Authors: Saje Williams
Chapter Four
Raven watched as Val threw herself into one of the over-stuffed chairs in the ‘sitting’ room back at his house. “That’s ridiculous,” she snorted, referring to his offhand revelation regarding the Church’s attitude toward magic.
He shrugged. “That’s the way they look at it. I didn’t invent it.”
Val tilted her head and read the line of his lips. “You’re serious.
That’s crazy.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not just screwing with me.”
“Absolutely not. You can’t practice magic without a license. It could get you killed. Right now the clock-tower would be a very unhealthy place to be, considering that it’s crawling with constables and Deacons.”
“And a Deacon is?”
“That’s the magic branch of the Church. They follow the Defender aspect of the Three-Fold God. God’s Hounds. They defend the church from evil magic, which they define as any magic that’s not theirs. They’re very good at hunting warlocks.”
“Not very good at hunting you,” she observed.
“True. But they’re not practiced at hunting vampire warlocks.” He flashed a quick grin. “Especially one who’s immune to any kind of location or detection magic.”
“That’s not all,” she said with a grimace. “You seem to be impervious to psionics, too.”
“You noticed, did you? Tried to read me or something? You’re TAU
and you’re not a mage—it’s a good bet you’re a psi. How powerful?”
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“That’s right,” she sighed. “You
were
an investigator, weren’t you?”
She turned away, shaking her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Raven knew guilt when he saw it. “There’s a guest bedroom upstairs you can use. I’m afraid the larder’s bare, but you can visit the market in the morning. In the meantime, I’d suggest you stay here. I’m going to go look in on the watchtower crowd.”
He knew she wanted to object, but guilt kept her silent. She simply nodded.
He turned, snatching a thread, and snapping it out into a transit tube. The Deacons ignorance of that particular trick made his life infinitely easier, he thought wryly, as he traveled nearly a mile with a single step.
He dropped silently on the peaked roof of the clock-tower and crouched there for several minutes, listening to the murmurs of the men roaming inside. He focused his vampiric senses and listened in on a few of the conversations.
They were clueless, as he expected, but one of them
did
mention something he found slightly alarming. Apparently the Church had stumbled across some of the smuggled weapons, and had put enough of everything together to find
some
connection between them and whatever had happened at the tower. They were still speculating wildly regarding what that may have been.
Good. So far they’re operating on complete guesswork
.
They probably weren’t able to get anything off the dead lycanthrope…at least not yet. They’d have to ship the body to Migar and the Church’s alchemical laboratory there, before they’d be able to discover anything about him. It would be a week in transit, three days in autopsy, and at least a day for the information to return to the locals—
assuming they discovered anything of value in the first place. Their knowledge of chemistry surprised him, but they were still swimming in dark waters when it came to anything like genetics.
Well, it seemed the first thing he and the blonde—
I really need to get
around to asking her name
, he mused—needed
to do from here was to track down the church’s cache. They’d be transporting it to Migar as www.samhainpublishing.com 25
Saje Williams
well, if he didn’t miss his bet, quite possibly with the lycanthrope’s body.
Their wisest course would be to destroy the body and steal the weapons, leaving them with nothing.
He liked that thought. He really didn’t like the Deacons much.
Frustrating them would be a definite bonus to the whole thing. And it would give his new partner something to send back home to make her bosses happy.
Which, as far as he was concerned, would go a long way to alleviate her anger at him for shooting the damn ’thrope in the first place. Even
if
it had been the right thing to do.
And why is it so important she thinks
well of you, Raven?
That voice was back, asking questions he didn’t want to answer, even in the privacy of his own head.
Val woke suddenly, clawing her way out of the chair and facing the shadow standing across the room.
Raven doffed his coat and hat and turned his eyes to her. Something fluttered in the pit of her stomach.
Just hunger,
she told herself, not really sure if she was being completely honest or not. The guy irritated the hell out of her. There was no reason for her to be having this sort of reaction to him.
Then he shocked her by stripping out of his black shirt and tossing it across the back of another chair. His slim, muscular torso gleamed like polished ivory in the dim light from the gas lantern in the corner. His chest was hairless, and completely unscarred, she noted. He drifted from the room without a word. A moment later the shirt vanished from the chair. She stared at the spot it had vacated.
What the hell was that?
she wondered. Why wouldn’t he change his shirt in privacy? Why peel it off right in front of her?
Unless, of course, he hadn’t even noticed she was there. Maybe he
was
that distracted.
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He walked back through the doorway about ten minutes later, chest sheathed in a tight blue linen shirt. His hair looked wet. “That was a quick bath,” she observed.
He ran fingers through his hair and shrugged. “Guess so.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me. Where’s your tub? How do you get hot water to it? You don’t have a staff here, do you? Do you use magic?
Isn’t that risky, considering the Deacons might spot you working mana?”
He just stared at her for a long moment. “I have a shower. With a water heater.”
Her jaw dropped. “Hidden, I suppose.”
“Buried about a hundred feet below the house. I plumbed this place myself—believe me, magic makes the job a
lot
easier. But I’m sure you’d rather use a water closet than a chamber pot. Am I wrong?”
“Water closet?”
“Old Earth term. Means a toilet.”
“We’re trained to handle—“
“—
handle
has a different definition than
appreciate
. Sure you’re trained to handle primitive conditions. Doesn’t mean you have to do it when an alternative is available.”
She frowned. “Okay, sure. So why would you include toilets in your plumbing plan if you don’t need to use one?”
“Sheer perversity. Seriously? Because this is a dimensional station—
and if I get company from anyone not a TAU fanatic, they’d appreciate being able to use decent facilities.”
“And what makes you think I won’t?”
“You getting your panties in a bunch about my shooting that ’thrope, for one thing. I gotta say, TAU’s brainwashing techniques are pretty damn impressive. Nearly every TAU agent I’ve run across is a damn freak for technological purity. I’m not sure why. The worst thing that might happen is that some fifty years in the future, after I’ve been reassigned and the house has fallen into disrepair, someone might come along and accidentally unearth the water heater. The wizards will debate its purpose for a few weeks and forget all about it. It won’t contaminate shit.”
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Saje Williams
She opened her mouth to object and snapped it shut again. “You have a point.”
“Glad you think so—“
“What the hell is
that?
” She pointed past him at a huge shape taking up most of the doorway behind him. “Is there a pony in the house?”
“Nope,” Raven answered. “That’s actually my dog, Cerberus.”
Cerberus grinned at her. He was a huge beast, easily two hundred pounds, with short black hair and a wide, wedge-shaped head.
Unsettling intelligence stared out of his black eyes. He lifted his head to stare up at Raven, uttering a murmuring grunt.
“Cerberus, this is—umm…” Raven looked at her. “What the heck’s your name?”
“Valerie Winn. Everybody calls me Val.”
“Cerberus, this is Val. You don’t have to eat her, okay?”
She could have sworn the dog nodded and said “okay.”
What if it had? It wasn’t as though it was impossible. Not in this day and age. But it sure made her curious. “Hi, Cerberus. Are you a good dog?”
The dog uttered a grunting moan that sounded suspiciously like a question aimed at Raven.
A shocked expression flitted briefly across the vampire’s face before it smoothed itself back into undead passivity. “No,” he said emphatically.
The dog chuffed.
Val snickered. “Now that’s low.”
“What?”
“Lying to a dog is about as low as you can get.”
“What makes you think I was lying to him?”
“He sure thinks so,” she answered. “Look at him.”
Raven glared down at Cerberus, who remained unruffled. It was hard to intimidate a two-hundred pound intelligent canine, even despite its inherent tendencies to follow pack order. The big lug had a sense of humor, and liked very much to give the boss a hard time when the situation called for it, regardless of the fact Raven was the pack alpha.
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He groaned inwardly. There was no way in hell he was going to translate the dog’s comments for Val.
He
wasn’t sure how to take them—
he definitely didn’t want to find out what
her
reaction would be.
“You’re a weird guy, Raven.”
A weird guy. When I was a teenager that would have been insulting.
Now it’s a compliment. Funny how these things change.
A lot changes over the course of a couple hundred years.
“I’ll show you to the shower, if you like.”
“I’d like.”
Raven set her up with a shower and wandered back to the sitting room, sinking into a stuffed chair with muted groan. The arms and corpse were likely being shipped out, either tonight or with the tide in the morning. The morning seemed most likely. They’d be put on a galley headed for Migar, which would take about a week to get there.
It would most likely follow the coastline closely, and drop anchor at night, so he’d have no problem slipping aboard and liberating the items.
His only real concern was what to do with Val while he was working that end of things.
That goddamn gown had to go, he decided. It was decidedly absurd to expect a female agent, particularly a TAU agent skilled in armed and unarmed combat, to wear those damn constricting things just to blend in. That was one reason he really didn’t approve of sending female agents in to places like this in the first place.
Nothing sexist about it…women expected to conform to local styles and mores were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to being able to protect themselves, or to perform half the physical tasks the typical mission might entail. He thought the whole thing demeaning and dangerous, and lobbied against it every time he had the opportunity.
He leaned forward, rubbing his chin. There
was
a way he could circumvent all of this, but the chances of her going for it were pretty damn slim. He’d been experimenting lately with transformational magic—
probably one of the most complex of all the disciplines—and he thought it quite likely he could alter her appearance far enough to allow her to www.samhainpublishing.com 29
Saje Williams
pass as a male. He could do a complete transfiguration, of course, but he seriously doubted she’d go for
that.
Then they could hire a couple of horses and ride up the coast. Might run into a few bandits, but he considered bandits to be nothing more than a chance for a little exercise.
His head snapped up as he heard someone coming down the long walkway in front of the house. It took him less than half a second to reach the door, gazing through the self-installed peephole to see who it was.
Cerberus barked from somewhere out in the yard.
Sergeant Goban and his sole companion froze mid-step as the big dog’s warning reverberated through the chill night air. Raven grinned.
Yes, Cerberus could have that effect on people.
Stand down,
he thought to the dog, and the barking stopped.
He opened the door with a innocuous glance toward the eastern horizon. The way he figured it, he had a couple hours left until dawn. He needed to talk Val into the transformation and affect the spell; he really didn’t want to chit-chat with Goban. “Do you know what time it is?”
“About two hours before the cock’s crow,” Goban grunted. “I need your help.”
“Really? You have no idea how busy I am right now. This is a very bad time.”
“Not my idea,” the watch sergeant grunted. “This comes straight down from the Provincial Governor.”
Oh, really?
That piqued Raven’s interest. “Come in.”
Goban responded with a quick nod and turned to his companion, a young freckle-faced constable. “Stay here. I’ll be out in a moment.”
The man saluted and turned to stand in the middle of the walkway, fisting the pommel of the sword at his waist and sweeping the front of the property with his gaze.
Once inside, Goban waited for Raven to shut the door. “You have anything to drink?”
The vampire thought about it. “Yes, actually. I don’t usually keep alcohol in the house, but I happen to have a bottle of excellent wine left 30
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by a visitor some time back. Have a seat and I’ll retrieve it and a glass for you.”