped and searched, very thoroughly. Some of the ghouls were chewing. I didn’t look closely enough to see any more details than that. I didn’t think that I wanted to know.

 

Snowflake sat and watched as they finished ransacking the complex. The duffel bags were zipped shut, and two of the jötnar heaved them up off the ground. The things must have weighed a couple hundred pounds each–computers are heavy, and I hadn’t wanted to take the time to pull out the hard drives and such. It didn’t matter. The giants looked human, but they were far stronger than anyone short of a serious bodybuilder. The bags wouldn’t slow them down appreciably.

 

They started towards the entrance we’d come through, but Kyi knew enough to look at Snowflake, and Snowflake looked down the hall towards the elevator. As simply as that, the direction of travel shifted, and I was guessing that most of them didn’t even realize how it happened.

 

The elevator was more than large enough to handle all of us at once. Unsurprisingly, really; it was a heavy-duty model, almost a freight elevator.

 

I was fully expecting a fight when the elevator doors opened again–or, if not a fight, certainly a confrontation of some sort.

 

I was not disappointed.

 

The doors slid open with a gentle chime, and we crowded out into the lobby. As expected, it was a familiar lobby, complete with a gift shop and a cafe. It looked like they’d just about finished remodeling. The entrance was across from us, and as expected, there were some people between us and it. As expected, I recognized all of them.

 

I wondered, idly, how many of them had known what was going on beneath their feet. David had known, must have, he was too much in control of what happened here for it to have gone on without his notice. Elyssa, similarly, must have been aware. Awareness was her whole thing, what she did; it was pretty much impossible to keep a secret from someone who had magically sharpened focus and perceptions when she was living in the building where you wanted to keep that secret.

 

The rest? I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t spent enough time with most of them to really get an idea of who they were. On some levels, sure, but I didn’t know them well enough to really guess on this. There were too many unknowns. And all of that was assuming that the Guards hadn’t been lying to me, which they rather obviously had.

 

Regardless, though, this was a conversation I wanted to have for myself. So I slid out of Snowflake and wove myself a body of darkness from the shadows of the jötnar and ghouls. They moved away slightly to give me room as I manifested, seemingly out of instinct.

 

It was probably a pretty freaking dramatic entrance. I’d have to remember this for later use.

 

“Hi,” I said, in that same eerie, hollow voice. “Been a while.”

 

David regarded me cautiously for a moment, then inclined his head slightly. “Jarl,” he said. “Reports of your death were somewhat exaggerated, it seems.”

 

“Only somewhat?” I said lightly, taking more pleasure than I should have in the way Tony flinched a little at the sound. “You wound me, David. Do you not like the new look?”

 

“I told you not to call me that,” he said, sounding impressively casual.

 

“I forget what your name is in-costume,” I said. “Which is, by the way, still a ridiculous thing to do. I do remember the rest of them, though.”

 

“I do feel special,” he said dryly.

 

“Happy to help. Here’s the interesting thing, though. I had no idea this building had a basement level. Did you guys realize that?”

 

Tawny and Derek–or Crimson and Chainmail, or whatever the hell I was supposed to call them–exchanged dubious glances for a moment before looking back at me. It wasn’t much of a tell, but it was enough. They didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

 

“This building has been renovated several times now,” David said smoothly. “I’m not surprised that there would be features we weren’t informed of, especially since we acquired it while local affairs were particularly unsettled.”

 

“Right,” I said sarcastically. “And I’m guessing you had no idea that there were a bunch of people living down there. People who, at the moment, I really don’t like.”

 

“Do you have an actual grievance with us?” David asked.

 

“Yes,” I said. “I have a great many grievances with you. But at the moment, you’re a secondary priority. So you’re going to provide me with any information you have on the people that have been basing their operations out of the complex under this building, and then you’re going to get out of my way. And later, if I have time, maybe I’ll lodge a complaint with your bosses or something.”

 

“We could stop you,” David said, in a rather conversational tone.

 

“Maybe,” I said. “But we had a deal, sort of. And I thought that meant something for you.” I paused. “Also, think about this. Yes, you could maybe stop me from leaving, and definitely you could stop me from getting the information I want. But if you start a fight here and now, it’s going to be a bloody mess. You and I will get out fine, sure, but a lot of other people will die. And while you’re certainly involved with some unpleasant dealings, I don’t think you’re really a bad enough person yourself to be willing to do that.”

 

I smiled, though I doubted it was visible on a face made of darkness. “So what’s it going to be, David?”

 

He stared at me. I stared at him. The tension in the room could have been cut with a rolling pin, let alone a knife.

 

Finally, he nodded.

 

I managed to keep from letting out a relieved sigh as I melted back into the shadows.

---

 

It took a surprisingly short amount of time to gather all the relevant information and get back to the mansion. I had a strong suspicion that David wasn’t half so opposed to the whole thing as he’d wanted to seem. He didn’t put up nearly as much resistance as I would have expected, and I saw him smiling when he thought no one was looking.

 

In a way, it made sense. David had struck me as a fairly upright sort of guy, on the whole, and I doubted he was terribly happy about being forced to cooperate with those lunatics and house them in his basement. I could see the Guards as a whole seeing them as a useful tool, a deniable weapon to be used on inconvenient parties. But David, personally, didn’t have to be happy about that.

 

It was basically the same relationship we’d always had. He was using me to do something he really wanted to, but for political reasons couldn’t.

 

We spent so much energy on lying, when everyone knew the truth. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the thought, but this was one of the more annoying occasions. It was just such a huge and pointless waste.

 

But eventually we figured it out, and lugged the bags back down to the mansion. I sculpted myself a new body on the way, one a bit more stable than pure shadows, out of a cooler of packed snow in the back of the car. The extremely excessive force around the apartment building cleared out, leaving behind nothing but a mess and a woman covered in duct tape in an alley. I expected that situation to arouse some questions, and also for it to be rapidly hushed up. No one wanted too much investigation into that, and some of the people that didn’t had more than enough pull to make it happen.

 

Hell, these days I was one of them. It would only take a few phone calls to make that problem disappear.

 

I opened the front door of the mansion and walked in with my minions arrayed behind me. There were more minions waiting for me inside, along with some people whose names I actually knew.

 

“Get some people to sort through this,” I said, as the jötnar set the duffel bags down behind me. “Some people who know what they’re doing, please. Call me when you’ve got answers.”

 

Unsurprisingly, it was Selene who nodded and stepped forward to start getting things under control. “Where will you be, jarl?” she asked.

 

“I’m going to rest for a while, I think,” I said. “Then go see how Aiko is doing with the faeries. She might want me to beat some heads in by now.”

Previous Chapter                                                                                    Next Chapter

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Like most apartment buildings, this one hadn’t been intended to withstand military assault. The door, a pretty standard sliding door, shattered when I kicked it. I stepped inside, and absently noticed a couple shards of glass getting stuck in my feet. It didn’t really matter; I didn’t feel any pain, and it wasn’t like I was going to bleed out. Hell, if anything it was more material to work with, and it would probably hurt more if I wound up kicking someone for some reason.

 

There was a desk just inside the door, and an attendant sitting at it. She was staring at me, and reaching for the telephone.

 

I looked at her as my minions streamed in behind me. “Leave it,” I said. That was all.

 

She got the point. Her hand fell back to her lap, and her lip trembled. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” she asked.

 

“Probably not today,” I said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

 

She nodded weakly, obviously scared and pretty sure I was lying. I almost felt bad about it. She was probably still in high school, working this job to scrounge up a bit of petty cash. She didn’t deserve the bad day she was about to have.

 

Then again, what people deserved had never had much in common with what they got.

 

“We’re looking for some people that are staying here,” I said. “You’ve probably seen them go by. They’ll have been armed, probably moving as a group.”

 

“That’s most of the people that live here,” she said. “Nobody wants to be on the street alone and unarmed.” She didn’t quite say moron, but she didn’t quite need to.

 

I felt a spark of amusement, although my lips didn’t twitch. That immediate response didn’t exist anymore; smiles were a deliberate action, not an instinctive one.

 

“Fair point, these days,” I said. “Different approach, then. Is there somewhere in this building where not many people go? A place that the residents, maybe even most of the staff, aren’t allowed?”

 

She considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “There’s the basement, I guess,” she said. “It’s just storage down there, I think. Only the manager goes there most of the time.”

 

“The basement,” I said. “Good. Where’s the entrance?”

 

“In back,” she said, gesturing behind herself.

 

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. Tape her up and leave her somewhere she’ll be found by morning.”

 

She started to protest, as three of my minions jumped to comply. I held up my hand, and she went silent, instantly.

 

Huh. I’d always wanted to do that, but I just hadn’t had the presence for it. Apparently the authority vested in me as a champion of the Midnight Court carried some weight. That, or the presence of a lot of heavily-armed lunatics made up for any deficiency of innate charisma.

 

“I’m sorry to do this,” I said to her. “But it would be dangerous for you to stay here, and the stakes are too high for me to just let you leave. This is the best compromise I have available. It’ll suck for tonight, but tomorrow this will just be a bad memory. Okay?”

 

She still looked scared out of her mind, but she nodded. Kyi and another jotun quickly, efficiently hogtied and gagged her with industrial-strength duct tape. The other jotun–one I didn’t recognize; Aiko’s recruitment drive had been quite thorough–picked her up effortlessly and carried her to the door.

 

“Make sure the snipers keep an eye on her,” I called out as they left. “I’ll hold you personally responsible if anything happens.”

 

He nodded and left. The rest of us went behind the desk.

 

It wasn’t hard to find the basement. There were only so many doors back there, and most of them were obviously not what we were looking for. Mostly it seemed very mundane–an office, a sort of breakroom, a back exit. The process of elimination didn’t take long.

 

I led the way down the staircase, which was surprisingly spacious, with my army of monsters and killers behind me. A couple of ghouls and a jotun stayed up top in case anyone wandered by and saw the broken door, and started asking inconvenient questions. It wasn’t a perfect solution–they’d have a hell of a time explaining things to the police, for example, and they only had enough tape to hogtie a few people. But at some point you’ve to call it good enough and take the risk, or you never get anything done.

 

At first, I was a little disappointed by what we found down in the basement. It seemed to be about what it claimed to be, just storage. Not even storage for particularly exciting things. There were lots of cleaning supplies, maintenance materials, that sort of thing.

 

Down here, out of sight and out of mind, we didn’t have to be gentle and delicate about searching the place. The thugs ransacked the place while Kyi and Snowflake and I stood and watched.

 

It took a while. They’d buried it behind a bunch of crates of bleach and cleaning solvents, somewhere that not even the employees would have seen. I had to respect their dedication, on some level. It must have been an immense pain in the ass to move that whole stack every time they wanted to use this door. I could admire the dedication and discipline that had kept them doing it anyway.

 

The rest of me was just annoyed at the delay. This plan was, of necessity, a time-limited one. Every moment wasted was a moment we couldn’t afford.

 

But finally we dug it out, and reached the door. It was a simple metal hatch, one that looked like it had been jury-rigged into place long after this basement had been constructed. It was heavily locked, a problem I solved with Tyrfing rather than a set of picks. Subtlety was not high on my priority list.

 

The raw, aftermarket feel continued as I started down the other side. The tunnel was roughly cut into the stone, seemingly by hand. Sections of the walls and ceiling were reinforced with unfinished concrete, but by and large it was crude at best. It was unlit, a problem I was not terribly concerned about. None of us needed much in the way of light, and my minions had brought what they needed. The shadowy, unsteady illumination the flashlights cast was perfect for me. It gave me lots of shadows to work with, darkness to bend to my will.

 

I was more concerned by the temperature. It was hot in that tunnel. Not just casually warm, but sauna-hot, more than hot enough to be uncomfortable for a human, which made it far too hot for my happiness. The presence of the jötnar was enough to keep it at manageable levels, but I was still having to work to maintain my frozen body. Finding enough ice to scrape another one together out of in this heat was out of the question.

 

So. If I took enough of a hit to wreck the body I was manifesting through, my options were limited. I wasn’t entirely sure how I could adjust to that.

 

It was almost like old times.

 

How do all these people manage huge underground lairs? Snowflake asked as we hurried down the tunnel. We were setting a pace considerably faster than most humans could sustain, which was part of why I hadn’t brought any humans down in here. Speed was important here, and with a crowd in enclosed quarters, guns weren’t a great choice anyway.

 

That’s actually a good question, I replied. Most of the ones we’ve seen, the people that built them have serious connections. But these guys are new on the scene. Call it more evidence that they’ve got some kind of sponsor, I guess.

 

You know what the problem with you is? she said after a moment. I want to laugh and call you paranoid, but then you keep being right.

 

Trust me, I’d rather be wrong. Speaking of, looks like there’s another door up ahead. Think we’re about to meet the welcoming committee, and I somehow doubt they’ll be glad to see us.

 

My only response was a delighted laugh and an increase in her pace. If she were wearing a leash, she’d have been pulling me along rather than the other way around. I could feel her eagerness, the thrill she felt at the prospect of violence.

 

Snowflake wasn’t a very good person. It was time I stop beating around the bush on that one. I’d lived with her inside my head for a long time now, and somehow I’d kept making excuses for her, and dressing it up in pretty words. The reality was that she quite simply was not a good person.

 

Not everybody could be. Not everybody even got the choice.

 

I arranged my thugs at a distance from the door, in case something bad happened when I opened it. I chopped through the locks with Tyrfing, and then shoved it open.

 

I promptly took a shotgun blast to the chest.

 

I stumbled back a step, glancing down. “Huh,” I said. “Guess they had a trap for someone who opened it without a key.”

 

“Are you all right, jarl?” Kyi asked promptly.

 

“Should be fine,” I said, pulling the holes in my torso closed again. I didn’t bother pushing the pellets out first. There wasn’t any real need. I didn’t have any actual control over the metal, but I could carry it along without any particular trouble, I was pretty sure.

 

Moments later, I continued, continuing to go first in case there were any more traps. I pulled the shotgun down, and then we kept going.

 

As underground lairs went–and Snowflake was right, I had seen a bizarrely large number of them–this one was…odd. It felt too new, too modern. It almost felt like a hospital, with the bright fluorescent lights, the white walls and gleaming tile floor, everything kept fanatically clean. Maybe I’d just spent too much time around extremely old-fashioned people, but this was not what I’d been expecting. Even if it hadn’t been built with a medieval design aesthetic, I would have expected it to feel more tired, more rundown.

 

As it was, I was starting to get a distinctly ominous feeling about this place. I felt like there was something I was missing, some obvious piece of the puzzle that I hadn’t quite slotted into place.

 

“Okay,” I said, looking around. It seemed like a fairly normal hallway, fairly generic. There were doors opening off it at regular intervals, none of which had a convenient label on it. “Spread out, small groups, start looking. I want anything you can find that might have information we can use. That means files, computers, anything that might seem remotely useful. Assume that everything is trapped, and if you find anyone, shout.”

 

A wave of nods swept over the group, and they started fanning out and opening doors. They were professional about it, which I was glad to see. Every movement was coordinated, and nobody was taking chances. That boded well for our chances here.

 

I stayed where I was with Kyi and Snowflake, and waited. I was confident our entry had not gone unnoticed, and I was fully expecting them to respond to it rapidly. Nothing I’d seen from this group suggested that they were less than efficient.

 

And what did they call themselves, anyway? I hadn’t heard a name for them. It was a minor issue, admittedly, but it was starting to bug me.

 

In any case, I didn’t have to wait long. Not two minutes after I triggered the shotgun trap, I heard footsteps and a group of people came around the corner. They were wearing modern camouflage gear, and heavy, face-concealing helmets, and they were carrying guns.

 

Once again, I was the first off the line. No one else–not even Snowflake–had so much as started to move before I was sprinting in their direction at full speed.

 

Unfortunately, I was fast enough now to run into the same problem I’d often exploited in the past. Reacting quickly is not the same thing as reacting well.

 

Because I’d put such an emphasis on reacting fast, it wasn’t until I’d almost reached them that I noticed a few important details.

 

One, the guns they were holding were oddly light, lacking the bulk of military-grade rifles.

 

Two, they were all carrying large metal tanks on their backs. It looked like they were connected to the guns with hoses.

 

And three, I could smell petroleum.

 

The resulting chain of logic was enough to instantly and completely reverse my focus. I’d had some bad experiences with fire in the past, enough to have a healthy respect for its destructive potential. Now that I was made of ice, I somehow didn’t think that I would enjoy it any more.

 

The moment I realized what I was dealing with, I stopped and threw power out into the hall. Again, it was a sloppy, inefficient bit of magic, but it did what it was supposed to do. It flooded the space with frigid, semisolid darkness a moment before they pulled the triggers on their flamethrowers.

 

Flamethrowers are scary weapons. Not the most effective, necessarily–they have a lot of limitations. But they’re terrifying. I mean, there are reasons so many of the most horrific events in the history of war involved fire, from sacking cities when “salt the ashes” was a literal phrase all the way to the Dresden bombing. Nearly every living thing has a healthy fear of fire, and millennia of civilization aren’t enough to remove that animal terror.

 

I didn’t feel fear in the same way I had, not quite. It lacked the same immediacy, lacked the physiological element.

 

When I saw the napalm chewing through my barrier, I still panicked.

 

I tried to smother it with another wave of magic. That proved to be an exceptionally bad idea. Trying to split my concentration when I was already maintaining a complex bit of magic just meant that both of them collapsed for a critical moment.

 

It was only a second. Just the space of a heartbeat in which I didn’t have defenses in place.

 

That was too long.

 

Napalm washed over me, and eradicated me. I wasn’t any better protected from this than anyone else. Hell, I might have been more vulnerable than a normal human. I was made of cold and darkness, and I’d just been immolated in flame and light.

 

I was knocked out of my embodied state, and the body I left behind was turned into nothing but steam. I was left implicit in the shadows and the cold and the hunger in that space, but I was pretty far out of it. I thought there was definitely something to my idea that having to put more bodies together took something out of me. I wasn’t sure how many more I had in me.

 

Come to think of it, I didn’t really know if I was going to recover. I’d sort of been assuming that I would, because the idea that I would heal with time was one that had been drilled into me throughout my life. But I wasn’t alive anymore, and I didn’t know all the rules of what I was. It was entirely possible that I’d already burned through most of the chances I’d ever get, without realizing what it meant.

 

With that comforting thought in mind, I turned my attention back to what was going on around me. It took a moment, and when I did my view was fuzzy, even more so than usual while I was in this state. It felt like my connection to physical reality was more tenuous, more fragile than it had been.

 

From what I did see, it seemed like the fight was most certainly not over. The flamethrowers hadn’t had enough fuel to keep going for very long after incinerating me, or else it was too hot for safety, because they’d stopped firing. They were grabbing for pistols instead, but they were too slow, because Snowflake was already in the middle of them.

 

She’d run straight through the lingering fires, barely skirting around patches of freaking napalm, to get to them. Unbelievable.

 

She pulled one of them down and started biting at their throat, but apparently the uniform was made out of some toughened fabric or the mask was getting in the way or something, because blood didn’t immediately start flowing.

 

One of the others pulled a grenade off their belt and threw it at the jötnar and ghouls who were streaming out of the doors into the hallway.

 

I felt a moment’s impotent rage. This fight was suddenly and rapidly turning more dangerous than I’d expected, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

 

Kyi threw a knife and hit the grenade out of the air, sending it spinning back to the ground. Snowflake bolted away, jumping through the fire again in her haste to get away before it blew.

 

It went off a second later with a flash bright enough and a noise loud enough to be annoying, even through the veil between me and the physical world. It was clearly enough to stun the people with guns, and even most of a hundred feet away, my minions were obviously not happy about it.

 

A flashbang. That made sense; in these enclosed spaces, a fragmentation grenade was just a fancy way to commit suicide. Then again, they’d been willing to use flamethrowers down here, so obviously that wasn’t something they were too worried about.

 

That burst of impotent wrath proved to be the motivator I needed. I transitioned into the shadow of one of the masked humans, and then manifested myself through that patch of darkness, filling it with Midnight power and making it more real in the process.

 

I grabbed them by the head and wrenched it back towards me with awful force, more than enough to destroy the spine. In the process, I got a good look at myself in the dark lenses of the mask.

 

I was an animate shadow, a vaguely humanoid piece of darkness that blurred seamlessly into the darkness I stood in. The only thing that stood out clearly were the eyes, which burned with a dull amber glow. Lines of brighter light and total darkness crossed them in subtly moving patterns, evoking the pictures frost makes growing on windows.

 

That was all that I had the chance to see before one of the others fumbled a high-power flashlight off their belt and caught me in the beam of light, tearing apart the shadow I was forming myself from and scattering it. It tore me apart in the process, leaving me disembodied once again.

 

Huh. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be vulnerable to something quite that…mundane as a result of what I was using as a door into the world. It made sense, though. Hell, that was probably why they’d brought flashbangs.

 

These people knew more about my weaknesses these days than I did. There was no question about it, somebody was way too well informed here.

 

Unfortunately for them, they’d focused too much on me, and left everyone else free to act. Some of the jötnar got close enough to the napalm to put out the fires with the cold that was their nature, and then the ghouls pounced.

 

The resulting bloodbath was mercifully short. That was about all that I could say for it.

 

I thought about trying to form a permanent body out of shadows, but it didn’t seem like a great idea. I hadn’t done anything more than disposable shells out of darkness alone, and I wasn’t sure that I could. It was clearly a secondary element, not something I could work with as well as easily or well as ice. And besides, they were prepared for darkness here. Getting more bodies destroyed by flashbangs and flashlights and who knew what other light sources just seemed like a waste of effort.

 

Instead, I picked the deepest patch of shadow available and pieced together another crude temp body, just enough to speak through.

 

“Keep going,” I said, surprising myself a little with the eerie, hollow sound of my voice. “Remember to search them, and keep an eye out.”

 

Apparently the sound startled them too, because my minions seemed more inclined to run than obey. It probably didn’t help that they’d just seen me burned alive, and they didn’t know the details of my current arrangement. From their perspective, this whole thing was probably starting to seem more than slightly freaky.

 

But Kyi acted like obeying creepy voices from the shadows was totally normal, and in the face of that unflappable calm, the unease faded quickly. By the time my body dissipated into wisps of shadow, they were already back at work searching the rooms.

 

I slipped into Snowflake–very gently, very delicately, not imposing myself, just a presence. You mind if I ride along? I asked.

 

The immediate response was shock, swiftly followed by sardonic amusement. Why not? she said. It’ll be just like old times. So what now?

 

Now we go check out where these nuts came from, I thought. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that there are more where they came from.

 

Let’s hope so, she said, standing and shaking herself. All right, let’s do this.

Previous Chapter                                                                                    Next Chapter

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It took a while to piece myself back together. Unsurprisingly, I supposed. Hell, the surprise was probably that I could do so at all. I’d taken multiple hits from an abomination out of the void between worlds. The one and only other time I’d had that happen, it had taken a ridiculously long time for it to heal to any degree of functionality. And that had been a glancing blow, barely even getting into muscle. The impression I’d gotten in general was that when the void destroyed something, it couldn’t really be fixed.

 

Which, all things considered, was a fairly ominous thought.

 

I started out trying to make a really well-designed body, but in the end I just didn’t have the energy to care. It was slow going, too, and I was more than a bit concerned that I’d miss something important.

 

My body was nothing more than a roughly humanoid shape, the sort of sculpture a not-particularly-gifted child might make, when I pushed my way out of the snowbank I’d been gestating in.

 

Nothing much had changed. I was actually a bit surprised by the extent to which nothing had changed. The housecarls were still staring like they couldn’t quite grasp what they’d seen. Even Snowflake was staring, and when I brushed against her mind, all I got was a sort of numbness, the mental equivalent of a cartoon character with his jaw on the floor.

 

It took me a second to realize why. They hadn’t seen either me or Aiko using our new powers. Not seriously. Even Snowflake had only seen the most basic applications of what we were capable of. She might know conceptually, but there was a huge gap between knowing something and seeing it.

 

No one else was there. Not one person pushed through the curtain of darkness Aiko was still maintaining around the scene.

 

It was quiet. Very quiet.

 

“Nice work,” I said to Aiko as I stood up, more just for something to say than anything.

 

“You weren’t too bad yourself,” she said, smirking.

 

“How did you get rid of it?”

 

She shrugged loosely. “I figured we know where they come from, and we know they can’t get in on their own. All I had to do was send it back. And it did most of the work itself, breaking down the barriers. I just…finished the job.”

 

I nodded. “You were always good at that kind of magic,” I commented. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was praising her, or trying to convince myself.

 

“She really was,” Loki said, appearing where the abomination had been when Aiko sent it bad. He flicked his fingers a few times, looking a bit like an artist correcting an errant bit of paint, and the streaks and trails of nothingness that still carved paths in the world’s skin disappeared. “Well done. A bit clumsy, but a fairly decent tactic, and you pulled it off.”

 

“You,” I said, pointing at him. “What the hell? Why did you make us deal with that thing?”

 

“Because it amused me,” he said, as though explaining to a child that knives cut. I noticed, absently, that no one else was reacting to this conversation. We weren’t perceiving time on different levels–they didn’t seem frozen–but I was betting they weren’t capable of perceiving it.

 

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m not buying your ‘I just do it for fun’ line. Not anymore. I mean, look at where we’ve wound up. This is not something that happens by coincidence. You’ve been planning this all along.”

 

“You act like those are mutually exclusive statements,” he said with a twisted grin. “What, does planning things preclude me from seeking my own amusement?”

 

“Well, it sure as hell suggests that you’ve got a bit more in the way of intent behind what you’re doing than that,” I said. “And it occurs to me that saying you’re just doing things to entertain yourself would make a great cover for your plans. With your reputation, you could do anything and write it off as just a bit of fun.”

 

“It’s true,” Aiko added. “I know. I’ve used that trick.”

 

“Ah,” Loki said. “Let’s assume that you’re right. If, and I feel I should stress the if, I’m going to those lengths to conceal some sinister plot…what on earth makes you think that I’d tell you what that plot might be?”

 

I ground my teeth, hard enough that the ice started to splinter. “Nothing,” I said. “I just felt a need to comment on it.”

 

“Comment noted,” he said. The wildfires in his eyes seemed to accelerate slightly, although I wasn’t sure what that might mean, or whether I’d really seen it all. “Would you like to say anything that isn’t pointless speculation, or should I just go?”

 

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got something to say. That guy. He was clueless. He didn’t even bother reading the book he was copying his circle out of.”

 

“They just don’t make them like they used to,” Loki sighed. “He is dead, by the way. I don’t think you had time to notice, but the beasty that he summoned annihilated him. Don’t call up that which you cannot put down, and all that.”

 

“That’s just it,” I said. “Those things are freakishly powerful, terrifying monsters. As I understand it, having one of them get loose is an apocalyptic threat. How did that dweeb know how to summon one?”

 

Loki smiled. “Now that,” he said, “is an extremely good question. I strongly suggest that you find out.”

 

And then he vanished. Completely, and instantly. Even with my newly expanded senses, I couldn’t even begin to figure out how he did it. It was like watching a movie, and having someone turn off the projector. Which, now that I thought about it, might not be a wholly inaccurate analogy.

 

“Beautiful,” I said. Well, growled, really. “Just beautiful.”

 

“Look on the bright side,” Aiko said. “At least you’re not bored.”

 

I glowered. “Yeah,” I said. “Boredom is not a thing I complain about. Pretty much ever.”

 

“I know,” she said happily. “So you’re following up on that, I’m guessing?”

 

“I don’t think I have a choice,” I said. “That might have just been a suggestion, but I don’t think I get to ignore it. Loki’s good at that.”

 

“I remember,” she said. “Okay. I need to be back in Faerie now. I was right in the middle of beating some sense into some skulls when you called, and I don’t think I should put off finishing any longer than necessary.”

 

“You need a hand?” I asked, instantly.

 

She hesitated, then shook her head. “Not at present, I think,” she said. “Currently, I’m still in the stage where I’m better off doing it myself. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

 

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to follow up on this one. Seems like it should be a priority at this point.”

 

“Call if you need some backup,” she said. “Seriously. I’ll appreciate the break, trust me.” She grinned, then stepped closer and kissed me.

 

I lingered over that touch. In that moment, I needed the contact. I needed very much to remember that there was more to me than the monster, something more than just bad choices and necessary evils. Judging by the intensity with which she held to me, Aiko did too.

 

And then she let go, and turned, and walked off into a shadow, and was gone.

 

I stood there for a moment, then turned to face the onlookers. There were more of them, now. The privacy curtain of Midnight power had vanished when Aiko did, leaving a couple dozen human bystanders staring at me.

 

I thought about trying to explain, and then thought better of it. People were dead. The property damage would probably be in the tens of millions. Nothing I could say would make this all right, ever again.

 

“Come on,” I said to the housecarls, who jumped to comply. I sheathed Tyrfing, and grabbed the unconscious man on the way by. He’d been far enough from the fight not to get annihilated, and he was still unconscious. He started moving as I picked him up, struggling, but I ignored him. I was so much stronger than him that I really didn’t have to worry about him getting loose.

 

Snowflake walked beside me as we left the scene, her shoulder a comforting presence against my hip. Behind us, the emergency services were just now arriving, starting to try and get a handle on what was happening.

 

A part of me wondered whether the witnesses would describe things accurately, or I would end up being the bad guy. Another part didn’t care.

 

Nobody tried to follow us.

---

 

Back at the mansion, Kjaran parked the car and Vigdis hauled the leader of the human supremacist delegation out. He was fully conscious now, and seemed to have no negative effects from being choked unconscious. Not that I could really say with confidence, on that topic. He hadn’t said one word on the way here, and I hadn’t tried to make him.

 

I found it notable that while the site had been crawling with cops by the time we left, not a one of them had followed us. Not a single car had tailed us down to the mansion, though several of them had seen us dragging a struggling man away, and probably at least one had watched him being forced into the back of the car.

 

I was glad that my unofficial truce with the police was still holding. At least enough that they were willing to turn a blind eye to me doing some extralegal work in a good cause.

 

Kjaran opened the door and I strode into the mansion. I’d taken the time to fix my face on the way, and now looked almost like a human being. As close as I had in a long time, at least. The captive tried to get loose and run between the car and the door, but Vigdis subdued him easily, almost pulling his shoulder from the socket in the process, and then literally dragged him in with a satisfied expression.

 

I pointed at him as faces turned towards me. “Somebody get answers out of him,” I said. “Who he is, where he’s from, where his people are. Don’t much care how you do it.”

 

Some of my people–the humans, mostly–looked a bit uncomfortable and hurried on about their tasks. Some others looked a little too enthused for comfort. Most, though, just looked professional. This was a job, like any other.

 

“I won’t talk,” he said, the first words he’d said since the fight started back at the cafe.

 

“I’m not expecting you to, honestly,” I said. “But with the stakes this high, I’ve got to try, and I dislike you enough right now not to be particularly upset by that. On that note, though, I want people trying other avenues. I want to know where these people are hiding out, soonest. Get some werewolves out there to try and track them back, talk to Pellegrini, talk to Frishberg. Make it happen.”

 

“On it,” Selene said, nodding sharply. She walked away, rattling off instructions to some of her minions.

 

I didn’t recognize all her minions. In my absence, Aiko had been preparing my organization for an all-out war, which had entailed some aggressive recruitment. Luckily we were now getting support from the massive, mind-boggling economic powerhouse of the Midnight Court, taking any lingering concerns of finances from minor to utterly insignificant. We weren’t completely subsidized, by any means, but just knowing that we had that support to fall back on had taken a lot of the stress off of Tindr.

 

The end result? I had a lot of minions. Enough that I wasn’t even trying to keep track of them individually, except for the relatively small proportion that had been with me since I was the start.

 

While they were working, I ate half a dozen sandwiches, then went upstairs to take a nap.

 

Sleep didn’t come. It seemed that I’d finally finished the conversion. First, sleep had been an unfortunate necessity, something that took my time but which I couldn’t really avoid. Then it had been a luxury, something that I did when I could, but which I could go without when I needed to.

 

Now, when I wanted to sleep, I found I couldn’t. I lacked the capacity.

 

It seemed a bittersweet trade.

---

 

A few hours later, I walked up to the door of an apartment building.

 

They’d tried to hide their tracks. They’d done a fairly decent job of it, actually. They just hadn’t quite anticipated the degree of tracking they had to evade.

 

They’d switched vehicles a few times, taking a twisty, crazy route to the meeting. They’d worn heavy perfume which they’d covered over a few times, and dropped pepper and silver at intervals along their way. They’d gone to considerable lengths to conceal where they’d come from.

 

Half a dozen werewolves, with assistance from the police, and from Pellegrini’s mafia organization, and Jackal’s gang of changelings and half-breeds, and all the information Luna could scrounge from her extensive network of contacts, had been a bit more than they’d been prepared to deal with.

 

I could not in all fairness blame them for not anticipating that. Even a few years earlier, there was no way in hell I could have managed a manhunt quite this extensive. Back then, the lengths they’d gone to would have been a serious, maybe even insurmountable, obstacle.

 

As with a lot of other things that had once been problems for me, it had ceased to be relevant somewhere along the way. I’d traded those problems up for another set.

 

Probably I could have safely handled this assault myself. Probably.

 

I hadn’t lived this long by betting on that, though. And what was the point of having a small army if you didn’t use it?

 

So I walked up to the door, but I wasn’t alone. Snowflake was at my side, of course, and Kyi was walking on my other side, flipping a knife around casually in her hand. They were wearing matching black eyepatches, which I found bizarrely amusing. Kyra was busy at school, but Anna was there, as were two more werewolves that I didn’t know. They were visiting, and they’d wanted to pitch in.

 

Behind us, half a dozen ghouls and twice as many jötnar were following. Another two dozen humans and near-humans were scattered around the neighborhood with radios and rifles, in case someone tried to run.

 

I’d considered, very seriously, the possibility of just blowing the building up. It was a strategy that had worked for me in the past, after all. But we were here to find information, rather than just for destruction, which required a slightly more subtle approach.

 

Not a whole lot, of course. I did still have a small army. But slightly.

 

I flexed my fingers with a quiet crackle of breaking ice, and then kicked the door down.

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There are ideas in this world that can infect a person, can change them. They make themselves at home in the dark and quiet places of your mind, they creep into your heart and wind their fingers in your soul.

 

And maybe you aren’t always aware of them. Maybe you can forget them for days at a time. But when you look in a mirror, there’s a part of you that knows they’re looking back at you. And while you may try to pretend that the idea isn’t in you, every now and then you think

 

What if?

 

That’s all. Just a simple question. That’s all.

 

Just an idea.

---

 

There are never very many of us. Perhaps a few dozen at a time, as many as a hundred when things are very good. It’s a surprisingly easy thing to become, but mostly we have a short life expectancy. A year or two, for most of us, at the most. It takes a certain sort of person to become a wendigo, a very specific sort of person, and we tend to lead fast lives, with no thought for the day after tomorrow.

 

I’m something of an anomaly, in that regard. A combination of natural inclination, skill, and a healthy dose of luck.

 

I’ve always been lucky.

 

Perhaps more than anything else, though, what sets me apart is a difference of taste, of preference. My inclinations are much the same as any other wendigo, but with a slight twist in application. I like to think that I have a slightly more refined palate than most.

 

When you see a person standing on a ledge, there are conflicting urges. There’s a part of you that feels concerned for their safety, and then there’s a part that thinks I could push them.

 

Normally, of course, the first of these dominates, and thus society is fairly stable. You tell yourself that the other is just a momentary lapse of reason, that you’d never actually act on such a destructive impulse.

 

But then there’s that moment, in the dark and the quiet, when you’re all alone and the light feels a million miles away, and you think

 

What if?

 

And generally, there are two ways you can go after you think that. You can try to forget it, and generally you can be fairly successful. You can live your regular job, run the rat race, go home to your spouse and your two children and your dog. You can pay your mortgage and save up for a car and have an affair with the secretary from work, and desperately want a divorce but always put it off one more year for financial reasons. And you can even think you’re happy, most of the time. Except for that quiet moment in the darkest hour of the night, when you feel a longing that you can’t define, a hole in your soul that you don’t know how to fill.

 

Or you can choose another path.

 

I prefer to work subtly. Not every wendigo does. Most don’t, in fact, which contributes a great deal to the remarkably high death rate. But subtlety, a fondness for working behind the scenes, has always been a talent of mine.

 

I am, undeniably, the second most important person at the club, and likely the most responsible for its day-to-day functioning. Yet none of the clients know my name, and even most of the staff would be hard pressed to remember it. I don’t make a great show of my work or my presence, don’t demand servility the way many people might in my position.

 

But I am the one who keeps things happening as they ought to, in a thousand tiny ways. When someone doubts, I am there with a gentle touch and a word of encouragement. When someone hesitates, I am there to give them that tiniest of pushes over the edge. When someone reaches out a hand without quite knowing what they want, I am there to fill it with a drink, or a pill, or a knife. And always, always I am there to urge them onward, to tell them to take that one step further, by my very existence to provide a reminder that there is further to go.

 

That’s what I am. At my core, that is what makes me what I am.

 

The legends say that a wendigo is a spirit of hunger and madness, that it crawls inside cannibals and makes itself at home.

 

They aren’t entirely wrong. They are missing the point.

 

Everyone who goes to the club has needs. Hungers that they live to sate–or, as the case may be, don’t. That’s the point, the telos of the institution. No one goes there except because they need something that they can’t find anywhere else.

 

For me, it’s something more abstract, more meta, as they say in this age. I’m not there because I need to feast upon the flesh of men. I do feast, of course, and I quite enjoy doing so, but that’s not why I’m there. It’s a side dish, an ancillary benefit.

 

The main course is something so simple, most people don’t even fully recognize its presence.

 

It’s a quiet night, tonight. Barely thirty people and not-people in the main room, another ten in private rooms for one reason or another. That’s very slow, for us. Even on a weeknight.

 

I make my usual rounds, checking in with the various members of the staff. None of them have anything of interest to report, and so my rounds don’t take very long. Just a few minutes, and then I make the next set of rounds, taking a moment to observe each of the things being done in the room.

 

There aren’t many, of course. There weren’t enough people for there to be very many. But the ones that were there were fairly creative. To most people, they would even have been shocking. From my perspective, they were rather bland.

 

And then I noticed one in particular, and focused on it. A young woman lying on the ground, half a dozen chemicals pulsing through her veins, writhing in agony or ecstasy at the visions only she could see. She came alone and everyone else was busy, even the ever-present guards having more important things to occupy them.

 

She writhed on the ground, bleeding from where she’d clawed at her own face, her beautiful features marred by irregular wounds. And no one looked.

 

No one cared.

 

I felt a sort of satisfaction at the sight, a sort of fulfillment.

 

This was what I fed on, what I was. This was what had led a girl and a spirit to join with one another and become something that transcended both, a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It was that element of excess, of transgression. It was the things done in the dark, the things no one looks at because no one wants to know. It was the small voice in the back of the head, when you knew that something was wrong and you couldn’t do it, asking

 

Why not?

 

I go to the woman and sit beside her. I take her hand and she clutches at mine, fierce, reflexive, her nails biting into my skin and drawing cold, slow blood.

 

I sit and hold her hand as her breathing slows, and her grip grows weak, and at the end her heart goes still.

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