When the Devil Dances

The four foot tall, green, “fur”-covered, bat-faced biped was swinging its feet back and forth in the chair like a little child for all it was probably over two hundred years old. Unlike virtually every Indowy in O’Reilly’s experience, the Clan Chief of the Triv Clan, all fourteen of them, never seemed worried or flustered by the presence of humans. Either it realized bone deep that humans, omnivores though they might be, were not going to suddenly kill it for some mistake, or it was almost preternaturally courageous. O’Reilly had never figured out which it was.

“Oh, just some minor good news would do,” O’Reilly said, waving the message. “Our old friend is on his way back to Earth. He should already be here, as a matter of fact.”

“Dol Ron,” the Indowy said calmly. “So I had heard. I wonder what mischief he is up to this time?”

“Well, the first visit we lost Hume, shutting down the only official group that was closing in on the secret of the Darhel,” the monsignor said. “The second the Tenth Corps was hacked and the hacking was pinned on the Cybers, who were the only group who was working at breaking the GalTech codes. Oh, and an attempt on the life of Cally O’Neal, which would have destroyed her father. The third was the death of General Taylor, and the elimination of two Société branches. Now this trip. I wonder who is going to die this time?”

“Not a soldier,” Aelool said. “The Cybers would never stop the killing until the last was done. And they are very good assassins.”

“Perhaps we should send a few groups of our own,” O’Reilly said bitterly. “It’s not as if we don’t know the Devil when we see him with our own eyes.”

“Dol Ron is a known quantity,” Aelool said with another grimace. “If he were removed, we would have to develop an information network on a completely different Darhel. Not the easiest thing to do. And then, of course, we could lose it at any time if we run into a ‘Cyber’ moment. It might be well to, sometime in the near future, create another ‘Agreement.’ The only problem being that they are often so entangling.”

“Well, I’m going to pull in my horns and teams,” O’Reilly said. He knew that Aelool had been against the Cyber agreement. The Indowy was clan chief only by dint of being the senior survivor of over fourteen million other clan members; he no longer tended to worry about the odd loss here and there. “As well as sending a warning to some ‘exterior’ groups.”

“The O’Neals?” Aelool asked.

“Yes, among others,” the monsignor answered. “We don’t have a team there anymore; we lost Team Conyers trying to prevent the Ontario sanction. So I think they’ll be on their own. But I’ll warn them that there might be hostile visitors.”

“Keeping the O’Neals, and Michael O’Neal specifically, functional has positive long-term implications,” Aelool said with a nod. “It is a thread that is being monitored at the very height of the Bane Sidhe. I have methods to contact them discreetly; would you prefer that I do so?”

“Go ahead,” O’Reilly said. “And then get ready for a storm.”

* * *

Shari ran her finger up a long scar on Papa O’Neal’s stomach and fingered a twist of gray chest hair. “That was very nice; you’re good.”

“Thanks,” O’Neal said, rolling over without breaking contact and snagging the bottle of muscadine wine he’d left by the side of the bed. “So are you; you wear an old guy out.”

“Fat chance,” Shari said with a chuckle. “I’m pretty old and tired myself.”

“You’re not old at all,” O’Neal said, pulling her closer against him. “You’re no teenager, but I wouldn’t want a teenager in my bed; a person who doesn’t have any scars isn’t worth my time.”

“I don’t have any scars,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding. “See?” She waved down her body. “Well, an appendix scar, but that’s about it.”

“You know what I mean,” O’Neal replied, looking into her eyes. “I think for all the knife slashes and zippers I’ve got on my body, I’ve probably got fewer scars than you. Not many fewer, but fewer.”

“Liar.”

“When you say that, smile,” Mike Senior said, but he smiled as he said it. “Seriously, I made a mistake a long time ago thinking that young and pretty was enough. It’s not; a person who hasn’t been through the fire doesn’t know what the world is about. They think that it’s all sweetness and light. It’s not; the world is at best chiaroscuro. I swear, my ex-wife still believes you can talk to the Posleen and show them the error of their ways. ‘Bring them to the Goddess.’ It makes me want to puke. Especially when I think about all the time and effort the ‘peace at any price’ assholes cost us in the early days of the war. And there are people that are, frankly, five times as bad as the Posleen. The horses don’t have any sense or a way out of their cycle; humans can choose. The fact is that too damned many of them choose evil.”