I braided my hair into a sloppy pigtail and tucked it into my armor neckline, out of the way. I didn’t have time for anything fancy. Wrapping the Glob in a big hanky, I shoved it into a padded pocket.
Since I was never the exact same shape when I went halfsies, all my fighting clothes were made to be adjustable, including the boots. I was furrier than usual today, with a full muzzle and cat ears high on my head. I snarled at the mirror and decided the uber-cool fangs made all the fur worthwhile, though positioning my big knobby fingers on the trigger of most handguns was difficult.
I wondered how my people would handle me going into battle again. The last time I was in mortal danger, I’d come so close to dying that I might have been legally dead for a while. Prior to going through the rift—a magical or maybe dimensional opening—my magic had always healed me in a shift change when I was in danger of death. Post-rift, it had failed me several times; I could no longer count on shifting shape when I received a mortal wound, and healing.
My people had all but imprisoned me for a while, trying to keep me protected. In the intervening months, I had spent a lot of time practicing fighting techniques, practicing shifting, and pushing my skinwalker magic. My magic seemed to be growing more reliable. Probably. Maybe. Sometimes.
But either way, my potential mortality put us all in a dilemma because now I had to think first, act later. Not my strong suit.
To keep my people safe, I had to walk a fine line between being protected and also being front and center in fights so I didn’t come across as weak enough for enemy vamps to successfully challenge me. I had to be visible in dangerous situations or I’d look like a coward. No Dark Queen or leader of fangheads could survive a label ofcowardwithout serious challenges, or even all-out war.For my security teams, that posed a need for balance, offsetting my safety from ambush attack against looking like I had a coward’s yellow stripe up my back, one with a target in the center.
I strapped on the double thigh rig with the matching nine-mils and snapped out the medium grips for the extra-large ones, but pocketed the mediums—just in case I shifted back to fully human form while in the middle of battle. Satisfied with the picture I presented in the mirror, I strode from the room to find the organized chaos of a well-prepared team gearing up for battle. Eli tossed me my Benelli, already in its spine holster. I buckled it on too. The ARGO shotgun had kinda become the trademarked weapon of the Dark Queen.
I checked the loads of both semiautomatics and gave Eli a small nod when he held out a gobag with extra mags and extra ammo for the shotgun. I strapped it on a utility ring at my waist. Everything inside the bag was color-coded for not-vamp and vamp, the ones marked with red for mundane kills, the silver-Sharpie-coded ones for killing most kinds of paranormal creatures. Vamps and weres had lethal allergies to silver. “Wanna tell me what bullets are going to do against a game of magic dodgeball?” I asked.
Eli grunted and pointed to Koun.
Koun, the Dark Queen’s Enforcer and Executioner, aka the chief strategist of Clan Yellowrock, answered for Eli. “My Queen. We have flashbangs, null cuffs, and new null sticks that appear to act as personal protection.” Koun strode to me and threaded two brownish metallic sticks about the size of a hair stick into slits in a leather surface layer of my matte black armor, near my shoulders.
I had thought all the little slits were decorative but apparently not. I didn’t ask where the null sticks came from. They were restricted to military and law enforcement use and the less I knew the better. But these looked different from the null devices I had seen before. “Copper?” I asked.
“Yes. The Seattle coven has acquired the services of ametal witch,” Koun said, as he checked and secured my defensive armor. That should have been Eli’s job as my secondo, or my personal security’s job, but Eli was giving orders into his comms, and Quint was off tonight. She would be ticked that she missed the fighting.
“Metal witch?” I asked.
Koun’s blue Celtic tattoos rose out of the neck of his modern armor and from his sleeves. His armor was black inked with blue to match the tattoos beneath. His long pale hair was braided back into a tight fighting queue. But his weapons were totally different from mine. He carried an ax, two swords, and, on his belt, what looked like fragmentation grenades. He knelt at my feet, which I hated. I opened my mouth to tell him to stand up, but he wasn’t doing the subservient thing. He threaded another null stick near my waist before spinning me around and adding one above my butt, below the Benelli.
Alex, bent over his tablets in the living room, answered my question, “Metal witch. Pietro Gonzalez. Twenty-seven. Survived three childhood witch-cancers. He was born a stone witch but after chemo discovered a special affinity for ore-bearing rocks. He made your null sticks and the latest version of the silver null cuffs. His coven added full coven null workings to them and the coven has described them as beingexceptionally robust.”
Koun said, “They make my undead flesh ache simply handling them.”
I touched one to find it had a very sharp end. Stakes? To nullify a vamp, maybe? “Full coven workings are expensive. Are they really worth it?”
“The local coven has been impressed with the quality and efficacy of the devices. Pietro also makes amazing solid silver athames, which they are praising,” Koun said, as he strapped another blade around my calf.
“Ducky. Hey,” I called out. “I need food. And somebody give me an update. What are we looking at?”
Eli slapped a platter-sized piece of naan folded around a sirloin steak into my hand. I bit in and grunted with appreciation. It was still warm.Holy moly, this is good. A little bit of heaven.
“I got into a nearby resident’s security cams, as well as the null prison’s cams,” Alex said. “Three witches appeared at the edge of a camera view at the null prison. The streets were empty one second and the next second a woman was standing there, then two more. When the three women stepped aside, people began popping into place in groups of three and walking into the shadows. I’m thinking maybe anobfuscationworking for dramatic effect. Like magic. Get it?” Alex chuckled at his very small joke.
I stared at him.
“Right. So. I had to get into the prison’s system to adjust the angle of a camera before I could detect a magical circle in the middle of the street, with the pavement all churned up. An unknown group of attackers spread out into the night and gathered up the street. Then you came in. I was still counting heads and trying to determine species when the witches threw magic workings and knocked out some camera systems.
“As of this time, I have no video from inside or outside but I’m working on it. I have programs open to access more private doorbell and security cameras up and down the street.” Which was technically illegal, but... I didn’t tell him to stop. His fingers danced across the keys and he whispered something I couldn’t make out. “Audio from inside the null prison is coming through, but it’s staticky. As far as I can tell, they’re still under magical attack, with the assumption that the attackers are trying a jailbreak. The prison’s wards are not down. Yet. The witch guards are patching holes in their outer ward but it’s crumbling.”
“How many layers of wards?” I asked.
“Three. And then the null house itself, which should be enough to incapacitate most magical beings.”
“Bruiser?”
“He was at HQ,” Alex said. “He’s securing the premises, turning everything over to Wrassler, and heading to you ASAP with two teams.”
Alex hit a key and Bruiser’s voice came over the speakers. “Gamma team. Two lanes of cover fire when my teams exit. Then immediate lockdown, everyone staysin their rooms. No one in. No one out. High alert and roaming teams inside.”
“Roger that,” Wrassler said. “Voodoo, get your team to the airlock doors—”
