Chapter Twenty-Five

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While I was talking with Cassie, the last few people had arrived. One was a woman on a motorcycle I recognized from Softened Dreams, but hadn’t ever spoken with. I wasn’t sure what she was; her magic smelled cold, like snow and wind and the polar night where the sun doesn’t rise for weeks and the only light is that of stars and aurora. Definitely not human, but no clue what she actually was.

The last to arrive was a bit more of a surprise. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting there, but it definitely wasn’t Melissa driving a beat-up old jeep. The fact that she had Capinera in the passenger seat was really just icing on the cake.

I walked over to where they were getting out and grabbing their stuff. “What are you doing out here?” I asked. I was legitimately confused by their presence; I just wouldn’t have expected to see either of them out here, wasn’t sure who would have even asked them.

Capinera smiled, though it mostly just looked sad. “Lord Cerdinen contacted me. He seemed to think that you were planning something dangerous. It appears he was correct.” She looked over to where the others were already prepped and waiting. It looked almost like a picnic, at sufficient distance. But that appearance would fall apart under even a cursory examination. Andrew was the only werewolf still on two feet, confirming my suspicion that he was going to stay that way; he had what looked like modern body armor, though, and a heavy machete, at least one gun. Audgrim in his medieval kit was even more obvious, and his employees looked scary right now, hard men and women with a lot more weaponry than security guards were supposed to carry. Richard was watching the flame of a lighter in a disturbingly intense sort of way.

I supposed I wasn’t much better. I still had a fair bit of my stuff in Saori’s car, but I was carrying several visible knives, and the shotgun wasn’t one that anyone would mistake for a hunting tool.

I sighed. “Why would you want to be here if you know this is dangerous and foolish, though?”

“Because all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing,” Capinera said. Her eyes were dark, and her voice was gentle. “And I have killed many things.”

I sighed again, and looked at Melissa, who was watching the scene with a strange sort of smile. “I don’t suppose you’re staying out of things?” I asked hopefully. I didn’t think there was much chance of that, but a girl could dream.

“Nope! Definitely not.” Her voice, like her smile, was so bright and cheerful that it was a little unsettling. You’re not supposed to be that kind of cheerful while anticipating bloody violence. Even the people who like bloody violence tend to have a darker tone about them, their joy something savage and bloodthirsty. Melissa just sounded cheerful, and there was no sign of what might be beneath that.

“You do realize this is insane, right?”

“Yes,” she said patiently. “But one of my friends is already dead, and a few others are going out there tonight. I would rather you came back.” Huh. She’d been friends with Chris, then? It wouldn’t have occurred to me.

I nodded, though reluctantly. “Alright then. I’ll grab some earplugs for you.”

Capinera looked at me curiously. “Do you usually bring earplugs to fights?”

“I bring earplugs almost everywhere,” I said dryly. “But yes, also for this specifically. You said that your father was mostly responsible for your education at violence, which suggests to me he wasn’t responsible for other things. And if you learned to sing from a banshee, then yes, I’d like to have some earplugs on hand tonight.”

She smiled. “Wise. Yes. I’m not a banshee; my song doesn’t directly harm anyone. But I am very good at inspiring emotion, and that is a weapon in itself.”

“Yeah, got that impression,” I said. I remembered very clearly how when Capinera had been singing, every person there was so focused on her and on the emotion in her song that most of them hadn’t even noticed me having a tonic-clonic seizure in the same room. “I might be particularly susceptible to that, incidentally. Something to be aware of.”

She nodded, and started getting what looked like dark metallic armor out of the vehicle. I turned away. This had already felt stupid, but it was starting to feel wrong as well. Capinera had wanted to leave this life behind her. Melissa was broken on a fundamental level, and I was well aware of just how bad tonight might be for her, how it might interact with her existing traumas. Dragging those two into this mess felt deeply wrong, even if they were volunteering.

But Capinera was presumably good at what she did. And while I didn’t think Melissa was actually an experienced fighter, I knew some of what she could do thanks to Serket’s influence on her bloodline. The scorpion goddess was not someone to antagonize lightly. And we were not in a position to refuse help offered, right now. I didn’t even try.

I turned and walked away. I got a phone call as I did, and answered without looking, grateful for the distraction. That gratitude evaporated almost immediately, though. Caleb was the last person I wanted to be talking to right now. Possibly literally.

“Hey, Kyoko. How’s it going?” He sounded stressed, and tired, and he sounded very old. Human lives were such a brief flame, a candle with a very short wick. We were almost the same age, but he was into middle age and I was barely more than a child by the standards of raiju. And those of most of the other people here, for that matter.

I sighed. “It’s going. You?”

“I’ve been worse. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

He was, but I had no idea how to explain that. How could I describe the things he was interrupting in a way that would make sense to him? It wasn’t even just that he was human. Even if I stripped out all the supernatural elements, this wasn’t an event he could understand. Caleb was sheltered; he’d never been in a physical fight that I was aware of, never seen someone die. How on earth could I explain what I was about to be doing?

I didn’t know what to say, how to explain that he was interrupting at a terribly awkward time. And it wasn’t like there was anything for me to be doing right at the moment. “I’ll have to go in a few minutes,” I said, after an awkwardly long pause. “But not immediately. What’s up?”

“Oh, not a lot. I’m just a little worried about you, I guess. Haven’t heard much from you recently.”

I sighed. Of course he was checking in on me. I’d probably missed another message from him in the past few days. Caleb was the type to fret. This would all be so much easier, in many ways, if he were an asshole. But the same qualities that made him a good friend were at this point making it hard to stay friends with him at all. “I’ve been busy. Haven’t had a lot of free time lately.” I wasn’t sure if I was lying.

“I figured. Anything I can help with?”

I laughed, though it came out very bitter. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Kyoko, you don’t sound great. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I thought about Melissa, a broken girl with wounds too deep for healing who was about to risk her life, largely because of me. I thought about the fact that I was planning to help kill people in a few minutes. I remembered a guy who tried to stab me on the street, and how little I’d cared. I’d beaten the shit out of him, made a point of terrifying him, and then handed him off to someone else like a package delivered to the wrong address. I didn’t know what had happened after that, hadn’t bothered checking what Audgrim ended up doing with him. And I remembered, too, old times, visits I’d paid to people who owed money to an organized crime family. The bloodbath that had marked the end of my time in Japan.

The silence had dragged on too long. And when I looked over to the forest, I saw that the scouts were filtering out of the trees. My break was over.

“No,” I said quietly. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been okay.”

And then I hung up, and I went to join the monsters I called friends.

---

“Okay, so what are we looking at here?” Audgrim said, once the werewolf had finished changing back to skin to report his part of the reconnaissance. Pack empathy was handy, but it wasn’t words, and we needed a little more detail for this. The change was slower than usual, and looked especially painful. It probably was; my understanding was that changing too many times in a short window made the experience worse.

“Well, it’s definitely the right place,” Saori said. “And they brought troops. Forest is crawling with constructs. They aren’t too bright and this model doesn’t look too tough, but there are a lot of them in there.”

I grimaced at that. It wasn’t wholly unexpected. Constructs—artificial beings animated with magic and given just enough mind to carry out basic orders—were a popular choice of minion as I understood it. They weren’t people, and they weren’t bright enough to do anything complicated or make decisions. But they were cheap, disposable, and you didn’t have to worry about their loyalty in the slightest.

Not unexpected. But it complicated things.

“That’s going to be an issue,” Andrew said. “We can probably take them, but the numbers might be a problem, especially in rough terrain like this. If they come at us from behind while we’re already fighting, it’ll go badly for us.”

“Yeah.” Jack sounded slightly grim. “How many humans, do you know?”

The werewolf shrugged. “Between me and the army guy we got at least eight different sets of tracks. Might be missing some; we had to be pretty cautious to not get caught and get back on time.”

“Not all of them are mages, though,” Saori noted. “We got an actual look at one of them, and he’s probably a mercenary. Had a couple of talismans, but I don’t think any power of his own. Thought about taking him out but didn’t want to risk alerting them yet.”

“That’s the right call, yeah,” Andrew said. “So, bunch of constructs, at least four or five humans supervising them, and at least four mages. Not ideal. Robert, did you pick up the nonhuman scent we found before?”

“No,” the other werewolf, whose name was apparently Robert, replied. “Not even a little bit.”

Audgrim nodded. “Hopefully they’re not here in person, then. Your wolves got a good sample of some of the mages, right? Think they can follow that?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Andrew was showing teeth, but that wasn’t a smile. “And that trail probably leads to the tree. Lot better odds than searching this whole area of forest.”

“My thought exactly.” Audgrim was quiet for a moment, considering. “We’ll have to move pretty quick. I think we’re going to want to have my people hanging back to keep the constructs from flanking us. They aren’t up for the main event anyway; they’re good, but they aren’t soldiers.”

“Some of the wolves too,” Andrew agreed. “They have better mobility. Might want one of the mages with that group in case they run into something more in that area.”

Jack nodded. “Alice is probably best for that. She’s a wizard, much better at prepared work and defense than rapid aggression. And from what I hear Rebecca is pretty mobile, too, more of a hit-and-run girl. She’ll be more useful there as well.”

Audgrim nodded, decisively. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s get moving.”

---

It was a relatively large group of us leading the attack, and oddly enough, almost everyone I actually knew was in it. Derek had solicited some ear scritches and a hug before going to join the rear guard, but pretty much everyone else I knew was coming with the main force. Melissa had no weapons, and probably needed none, though I’d made sure she at least had a knife on her. Capinera and Audgrim looked both threatening and absurd, wrapped in metal armor and carrying actual swords. Andrew was there, as were Cassie and two other wolves in fur I didn’t recognize. Jack was carrying the tire iron I’d noticed before, and his posture made it very clear it was a deadly weapon in his hands. Richard’s eyes were full of fire. And Saori….

I stared at the kitsune. “Is that armor?”

She grinned at me. “Yep,” she said, sounding a bit smug. “Scale armor with kevlar lining. Custom made.” She pulled the helmet on. It had a vaguely demonic visage, and like the rest of her kit, it had a very samurai look to it. She even had a wakizashi belted on, though at least she was also carrying a light rifle and what looked suspiciously like grenades.

I rolled my eyes at her. “You people are insane.” I stuck close by her as we started out into the forest, though, and I had to admit the presence of so many extremely armed people was comforting right now.

As we’d been warned, it was a pretty dense forest. Pittsburgh’s environment is practically a temperate rainforest, and the vegetation in this area was thick. There were no established trails, and we were left with little beyond game paths to work with. The wolves were in front to catch the scent of the mages, but Andrew and Audgrim were following directly behind, mostly so they could cut the bushes back where that was needed. It made it quicker for the rest of us following them.

There was no longer any effort being made for stealth. There was no point, not with this many people. This was an open assault now, not an infiltration of any kind. I felt nervous, agitated; I kept checking and rechecking that I had the various knives, that they were clear and I could draw them quickly. The shotgun I had slung across my chest on a heavy nylon strap; its weight was unfamiliar, a constant reminder of what we were doing. I was vaguely glad that I wasn’t human, that the raiju blood lent me so much strength and endurance beyond what a human of my build would have. This would have been exhausting otherwise, a heavy load and a long hike through rough terrain. As it was, it was mostly just tedious, and the leather was too warm. I couldn’t fathom how the people in armor were tolerating it.

We were quiet as we walked. Nobody wanted to talk right now; it was too important that we hear anyone approaching. The wolves had apparently found the scent they were looking for easily, because their movement had become very purposeful, and I could read the anticipation in how they held themselves. Lupine ears and tails are very expressive, once you learn to pay attention to them. Cassie in particular I noticed. She was smaller than a lot of werewolves, lean and quick, making her easy to recognize. And she was eager, was hungry for this.

Occasionally, I got a glimpse of the peripheral escorts. A wolf would be visible through the trees, for just a moment. I spotted one of Audgrim’s people, waiting patiently on a nearby hill where she had good sight lines. The motorcyclist who smelled like a glacier, whose name was Rebecca from what Jack had said, dropped in on us twice to report. Even without the frozen feeling of her signature, I’d have known she wasn’t human now. She moved through the trees too gracefully, a long, loping stride that reminded me of the wolves. They’d found two small groups of constructs, she said, and destroyed both. No sign of humans, but our presence was definitely not a secret. No magical defenses so far.

Minutes ticked past. The tension built. And then, suddenly, the wolves stopped. So did the rest of us, for obvious reasons. After a moment, Andrew murmured, “Company ahead. At least two mercenaries, at least a dozen constructs. Looks like they’re hoping for an ambush. I am inclined to disappoint them.”

“Yes,” Audgrim said simply, and then we were moving again, but it wasn’t even pretending to be a normal hike now. It was a bunch of armed lunatics about to intentionally spring an ambush.

It was finally showtime.

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