Biting Cold (36 page)

“They sent a man to this House who rationed blood, who sent our vampires into the sun, who stripped us of our protections. Are those the acts of an entity that supports us? That protects us? Or are those the actions of an entity that tests us and provokes us? The world is different than it was a hundred years ago, and it is worthwhile to seriously consider whether membership is, as they say, worth the privilege.”

He looked across the sea of vampires. “To excommunicate a House is a profound action. Not being affiliated with the GP would not be an easy course. There is a stigma, of course, and the concern we lack protection if we are not affiliated. But this House is financially secure and would be able to maintain itself without the GP. It has connections throughout this city, including Merit’s grandfather, the Apex of the North American Central Pack, water nymphs, fairies, the Lake Michigan siren, and potentially the Queen of the Fae. My friends, my brothers, my sisters,
I am not afraid
.”

He stood up again, walked to the edge of the platform, and
lifted up a small box that had been placed there. There was a slit in the top, just wide enough for a piece of paper or two.

It was a ballot box.

“We are not colonials of the British Empire. We are citizens of these United States, and our ways are different. I say we make our own decision. We can wait for a formal excommunication to be handed down tomorrow. Or we can act tonight. We can leave the GP on our own terms. We can establish a new kind of vampire organization which recognizes our contemporary needs.”

He put the box down again and slipped his hands into his pockets. He must have had doubts about leaving the GP, but you’d never have known it to look at him.

“All I ask is that you vote your consciences,” he said. “If you do that, whatever the outcome, I will support it. I will be proud of it.” He nodded once. “You are dismissed.”

The vampires filed out of the room again, and the chatter started immediately.

“What are you going to do?”

“Is this completely crazy?”

Their doubts were loud, but at the same time there was a bit of nervously hopeful energy. I guessed these weren’t the types of decisions Novitiates were usually allowed to make.

When the room was mostly clear, Ethan stepped down from the platform and walked to me, hand extended. I took it.

“What do you think they’ll do?” I asked.

“It hardly matters,” he said. “The decision isn’t important. The action is. Either we recommit to the GP and beg for their forgiveness, or we reject their authority on terms of our own. These are exciting times, Sentinel.”

Hand in hand, we walked to the ballroom door. “By exciting, do you mean moderately terrifying?”

“I wasn’t going to use those words, but if the shoe fits…”

“
Que será, será
,” I said. “Now, let’s go kill an angel.”

Okay, that had sounded a lot better in my head.

We assembled in the Ops Room: the messenger, the sorceress, the vampires. And on the phone, a sorcerer, another sorceress, and a shifter.

We hardly fit around the conference table, but that wasn’t the important part. We were a team, working together to solve a problem, even if Darius would have preferred we simply let the world spin around us.

We were also working the low-tech way. Instead of whiteboards or touch screens, we’d placed giant sheets of white paper in the middle of the table, and everyone had a permanent marker.

“So,” Luc said, “we know the actual battle goes down with a sword. That’s Ethan’s job.” He pointed at Ethan with his marker, then wrote
SWORD
on one end of the page.

“And on the other end,” Lindsey said, “is actually getting Dominic to the battle spot. That’s where the summoning comes in.” She wrote
SUMMONING
on the other end of the page.

“That process is relatively straightforward,” Seth said, putting the sigil on the table. “The sigil is like a phone number for an angel of justice. We draw the sigil, and Dominic must appear.”

“Does that work for you, too?” I asked.

Seth shook his head. “In fact, it’s entirely new to me. According to our research, only angels of justice were assigned sigils. It was a check on their power, created by archangels who apparently believed there was a risk the angels of justice would act beyond their authority.”

“Which is precisely what they did,” Ethan darkly said.

Seth nodded.

“Okay, then,” Luc said. “We have summoning magic to get him here. We have a sword bearer to fight him.” He drew a circle in the middle of the page. “Now, we just need a way to make him vulnerable.” He looked at Paige. “Thoughts?”

Paige grimaced. “Not yet. I mean, technically, we’ve got some ideas. We think nullification would work on him. If it can work on sorcerers, there’s no reason it can’t work on messengers. They’re both creatures of magic. But there is a bit of a logistical problem.”

“Which is?” Ethan asked.

“Nullification is what’s called a wicking spell. The person working the magic has to actually touch the other one to wick their power away. It doesn’t take long, and there are things we can do to expedite the spell, but there’s no way Dominic is going to let me, Catcher, or Mallory touch him. He knows what we are, and he won’t let us get near him.”

“That’s a problem,” Luc said.

“Actually, maybe not,” I said. “There may be a way to manage it.”

“What’s that?” Paige asked.

I blew out a breath, steeled my courage, and looked at Ethan. “You can get closer to Dominic than anyone else. He won’t think you’re a threat—not like they are. He’s let you close enough to punch him before. But we already know Ethan and Mallory have a connection to each other. I was thinking we could use that.”

“No,” Catcher and Ethan simultaneously said.

“There is no way in hell I will let someone control me,” Ethan said. “Besides, I’m supposed to be fighting him. I can’t concentrate on anything when she’s in there, much less fighting him.”

“We’re not talking about control,” I quietly said. “Mallory can’t do that anyway, because the spell wasn’t completed. But maybe she could work the wicking spell through you.”

“No,” Catcher repeated. “She’s not putting herself at that kind of risk. He’s an
angel
, for Christ’s sake. Do you know how much magic he has? And how much she’d have to funnel through both of them? That could kill her.”

Magic peaked in the room as tensions rose—from Ethan and the rest.

“I’ll do it,” Mallory quietly said.

We stared at the phone.

“This is my fault,” she said. “There’s no argument about that, and no way around it. If this is the way it has to be, then so be it.”

“Mallory—” Catcher interrupted, and I imagined her shaking her head.

“I have to do this,” she said. “If Ethan will allow it.”

The room was quiet as he silently fumed. And after a moment, I watched the anger fade into something else—savvy.

“How would it work?” he asked.

I leaned toward the phone. “Mallory, as I understand it, the point of a familiar is to give you an extra bit of capacity for controlling the universe, right?”

“That’s the basic idea,” she said. “The familiar’s like a battery. Kind of. But he’s not a familiar.”

“Not enough that you could actually make him do something,” I agreed. “But you have a connection, certainly. And if your emotions are connected, maybe the magic could be, too? And maybe, if you can use Ethan to funnel power, couldn’t he also be used to take it away from Dominic? You don’t need to control him for that—he just needs to act as a conduit. A magical conduit between you and Dominic.”

Silence.

Ethan ran his hands through his hair, then looked back at me. “He wouldn’t expect me.”

“Not to use magic. To punch him in the face, though? Yes. He would probably expect that. But that’s the key—it fits with who he thinks you are. He’d suspect you were getting close enough to hit him. Not to wick his magic away.”

“So I’m to become a utility. A functionality of magic?”

“A tool,” I said. “And a handsome one.”

“And only a temporary one,” Mallory assured.

“Mallory, you want me to trust you,” Ethan told her. “To allow you to use me as that tool. As a puppet on a string. You ask much of me. Much that no vampire gives willingly.”

“You give it willingly to a vampire,” she said. “Each time a new one is made. You communicate with them, don’t you? Call and control them, in a fashion?”

Ethan looked sharply away.

“He can’t communicate with anyone anymore,” I confessed, not that the vampires in the room would have been surprised. “The spell seems to have knocked that out of him.”

“I’m sorry,” she quietly said. “I know that’s not good enough, but I’m sorry.”

There was silence for a moment.

“I am glad I’m alive, Mallory. I thank you for that. But you have put me and mine in danger, and those acts may ultimately prove unforgiveable.” He looked over at me, love shining in his eyes. “And for all that, Merit still seems to believe in you. I don’t trust you,” he said after a moment, “but I trust Merit. And I have seen her fight. And if you do anything to hurt me, she will come after you with all that she has.”

“I understand,” Mallory said.

“Wonderful. But if I’m doing the nullifying, who battles Dominic?”

Courage,
I reminded myself. “I will.”

All eyes turned to me.

“No,” Ethan said.

“Yes,”
I countered. “I’m the only one close to your level. You can argue,” I said, parroting back his words, “and I’m sure that argument will be well reasoned, but you know I’m right.”

We looked at each other again, the risk of losing ourselves again between us. But this wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that we were faced with choices like these.

Ethan nodded. “You will fight him.”

There was a collective heave of relief in the room.

“There is one more issue,” Paige said. We all looked at her.

“I’m fairly confident this counts as black magic. If so, it seems unlikely the shifters or the Order will allow her to do it.”

That was a bit of a sticking point.

“There’s risk,” Mallory said. “Even if Gabriel said it was okay, I’d be nervous about backtracking. About getting worse instead of getting better. But for the first time, I’d have the chance to help someone else, not just myself.”

“I’ll be there,” Catcher said. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”

The decision made, Luc uncapped his marker again and filled in the empty space in the middle of our plan.
WICKING
, he wrote.

“When he appears,” Seth said, “you’ll only have seconds to strip his magic. The summoning only calls him to appear—it won’t hold him forever.”

“And if he’s summoned, he’ll already have his guard up,” Ethan said.

“Quite probably. You’ll need to act fast.”

Another reason for Ethan to work the mojo instead of Mallory. Dominic would instantaneously react if Mallory appeared at his side, but if Ethan was there, he might just be curious enough to wait a moment, just long enough for Ethan to get the job done.

“We’ll set things up before he arrives,” Paige said, “so you only need to touch him to trigger the magic.”

Ethan nodded, but the worry was clear in his face.

“And when his magic is gone, he won’t be able to leave again. He’ll be stuck here, and in human form.” Seth looked at me. “That will be your cue.”

I nodded.

“Then we know the plan,” Seth said. “I will summon him. Ethan and Mallory will neutralize him. Merit will fight him.”

His list left out an item:
Merit will kill him.
However unpleasant, that result seemed inevitable and would be required regardless of whether step number two worked. Dominic had to be eliminated, or even more people would die. And he had no right to play judge, jury, and executioner. Although I wasn’t looking forward to playing that role myself—playing a game that would end only with a death by my hand and sword—I didn’t think we had a lot of other options.

“It’s not a bad plan,” Luc said. “I mean, in my opinion. Lots of parts.”

“Lots of places for things to go wrong,” Catcher agreed.

“Where can we do this?” Ethan asked.

“Hallowed ground,” Seth said. “It has to be.”

Paige nodded. “If you’re messing with dark magic, you want to stick to hallowed ground. The goal is to make this better—not worse.”

“We’d need a church?” Ethan asked.

“Not necessarily,” Paige said. “Any land that’s been blessed or purified would work.”

“How do we locate suitable property?” Ethan asked.

“I can ask Gabriel,” Jeff suggested.

“Gabriel?” Ethan asked.

“We have bonds with the land,” he said. “If anyone would know it, he would.”

“Gabe may not want us summoning Dominic on ground he’s decided is blessed,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but I don’t think you’ll find a pastor in Chicago who’s crazy about it, either.”

Jeff had a point.

Ethan nodded. “Shifters it is. Jeff, please make the call and see if he has time to talk or survey or whatever else it will take.” He looked at Seth and Paige. “Make sure we have what we need to make the magic work. If you need materials, have Helen order them, and get double sets of anything we might need.”

“Eye of newt and toe of frog?” Mallory asked.

“ ‘Double double toil and trouble,’ ” Ethan said, quoting Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
. “Just get it done. Let’s meet back here in an hour.”

I murmured the rest of the witches’ song. “ ‘Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Cool it with a baboon’s blood—’ ”

Mallory’s voice echoed through the phone. “ ‘And then the charm is firm and good.’ ”

An ominous chill ran through me. But it was too late to turn back now.