Dragon Justice (16 page)

“If you two are quite done?” Sharon asked, impatient, and the
connection broke, and we were in a room filled with people again.

“So you can get hold of Wren, or no?” I asked Sergei.

“No. Not until she contacts me. And she won’t until the job is
done—particularly if she’s got to restructure her plans. She’ll hole up until
she figures it out.”

They’d been partners for a long time, according to gossip,
since Wren was a teenager. Whatever scenario they’d worked out, I wasn’t going
to question it. “And if I were to ping her?”

“She might listen…or she might block you out. It depends on
what she’s doing and if she knows that your…that Venec here is the one defending
the museum.”

“Damn.” But it made sense. We weren’t friends and former
building-mates now, but the competition—the ones trying to ruin her perfect
record. She wouldn’t listen to us, suspecting a trap, or at very least, a
distraction.

And normally, she’d be right.

“Is there anyone she’d listen to?”

“Is there ever?”

“What about PB?”

Sergei sighed. “He left for South America yesterday.”

Really? Huh. I thought he’d given up on couriering, but maybe
not. “All right. For now, we just have to trust to her own native suspicion and
caution. I assume Lou’s already trying to find Stosser?”

“I suggested that would be a good idea, yes. If she’s actually
doing it…”

“She is.” Pietr, who had gone silent during most of this, had
apparently been busy. “She and Nick are hunting him down, while Nifty covers the
ongoing assignments and deals with everything else. As soon as he resurfaces
enough to hear a ping, we’ll have him.”

You weren’t supposed to ignore a ping, but Stosser was the Big
Dog, and rules Venec made to keep us in line didn’t seem to apply to him. If he
wasn’t responding to Ben, he wasn’t going to respond to a pup, not unless we all
mobbed him.

“Boss?”

Sharon looked at Venec, asking the same question I’d come to:
Was it time to mob Stosser?

“We don’t know enough,” he said. “He’s better off undistracted,
whatever he’s doing.”

* * *

She had called him, and he had gone. He always did, and
he always would. But it was becoming tiresome.

“You’re acting like a spoiled five-year-old, upset because she
didn’t get a pony on her birthday.”

She sat comfortably in her chair, in the town house that was
clearly not hers; the decor was all wrong for her usual tastes, too exotic and
crowded with knickknacks. It had a decidedly masculine feel. Masculine and
magical. And darker than Ian Stosser was comfortable associating with his baby
sister.

“I am acting like an adult, determined to do what is necessary
to prevent something terrible from happening.”

He tore his attention away from a particularly fierce African
mask on the wall and looked at her. “You’ve been saying that for three years
now. No, four. Tell me, Aden—what terrible things have happened? When has the
sky fallen?”

Her face moved through a variety of emotions, settling on
scorn. “It’s a joke to you, isn’t it?”

“No, Aden. Never a joke. You’ve seen the good we can do. You
were part of it!” She had helped him corral the trickster imp, setting up the
capture and punishment of a man who had imprisoned his wife and son for years
with magic.

“That was different.”

Different: because it had involved a nonhuman and a Null. She
had no problem with them being tracked down, identified, and punished by
external sources. Only Talent should be exempt. Only Council should be allowed
to judge Council.

“We’re not special, Aden. We’re just human. And we need to be
held liable for what we do—to everyone, not just a star chamber. You knew that
once.”

“No, that was always your folly. I interpret a jury of her
peers differently.”

It was an old disagreement, and one they were unlikely to
settle now, if ever. But the new twist in her argument had him particularly
concerned.

He picked up the folders that were on the desk, the simple
silver sigil pressed into the paper unmistakable, and waved them at her, feeling
frustration build. “Aden, you can’t, you didn’t… Aden, sorcerers? Using their
town house—what deal have you made, Aden? Why? They’re extreme even by Council
standards!”

She didn’t even glance at the folders. “Use the tools that come
to hand. Isn’t that what we were taught?”

They had been. The Stossers were pragmatic, practical, and
focused at all times. It was their inheritance, their destiny. Not to lead—they
had no desire for the spotlight, his gift of charisma notwithstanding—but to
guide, to take whatever form was needed and shape the future into the history
they desired. They, meaning Council. The Stossers had been Council since the
first generation on American soil.

Ian might have changed his desires but not his means. For him
to take offense at Aden’s actions would be to be offended at his own, to find
the way he had manipulated and shoved his PUPs offensive, disgusting.

Self-disgust was nothing new to Ian Stosser.

“Ian, I know you’re struggling.”

His spine stiffened, although his face remained as much a mask
as the objects on the wall.

“There’s no shame attached if you let it go. As you say, you
did good. You can take what you’ve learned and put it to better use. I’ll help
you....”

“More acceptable to your usage, you mean. Aden, do you really
think shame, fear of admitting failure, is what keeps me going?”

Of course she did. She couldn’t imagine what else might drive
him so hard.

The faint touch of a ping slid across his awareness, searching
for him, sliding off his walls, and was gone. Lou. Whatever it was, it could
wait.

“Aden.” His entire world had narrowed to her, this woman who
was still, to him, a little girl, looking for her big brother to somehow save
the day. “Don’t do this. We’ve just put the
Cosa
back together—what you’re doing could destroy it forever.”

“Destroy it? Or remake it into what it should have been? I’m
not a monster, Ian. Despite what you’re thinking. I don’t want to rule the world
or cast down others…but there’s no reason to let others rule us. Not when they
cannot understand what we do, what we are. I want to protect that, too.
Ian.”

He stalked to the far end of the room and stared out the window
at the city below. She must hate it here, the Schuylkill River barely visible in
the distance. Aden always returned to the water, either a lake large enough you
couldn’t see across or the ocean. Endless waves, washing away at the shore.
Patience and the long view. He, on the other hand, saw all too well what
happened in the short-term, the immediate world.

Two sides of the same coin, and therefore unable to ever see a
problem the same way.

“These people…” He gestured around him, indicating the owners
of this town house and everything it represented, “if they are allowed to win,
it will be Chicago all over again.”

“What happened in Chicago was the proper order of things.”

“No, it was not.” But he said it without heat: had she agreed
with him, ever, she would have been on his side, supporting what he did with
PUPI, not trying to stop him at every turn.

“We allowed killers to walk free, Aden. Not just
killers—coldblooded murderers. Whatever you might think about our origins, our
destiny…” His voice dropped. “They murdered children, Aden.”

A shudder went through her slender body, and her head, crowned
with red hair a darker auburn than his own, dipped toward her chest. “It was an
accident, a terrible accident. Allowing others to judge, dragging the story out
into the public eye, would not have changed a thing.”

His jaw hurt from not clenching his teeth, from biting back the
words he wanted to say, from not taking her and shaking her until some decency,
some compassion broken open in her brilliant mind. “It was murder. And I will
never stop until I can prove it and force them to justice. No matter how many
years have passed.”

“And when you do that, you will destroy the Council that
absolved them, as well. You will shatter the Council itself, to defend those who
are already dead.”

The crux of their argument, finally out and spoken. “If it
comes to that. Yes.”

If she could strike him down now, she would. If she could bind
him somehow, stop him, she would. She had tried; tried and failed. She had tried
to strike at him through his pups, the embodiment of his goal, and failed there,
as well—and in the failing, been censured by the very organization she fought so
hard to protect.

His heart broke for her, a little. But only a little.

He had only one defense left. “If you stand with these people,
Aden, these sorcerers. If you stand with them and their goals…I do not know you.
You are no sister of mine.”

“It’s too late, Ian. You’re going to have to be the one who
yields.”

He stared at her, serene again. “I won’t.”

“I know.”

Two sides of the coin; but only one could come out on top. He
kissed her on the cheek, a caress she allowed, and let himself out, back onto
the street.

He did not look up to see if she watched him walk away.

Chapter 12

Two years ago, the news that a storm-seer had foreseen
the deaths of both my boss and my friend might have freaked me out. After those
two years, seeing what we had seen, I was still freaked out but functional.

“So, we have two cases. Find a serial killer before anyone else
dies, and figure out who wants to kill the boss, and stop it.” And Wren. Who
would want to kill a Retriever? Hire them, fire them, scare them off, yeah. But
kill? Okay, this was Wren—that was a more complicated question. But the fact
that Ellen saw them both in the same vision suggested they were connected.
Didn’t it?

Venec lifted three fingers, then folded one down halfway. “Two
and a half cases, really. If we’re counting Valere’s attempted break-in in
progress.”

He was still cranky about that. Not that Wren was involved, but
that I’d known and not told him.

“Being hired to prevent it is not the same as being hired to
solve it. Anyway, that wasn’t a PUPI case. And I only suspected.” A potential
serial killer I could handle. The boss in danger I could handle. Setting myself
up against Wren had the potential to get messy. Especially if we were supposed
to be finding out what was gunning for her, too. What if something we did caused
her to get hurt or die? Oh, god, was that the connection? I felt queasy.

“It’s my reputation on the line as much as it is hers.” Venec
sounded miffed, like he thought I was trying to avoid investigating. I wasn’t.
Okay, I was.

“I know,” I said out loud, pitched just enough to carry to him
and not be heard by any of the others in the room, who were ostentatiously
ignoring us. Ellen and Sharon had settled in on the far side of the room; they
were talking quietly, intently. Pietr, meanwhile, was going over a map spread
out on the table, sticking pins into locations and then moving them around. He
could have been performing a spell or trying to map out Starbucks locations, for
all I could tell. “I just…really hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with this and
especially not in the middle of
this
.”

“Oh, you mean because you hoped something would be easy?”

And there, in the middle of stress and complications and
worries, surrounded by coworkers and near-strangers: the touch of warmth and
affection, core to core.

I’d been fighting against the Merge for a year now; we both
had. Even when we gave way for the sake of work, we still fought, resisting any
external force that tried to make us dance to its tune. We’d fought so hard,
we’d refused to see the benefits, too.

Knowing someone had your back and actually feeling them at your
back, the rock-solid assurance that they weren’t going anywhere; the difference
between the two was chalk and cheese. I don’t know why Ben had changed his mind,
but for me—well, once I admitted I was being dumb, I didn’t want to be dumb any
longer.

For now, though, I accepted the touch, returned it, and then
shut the connection down. It was still there; if we wanted it, it would be
there. But it wasn’t needed right now.

“Can we at least table the question until she actually breaks
in and steals whatever it is she’s stealing?”

“Yeah. About that.”

I’d sensed Sergei standing there, waiting, but his intrusion
into the conversation still startled me.

“About that?” Venec prompted the older man.

“I don’t think the museum directors will authorize hiring
anyone competent to regain whatever is stolen.”

They stared at each other a long while, and I was shut out
entirely of whatever was going on, either through XY connection or something
else.

“They hired you.” Venec sounded resigned, as though it were
merely a confirmation of something he’d long suspected about the world.

“Classic case of the left hand having no idea what the right is
doing.” Sergei was being suavely consoling, which he did annoyingly well.
“Security wanted the best protection they could manage, to placate the Board, so
they hired you. The Board, for reasons of their own I’m not at liberty to
discuss, wanted something to disappear without a trace—so they hired Wren. If
you ever speak of this, I will break your jaw.”

He was talking to both of us now.

“You can try,” Ben said, and he was speaking for both of us,
then, his lips pulled back in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Children,” I said, breaking into the moment before they
started actually bumping chests. “We’re all professionals here, remember. Ben,
he wasn’t threatening me. At least, not that way. And if he was, I could defend
myself quite well, thank you. And, Sergei?” I looked up at him—and then up
again, because he was a tall bastard. “Don’t ever threaten me. Wren might be
able to steal anything, but I know how to make you disappear.”

And then I smiled, a real smile, so that he knew we were all
friends together. He smiled back. There was an awful lot of teeth-baring going
on in that room.

The moment might have gone somewhere, but Ellen’s voice, raised
into almost a wail, broke in.

“But then where does it come from?”

“We don’t know.” Sharon’s voice had the same tone my mentor’s
used to get, when I was being particularly intense about something that had no
answer, or at least no satisfying one.

“But if we don’t know what causes it or where it comes from,
then why did Denise say… She promised them!”

I left the boys to their teeth-baring and went across the room.
Pietr had seemingly disappeared. Upset women weren’t usually enough to stress
him, but maybe it was just a cumulative overload.

“What did Denise promise?” Densie, I was guessing, was the
mysterious charismatic in the Park.

“She said… When she came to us, she said that we were special,
that we had abilities…” Ellen made a noise like a snort, full of disgust, and
the diffident, worried girl disappeared for a moment under a flash of fire. “The
younger girls ate it up. When you’re fourteen, you want someone to come and tell
you that you’re special, that you have a destiny. I should have known better.
But I was so tired, so bored of being different, of having weird things happen
and nobody could tell me why, nobody would believe me… I fell, same as the
younger ones. But she was as full of shit as the doctors who told me I was just
making things up....”

Hah. I’d been right. “What else did she say, Ellen?”

*push her* Venec in my brain, although he stayed at the other
side of the room, not wanting to crowd Ellen.

*back off* I sent, with a wash of irritation that he was trying
to tell me how to do my job. The irony of that hit me a second later, with the
backwash of his own amusement.

“What else did Denise tell you?”

“That together we could become something stronger, a force that
nobody would be able to ignore.” The words had the weight of a speech to them,
rehearsed and often repeated, until they were embedded in Ellen’s memory. “That
if we all worked together, with her as the center, we could do anything. That
nobody would ever doubt us or overlook us again.”

“She was trying to use them as signal boosters.” Sharon sounded
incredulous.

“Low-res, probably.” Pietr had joined us at some point, and it
became a three-way conversation, not so much excluding Ellen as flowing over
her. “The woman, I mean. Most covens were originally formed that way, a strong
Talent gathering lesser ones or sensitive Nulls, their abilities layering to
create a more powerful community.”

Back in the back-when, before Founder Ben discovered the actual
basis of Talent, how to best channel and use current. When we were called
witches or warlocks or sorcerers and magic was something uncertain and
unpredictable.

“That’s why only girls?” It made sense, in that crazy
makes-no-sense kind of way. “I bet she insisted they all be virgins, too.”
Sexuality had been big in the bad old days. There were still some people who
insisted purity—or lack thereof—enhanced your abilities, but I’d never seen
proof one way or the other.

“Did she really think she’d be able to take their ability
somehow?” Sharon was incredulous. “Is that even possible?”

“No. Not that I’ve ever heard, anyway.” And between the bunch
of us, we’d heard almost everything, at this point. Stosser might know more, but
we didn’t know where he was, to ask.

“So how the hell…?” I could practically see the activity inside
Pietr’s head. It wasn’t really the point, and way down on the priority list
right now, but we were trained to figure things out and ferret out information,
and we had an actual source here. Like a three-headed hound, we all turned to
Ellen, who looked like she wanted to run into the bathroom and slam the door but
was too scared to move.

“How did Denise say she was going to strengthen you?”

Venec’s question, his voice low but still carrying easily
across the room, seemed to prod her into a response.

“She taught us how to meditate, to let our magic flow into her,
like rivers going into the ocean, and then she’d send it back to us,
stronger....”

Sharon made an impatient sound, a cross between a tsk and a
harrumph. “It doesn’t work that way.”

That got our rabbit’s dander up. “How do you know? How do you
know that she couldn’t do it?”

Sharon looked like she was going to launch into a lecture on
what was and wasn’t possible, but I shook my head slightly and, thankfully, she
caught it. She’d forgotten that Ellen hadn’t been trained the way we had, so to
her, anything was as impossible as the other.

“The rules of current are pretty well-known by now,” Pietr
said. “Have been for a couple hundred years. We’re learning how to pool our
abilities, more effectively and consistently than the way they did in covens,
but actually taking ability from one person and putting it into another? Can’t
be done. And from Nulls? You can’t develop what’s not there.”

Our rabbit had a stubborn streak, because his words just made
her set herself more firmly in defense of the woman who had lured and abandoned
her. “Just because you haven’t seen it before doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Since that’s pretty much the basis of all investigation—facts,
not theories—Ellen had us there. The feeling of amused pride was a surprise,
until I realized that it was coming from Venec, not me, and he was proud of
Ellen, not us.

*shut up* I thought at him crossly.

“All this is fascinating,” Sergei said in a dry enough voice
that it was clear he didn’t find it fascinating at all. “But I’m not seeing
where it gets us any closer to finding out who may be gunning for your boss and
my partner, or how to stop it.”

“Tall, Dark and Null over there is right,” I said, using a
nickname I’d heard PB use once or twice. “Focus, people. Sergei, thanks for the
info. We’re on the job. Can you take Ellen somewhere and feed her?” And keep
both of them out of our way, I really meant. “And if you hear from Wren,
anything at all, let us know the minute you hang up the phone, okay?”

He looked like he was going to say something sarcastic, then
just nodded and stood up, reaching out a hand for Ellen. She took it with a kind
of relief that confirmed what I’d been thinking; she was finding being around
Talent unnerving, never mind she was one.

It might be too late to do anything other than teach her basic
control and put her back into the Null world. But that was someone else’s
problem. Right now, our job was to stop anyone else—known or unknown—from
getting killed.

Once the two outsiders were gone, Venec took control of the
show.

“Priority goes to the case we actually have information on.
Pietr, you be the conduit back to the office.” Pietr nodded, and his eyes took
on the slightly hazy look of someone in fugue state. It wasn’t a direct line,
the way a conference call would be, but it distracted fewer of us, and whoever
was in the office would be able to hear what we were saying, even if they
couldn’t respond directly.

“All right. What do we know about our Decade Killer?”

He’d given the vivisectionist a name. I wasn’t sure if that was
good or bad, but it simplified things, differentiating him from Stosser and
Wren’s maybe-killer still out there.

I reeled off the known facts. “Kills Talent. Males, between the
ages of thirty and sixty. Mostly but not all white—that could just be the
logistics of where he’s killing—Montreal, San Diego…”

“We’ll see a difference in Philly, then. More mixed
community.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Venec said. “San Diego’s a vastly different
population pool than Montreal. Financial background of the victims?”

The details of the file came back to me, on command.
“Blue-collar to white, running a gamut similar to that of ages…nothing extreme
in either end. Lonejack and Council, both. Steady citizens. Although there could
have been homeless people thrown into the mix and they’d never been found or
reported.”

We weren’t the police or the Feds; even with our contacts and
the local help, we still didn’t have the resources they did. I could feel the
tension in the room rise, humming through everyone’s core, as we considered the
magnitude of information we didn’t have. Pietr was right; these two might not be
the first, only the found.

“One thing that’s bothering me,” Sharon said.

“Only one?” Pietr looked surprised.

“Shut up. Thirty years from the first killings we know about
until now. Either our guy started young, or he’s no spring chicken now.”

“No age-enforced retirement in that field,” Venec said.
“Killers might pause—for whatever reason—but they don’t stop. Not guys like
this. Not unless they’re stopped.”

“Yes, but—”

“What about my kenning?” I said to Venec, suddenly. In all
this, I’d almost—not forgotten, because you didn’t forget something like that,
or at least I didn’t, but pushed aside. But now that the thought rose up again,
I could feel/taste/smell the vision all over again.