Blood Lines (12 page)

Exterminators
wasn’t Cynna’s nickname for that bunch. It was what they’d called themselves.

“However,” Ruben was saying, “because these events lie within our jurisdiction, we will retain some control. MCD agents will be loaned to us and will report to Special Agent Croft.”

Cynna’s eyebrows shot up. How had Ruben pulled that off? On paper, the Unit looked like part of MCD. In practice, Ruben operated free of the nominal chain of command, which did not endear him to the rabidly territorial head of MCD.

She glanced at the presidential adviser. Had she leaned on MCD? What was going on here?

Ruben shifted in his chair. “So far I’ve referred only to ASEs within our borders, but the United States wasn’t the only country affected by what happened last night. For example, in Dublin a pair of banshees—”

The bald guy snorted. “If I had a dollar for every Irishman who claims to have seen a banshee, I could pay off the federal debt.”

Ruben nodded politely. “Perhaps, though I believe there are somewhat less than eight trillion Irishmen. But irrelevant. This sighting was witnessed by the Japanese prime minister—you may recall he’s on an official visit to Great Britain—as well as three journalists and two members of Parliament. And that was a single example. Ms. Pearson brought me a report, which I’m unable to share with you due to security constraints, but it confirms my gut feeling that we are dealing with a worldwide phenomenon.”

Holy shit.

“Perhaps all of the consequences of this unknown phenomenon have already occurred. Perhaps not. My strong feeling is that we’ve seen only the first wave—that more will follow.”

One of the Unit’s agents said quietly, “One to ten, Ruben?”

Ruben gave him the faintest of smiles but spoke generally to all of them. “Sean’s in the habit of asking me to pluck a number from thin air to back up my hunches. On a scale of one to ten, he’s asking now how certain I am that I’m right.” He looked at Sean. “I’d give this one a ten.”

Cynna shivered suddenly. She knew about Sean’s scale, including the part Ruben hadn’t mentioned. Ten meant Ruben was slightly more sure of this hunch than he was of gravity.

“Yet we need more than my gut feelings. We need to know what happened, whether it could happen again, what the consequences might be. The president has asked me to create a task force to answer these questions. Dr. Fagin will head this task force.”

Einstein-hair was doodling on a pad of paper. He looked up to smile vaguely at them.

“Archbishop Brown and Ms. O’Shaughnessy have also agreed to serve, and Hikaru Ito will be joining them soon. Dr. Fagin has the authority and the budget to add to his staff as needed. They will require your utmost cooperation and have been granted security clearances that will allow you to freely answer any questions.”

He shifted again. Cynna hoped he wasn’t having one of his bad spells, when his muscles ached constantly. He’d probably been up most of the night.

“Some of you have already received your assignments and are eager to be off. I think you understand now why I delayed your departures for this meeting. Before you go, you need to know two more things. First, I will be unable to monitor individual investigations as I normally do, nor can even one of my Gifted agents be pulled from the field to assist with coordination. We have too many fires to put out. Therefore, for the duration of this emergency, field agents will operate with full field authority. Get your codes from Ida before you leave.”

Full field authority. For
all
of them. That slid down Cynna’s gullet and settled in her stomach with all the comfort of a lumpy rock.

“Second, you are to consider this morning’s briefing highly confidential. Full field authority permits you to reveal classified information if such revelation is essential to your investigation. It does not allow you to discuss it around the water cooler.”

There was a bustle of papers and movement as Ruben dismissed those agents who had their assignments. Cynna was so busy assimilating the morning’s shocks that she didn’t notice Lily until she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Come on. You’re with me on this one.” Lily grimaced. “Though we’ll have to use your office. They haven’t assigned me one yet.”

EIGHT

LILY
felt short, tense, and awkward as she kept up with Cynna’s longer legs. She needed to explain that she hadn’t asked to be put in charge; that was Ruben’s doing. But they couldn’t discuss that or any of the morning’s shocks in the corridor.

When they reached the elevator she thought of a way to break the silence. “Car trouble?”

Cynna grimaced. “Son of a bitch turned belly-up on I-235. I should’ve taken the Metro, like usual. Cars hate me.”

The doors whooshed open and they joined three others. Lily didn’t know any of them, but Cynna exchanged nods with an older man. After that, they followed the usual elevator protocol, pretending they didn’t see the others trapped in the little box with them. “All cars?” she asked. “Or just that one?”

“Any of them I drive too often. Computers hate me, too. So do cell phones and remote controls, and I gave up wearing a watch years ago.”

“Wait a minute. You use a cell phone.”

“Sure. And most of the time it works. But if I leak, it doesn’t.”

“Leak?” Lily said. “Leak magic, you mean? I know some of the Blood don’t deal well with technology, but I hadn’t heard of any Gifted having problems.”

“Most don’t, but—”

The doors opened. Cynna finished explaining as they left the elevator for a long hallway. “I wear a lot of my magic on my skin. It’s locked up in the
kilingo
and
kielezo
—the two kinds of what you’d call tattoos—but sometimes there’s a discharge, like static electricity. Then things go wacko.”

“Magic can interfere with technology?”

“Sure, but the little bit that floats around loose is weak, not enough to . . .” Cynna fell silent as the implications sank in. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.” Loose magic hadn’t been a problem before, but if last night’s phenomenon hit again . . . Lily added that to her list of things to worry about when she had time. “What’s ‘full field authority’? ”

“Scary.” Cynna stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like the others spaced with metronomic precision along the hall.

“I was hoping for a more precise definition,” Lily said dryly.

“Just a minute. Put your hand here, next to mine.” Cynna flattened her palm on the door above the knob. “I want to key it to you.”

Puzzled, Lily did.

“There,” she said after a moment, and moved her hand to turn the knob. “You’ll be able to open it if I’m not around.”

“Most people use keys.”

“So do I.”

Not the usual sort, obviously. Lily followed her into a small office made smaller by a cacophony of objects: a desk bearing the expected computer and such, yes, but also a sitar, two dead plants, a human skeleton, a bookcase crammed with peculiar objects—the shrunken head was an eye-grabber—piles of baskets and files and papers, and a little fountain.

To her surprise, the fountain was burbling away. “Where do you pace?”

That brought a grin. “It’s a challenge. Full field authority,” Cynna said, grabbing a stack of files from the visitor’s chair and dropping them on the floor, “means you can commandeer just about anything, no forms to fill out, no questions asked. Supplies, personnel, weapons, airplanes . . . technically you could call in the army, but I don’t think anyone’s ever done that.”

Cynna was right. That was scary. “Ruben said something about a code.”

She nodded and plunked herself down on the corner of her desk. “On the rare occasions when a Unit agent is granted full field authority, he or she gets a code number. That’s the authorization, but it’s only good for a short time. Ida will tell us how long our codes are good and what the procedure will be to invoke them.”

There was plenty she needed to tell Cynna, plenty she needed to ask. But Lily wanted to clear the air first. “Cynna, I told Ruben you should be in charge, but—”

“Whoa!” Cynna held up both hands. “Is that what has you as stiff as if rigor had set in? I don’t
want
to be in charge. Ruben knows that.”

“I’ve only been an agent for two months. You’ve got the seniority, the knowledge—”

“Not to mention the rap sheet.” She grinned. “Didn’t know about that, did you? Penny-ante stuff from when I was young and stupid, but I did some time. It would disqualify me for any part of the Bureau except the Unit. As for my seniority, that’s bullshit.”

“Experience isn’t bullshit.”

“No, but your experience counts more than mine. I’m a Finder, not an investigator. The only cases I’ve handled on my own are missing persons. Kids,” she added, her voice turning soft and sad. “A lot of the time, Ruben sends me to Find kids. Sometimes they’re just lost. Sometimes . . . too often . . . they’ve been kidnapped, raped, hurt. Killed. But even then, someone else puts together the case. I’m not trained for that. You are.”

Lily drew a breath, let it out. “So we’re okay.”

“We are. Sit, if your body will bend now.”

“I’ve been sitting all morning.” Besides, if she sat in that chair, she’d get a crick in her neck looking up at Cynna. “We’re working the case we started last night. The demon summoner.”

Cynna nodded, obviously expecting that. “You should know that I tried to Find Jiri before I left the scene. Bombed.”

“You told me your Gift can only reach a certain distance.”

“About a hundred miles, given a tight, fresh pattern. Which I don’t have for Jiri,” Cynna admitted. “I haven’t seen her in years, so my pattern for her is old. But I still should have been able to Find her if she’d been close enough to control that demon.”

“Did she have to be close? You said summoning and binding were two different things.”

“They are, but you still have to bring the demon here, to our realm, which means bringing it into a summoning circle. There’s no way to do that from a distance.”

That’s what Lily had thought. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. “There were five demons last night, not one. Five demons who attacked the lupi heirs to their clans—three here in the United States and two in Canada. Three of the heirs were killed. So were at least two of the demons, counting the one we killed.”

Cynna stared. “Holy Mother Mary. Five summoners?”

“And maybe three demons still around.” Lily gave her a moment to absorb that. “From what I was told, one of the demons vanished after killing its target. But that doesn’t mean it’s really gone, does it? The one last night mostly vanished, too. It turned shimmery. I almost couldn’t see it.”

“Almost?” Cynna was surprised. “You shouldn’t have been able to see it at all when it was dashtu. I wonder if that means dashtu is part illusion?”

“I’m not following you.”

“A dashtu demon is out of phase with our realm—not quite here, not quite gone. They can’t go dashtu in hell,” she added. “That’s one reason they like to come here. I thought dashtu made them completely invisible, but if you saw something, there must be a degree of illusion involved. Illusion wouldn’t work on you.”

“I saw Gan when she was invisible to others. No shimmer.”

“Huh.” Cynna considered that a moment. “There’s a lot I don’t know, but Gan’s a really young demon. Maybe she can’t phase out as completely as the older ones, so she relies more on illusion. What kind of demons attacked the others? Did you get a description?”

“Only of two of them. They match the one we killed last night: big, built like a hyena with a broad chest and short rear legs, red eyes. A third pair of limbs attached at the chest that end in claws.”

Cynna nodded. “Like the ones we fought in Dis, then.”

“Except for the claws on the forelimbs.” Which made a difference. Lily took a slow breath to steady herself. “Five demons means we’re looking for five people who can summon and bind demons. That suggests a strong, organized conspiracy.”

Cynna frowned. “Maybe not. Give me a minute.” She stared at the fountain, jiggling first one foot, then the other, as if trying to pace sitting down. “Five summoners were needed,” she said slowly. “We can’t get around that. But maybe only one did the binding.”

“How?”

“Theoretically, at the master level—and with binding, that’s what we’re talking about, a demon master—at that level you start getting into demon politics. Politics in hell,” she added, “make the UN look good.”

“I can believe that, but I don’t see where you’re going.”

“It’s because of the way demons are bound to their higher-ups, see? You bind enough low-level demons, or reach for one of the more powerful ones, and you’re treading on some powerful toes. See, the one you’re hooked into is hooked into a more powerful demon, and so on, right up the feeding chain. So your deal can end up involving some of hell’s big muckety-mucks.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “The short version is that our perp could’ve cut a deal with a demon lord, who can bind multiple demons, no problem. Though distance still could be a problem . . . but if the deal involved a demon prince, it wouldn’t be.”

Sickness settled in the pit of Lily’s stomach. “Xitil.”