The Undead Pool

Edden smiled. “She’s downtown, under the streets with Jenks looking for you. Bis, too. Apparently your aura has shifted and he can’t find you. Ah, Rachel? I don’t want to know about those two cadavers in your front room, but they’d better be gone tomorrow. Okay?”

Nodding, I turned away, blinking fast. The memory of Ivy’s last expression passed over me, confusing the mystics and prompting a flurry of discussion over I, us, and we. Ivy and Jenks were looking for me. I knew they would, and I felt loved.

Edden pulled the phone from his ear, ended the call, and hit Jenks’s number instead. “Half the city is looking for you. The only reason we found you first was because of Trent.”

Trent? How had he known where I was? And why hadn’t he come to get me?

Betrayed, the mystics hummed, and I shoved it aside. Trent hadn’t betrayed me. He’d told Edden how to find me, and that was more than he really needed to do.

No, betrayed! a single mystic screamed, and I spun, hearing a new meaning in the rustling from the dark. An image of glowing eyes burst in my thoughts, ignored until now.

“It’s them!” I shouted, wild magic a sudden, painful pulse.

“Down!” David shouted, falling on me.

I hit the ground, watching as the two surrendering vampires with us fell, groaning. The soft retort of twin shots echoed an instant later. Swearing, David shoved my head down and crawled to them, Edden joining him with a frantic haste as they jammed whatever was handy onto gaping wounds that glinted wetly in the dark.

We were under attack and I could do nothing, struggling with a splinter of a Goddess bent on revenge. “Not this time,” I gasped, wrenching control back. “Make a circle. A circle!”

I gave them an outlet, and a circle sprang up around us, humming with an unreal but familiar sensation. I wasn’t connected to a line. It was as if I had a direct line to the divine, my every wish granted. Even the ugly ones, if I wasn’t careful.

“Damn, Rachel, you’re glowing,” David said as he glanced up, his hands bloodied, and I looked at myself, scared. I was, the mystics’ energy leaking out of my pores.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I said as I got up. It was better. Somehow it was getting better, and I wavered only slightly as David and Edden rose as well, standing beside me and safe in my circle.

My lip curled as Ayer sauntered out of the dark with about twenty men, all dressed alike with those damn little caps. How could I have ever thought he looked like Kisten? Ayer’s soul was ugly. He was nothing like Kisten. Careful, I thought, not wanting to get the mystics riled up and out of control, but a small part of me was halfway to letting them have their way. Humming, the mystics darted in and out of me with little zings of power. We’d found common ground. I didn’t understand why, but they were finally listening to me.

The Free Vampires stopped eight feet back with Ayer coming a few feet closer. He motioned for his men to start laying a thick electrical cord in a circle about us, and I stifled a shiver. We were safe in my mystic-born circle, but it was a trap. I’d managed to gain control of this small fraction. I’d lose it if he took them from me.

“Looks like you’ve got a handle on it, Morgan,” he said, and I tried to flatten my hair. Trent’s hair floated when he did magic. I’d always thought it was because of the ever-after energy, but maybe it was mystics.

“Then you’d be wrong,” I shot back.

He turned. “Bring her down,” he said as he walked away. “Kill the rest.”

“Sir?”

“You want them to talk?” he shouted, clearly disgusted. “Kill them!”

Edden shifted his weight, his hand on his pistol. “They can’t do anything if we’re in this circle, can they?”

A howl split the night, bringing Ayer’s expression to a frozen stiffness. “That was supposed to have been taken care of,” he said, and the man next to him fidgeted as David began to smile.

“We got the mystics out, but Smith hasn’t checked in, sir.”

More howls, this time closer. It was my pack, a fact I knew for certain thanks to a wandering mystic bringing me back an image of my tattoo.

“This was supposed to have been taken care of!” Ayer raged as his men began retreating, one by one and in pairs. For all their bloodlust, vampires did not make good soldiers. Shaggy hunched shadows were padding out from the abandoned homes and rusted cars, pushing them along. A low growl and a bark made one man fall, and he scrambled to his feet, backing up fast.

“I never thought I’d be happy to see a mob of Weres.” Edden drew closer as a thin man in jeans and an open shirt eased confidently out of the dark. No gun, no weapon, and tattoos everywhere, he came up to Ayer with a confidence that couldn’t be faked.

“Leave, or you will have to fight for your life,” the man said. Behind him, the sound of harsh panting became obvious.