Huntress, Black Dawn, Witchlight (9 page)

“Who said anything about witches or vampires or shapeshifters? The kid’s
human.
”

Jez blinked.

And blinked again, trying to conceal the extent of her astonishment. For a moment she thought Morgead was putting her on, but his green eyes were simply exasperated, not sly.

“The Wild Powers…can be human?”

Morgead smiled suddenly—a smirk. “You really didn’t know. You haven’t heard all the prophecies, have you?” He struck a mocking oratorical pose. “There’s supposed to be:

The Day World, Jez thought. Not the Night World, the human world. At least one of the Wild Powers had to be human.

Unbelievable…but why not? Wild Powers were supposed to be weird.

Then she thought of something and her stomach sank.

“No wonder you’re so eager to turn her in,” she said softly. “Not just to get a reward—”

“But because the little scum deserves to die—or whatever it is Hunter has in mind for her.” Morgead’s voice was matter-
of-fact. “Yeah, vermin have no right developing Night World powers. Right?”

“Of course right,” Jez said without emotion. I’m going to have to watch this kid every minute, she thought. He’s got no pity at all for her—Goddess knows what he might do before letting me have her.

“Jez.” Morgead’s voice was soft, almost pleasant, but it caught Jez’s full attention. “Why didn’t Hunter tell you that prophecy? The Council dug it up last week.”

She glanced at him and felt an inner shiver. Suspicion was cold in the depths of his green eyes. When Morgead was yelling and furious he was dangerous enough, but when he was quiet like this, he was deadly.

“I have no idea,” she said flatly, tossing the problem back at him. “Maybe because I was already out here in California when they figured it out. But why don’t you call him and ask yourself? I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.”

There was a pause. Then Morgead gave her a look of disgust and turned away.

A good bluff is priceless, Jez thought.

It was safe now to move on. She said, “So what do the ‘two eyes watching’ mean in the prophecy?”

He rolled his own eyes. “How should I know?
You
figure it out. You’ve always been the smart one.”

Despite the heavy sarcasm, Jez felt a different kind of shiver, one of surprise. He really believed that. Morgead was
so smart himself—he’d seen that flicker on the TV screen and realized what it was, when apparently none of the adults in the Bay Area had—but he thought she was smarter.

“Well, you seem to be doing all right yourself,” she said.

She had been looking steadily at him, to show him no weakness, and she saw his expression change. His green eyes softened slightly, and the sarcastic quirk of his lip straightened.

“Nah, I’m just blundering along,” he muttered, his gaze shifting. Then he glanced back up and somehow they were caught in a moment when they were just looking at each other in silence. Neither of them turned away, and Jez’s heart gave a strange thump.

The moment stretched.

Idiot! This is ridiculous. A minute ago you were scared of him—not to mention sickened by his attitude toward humans. You can’t just suddenly switch to
this.

But it was no good. Even the realization that she was in danger of her life didn’t help. Jez couldn’t think of a thing to say to break the tension, and she couldn’t seem to look away from Morgead.

“Jez, look—”

He leaned forward and put a hand on her forearm. He didn’t even seem to know he was doing it. His expression was abstracted now, and his eyes were fixed on hers.

His hand was warm. Tingles spread from the place where it touched Jez’s skin.

“Jez…about before…I didn’t…”

Suddenly Jez’s heart was beating far too quickly, I
have
to say something, she thought, fighting to keep her face impassive. But her throat was dry and her mind a humming blank. All she could feel clearly was the place where she and Morgead touched. All she could see clearly was his eyes. Cat’s eyes, deepest emerald, with shifting green lights in them….

“Jez,” he said a third time.

And Jez realized all at once that the silver thread between them hadn’t been broken. That it might be stretched almost into invisibility, but it was still
there,
still pulling, trying to make her body go weak and her vision blur. Trying to make her fall toward Morgead even as he was falling toward her.

And then came the sound of someone kicking in the front door.

“H
ey, Morgead!” the voice was shouting even as the door went slamming and crashing open, sticking every few inches because it was old and warped and didn’t fit the frame anymore.

Jez had jerked around at the first noise. The connection between her and Morgead was disrupted, although she could feel faint echoes of the silver thread, like a guitar string vibrating after it was strummed.

“Hey, Morgead—”

“Hey, you still asleep—?” Several laughing, raucous people were crowding into the room. But the yelling stopped abruptly as they caught sight of Jez.

There was a gasp, and then silence.

Jez stood up to face them. She couldn’t afford to feel tired anymore; every muscle was lightly tensed, every sense alert.

She knew the danger she was in.

Just like Morgead, they were the flotsam and jetsam of the San Francisco streets. The orphans, the ones who lived with indifferent relatives, the ones nobody in the Night World really wanted. The forgotten ones.

Her gang.

They were out of school and ready to rumble.

Jez had always thought, from the day she and Morgead began picking these kids up, that the Night World was making a mistake in treating them like garbage. They might be young; they might not have families, but they had power. Every one of them had the strength to be a formidable opponent.

And right now they were looking at her like a group of wolves looking at dinner. If they all decided to go for her at once, she would be in trouble. Somebody would end up getting killed.

She faced them squarely, outwardly calm, as a quiet voice finally broke the silence.

“It’s really you, Jez.”

And then another voice, from beside Jez. “Yeah, she came back,” Morgead said carelessly. “She joined the gang again.”

Jez shot him the briefest of sideways glances. She hadn’t expected him to help. He returned the look with an unreadable expression.

“…she came back?” somebody said blankly.

Jez felt a twinge of amused sympathy. “That’s right,” she said, keeping her face grave. “I had to go away for a while, and
I can’t tell you where, but now I’m back. I just fought my way back in—and I beat Morgead for the leadership.” She figured she might as well get it all over with at once. She had no idea how they were going to react to the idea of her as leader.

There was another long moment of silence, and then a whoop. A sound that resembled a war cry. At the same instant there was a violent rush toward Jez—four people all throwing themselves at her. For a heartbeat she stood frozen, ready to fend off a four-fold attack.

Then arms wrapped around her waist.

“Jez! I missed you!”

Someone slapped her on the back almost hard enough to knock her down. “You bad girl! You beat him
again
?”

People were trying to hug her and punch her and pat her all at once. Jez had to struggle not to show she was overwhelmed. She hadn’t expected this of them.

“It’s good to see you guys again,” she said. Her voice was very slightly unsteady. And it was the truth.

Raven Mandril said, “You scared us when you disappeared, you know.” Raven was the tall, willowy one with the marble-pale skin. Her black hair was short in back and long in front, falling over one eye and obscuring it. The other eye, midnight blue, gleamed at Jez.

Jez allowed herself to gleam back, just a bit. She had always liked Raven, who was the most mature of the group. “Sorry, girl.”

“
I
wasn’t scared.” That was Thistle, still hugging Jez’s waist. Thistle Galena was the delicate one who had stopped her aging when she reached ten. She was as old as the others, but tiny and almost weightless. She had feathery blond hair, amethyst eyes, and little glistening white teeth. Her specialty was playing the lost child and then attacking any humans who tried to help her.

“You’re never scared,” Jez told her, squeezing back.

“She means she knew you were all right, wherever you were. I did, too,” Pierce Holt said. Pierce was the slender, cold boy, the one with the aristocratic face and the artist’s hands. He had dark blond hair and deep-set eyes and he seemed to carry his own windchill factor with him. But just now he was looking at Jez with cool approval.

“I’m glad somebody thought so,” Jez said, with a glance at Morgead, who just looked condescending.

“Yeah, well,
some
people were going crazy. They thought you were dead,” Valerian Stillman put in, following Jez’s look. Val was the big, heroic one, with deep russet hair, gray-flecked eyes, and the build of a linebacker. He was usually either laughing or yelling with impatience. “Morgead had us scouring the streets for you from Daly City to the Golden Gate Bridge—”

“Because I was hoping a few of you would fall off,” Morgead said without emotion. “But I had no such luck. Now shut up, Val. We don’t have time for all this class-reunion stuff. We’ve got something important to do.”

Thistle’s face lit up as she stepped back from Jez. “You mean a hunt?”

“He means the Wild Power,” Raven said. Her one visible eye was fixed on Jez. “He’s told you already, hasn’t he?”

“I didn’t need to tell her,” Morgead said. “She already knew. She came back because Hunter Redfern wants to make a deal with us. The Wild Power for a place with him after the millennium.”

He got a reaction—the one Jez knew he expected. Thistle squeaked with pleasure, Raven laughed huskily, Pierce gave one of his cold smiles, and Val roared.

“He knows we’ve got the real thing! He doesn’t wanna mess with us!” he shouted.

“That’s right, Val; I’m sure he’s quaking in his boots,” Morgead said. He glanced at Jez and rolled his eyes.

Jez couldn’t help but grin. This really was like old times: she and Morgead trading secret looks about Val. There was a strange warmth sweeping through her—not the scary tingling heat she’d experienced with Morgead alone, but something simpler. A feeling of being with people who liked her and knew her. A feeling of belonging.

She never felt that at her human school. She’d seen things that would drive her human classmates insane even to imagine. None of them had any idea of what the real world was like—or what Jez was like, for that matter.

But now she was surrounded by people who understood her. And it felt so good that it was alarming.

She hadn’t expected this, that she would slip back into the gang like a hand in a glove. Or that something inside her would look around and sigh and say, “We’re home.”

Because I am
not
home, she told herself sternly. These are not my people. They don’t really know me, either….

But they don’t have to, the little sigh returned. You don’t ever need to tell them you’re human. There’s no reason for them to find out.

Jez shoved the thought away, scrunched down hard on the sighing part of her mind. And hoped it would stay scrunched. She tried to focus on what the others were saying.

Thistle was talking to Morgead, showing all her small teeth as she smiled. “So if you’ve got the terms settled, does that mean we get to do it now? We get to pick the little girl up?”

“Today? Yeah, I guess we could.” Morgead looked at Jez. “We know her name and everything. It’s Iona Skelton, and she’s living just a couple buildings down from where the fire was. Thistle made friends with her earlier this week.”

Jez was startled, although she kept her expression relaxed. She hadn’t expected things to move this fast. But it might all work out for the best, she realized, her mind turning over possibilities quickly. If she could snatch the kid and take her back to Hugh, this whole masquerade could be over by tomorrow. She might even live through it.

“Don’t get too excited,” she warned Thistle, combing some bits of grass out of the smaller girl’s silk-floss hair.
“Hunter wants the Wild Power alive and unharmed. He’s got plans for her.”

“Plus, before we take her, we’ve got to test her,” Morgead said.

Jez controlled an urge to swallow, went on combing Thistle’s hair with her fingers. “What do you mean, test her?”

“I’d think that would be obvious. We can’t take the chance of sending Hunter a dud. We have to make sure she
is
the Wild Power.”

Jez raised an eyebrow. “I thought you
were
sure,” she said, but of course she knew Morgead was right. She herself would have insisted Hugh find a way to test the little girl before doing anything else with her.

The problem was that Morgead’s testing was likely to be…unpleasant.

“I’m sure, but I still want to test her!” Morgead snapped. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Only if it’s dangerous. For us, I mean. After all, she’s got some kind of power beyond imagining, right?”

“And she’s in elementary school. I hardly think she’s gonna be able to take on six vampires.”

The others were looking back and forth between Morgead and Jez like fans at a tennis match.

“It’s just as if she never left,” Raven said dryly, and Val bellowed laughter while Thistle giggled.

“They always sound so—married,” Pierce observed, with just a tinge of spite to his cold voice.

Jez glared at them, aware that Morgead was doing the same. “I wouldn’t marry him if every other guy on earth was dead,” she informed Pierce.

“If it were a choice between her and a human, I’d pick the human,” Morgead put in nastily.

Everyone laughed at that. Even Jez.

The sun glittered on the water at the Marina. On Jez’s left was a wide strip of green grass, where people were flying huge and colorful kites, complicated ones with dozens of rainbow tails. On the sidewalk people were Rollerblading and jogging and walking dogs. Everybody was wearing summer clothing; everybody was happy.

It was different on the other side of the street.

Everything changed over there. A line of pinky-brown concrete stood like a wall to mark the difference. There was a high school and then rows of a housing project, all the buildings identically square, flat, and ugly. And on the next street beyond them, there was nobody walking at all.

Jez let Morgead take the lead on his motorcycle as he headed for those buildings. She always found this place depressing.

He pulled into a narrow alley beside a store with a dilapidated sign proclaiming “Shellfish De Lish.” Val roared in after him, then Jez, then Raven with Thistle riding pillion
behind her, and finally Pierce. They all turned off their motors.

“That’s where she lives now; across the street,” Morgead said. “She and her mom are staying with her aunt. Nobody plays in the playground; it’s too dangerous. But Thistle might be able to get her to come down the stairs.”

“Of course I can,” Thistle said calmly. She showed her pointed teeth in a grin.

“Then we can grab her and be gone before her mom even notices,” Morgead said. “We can take her back to my place and do the test where it’s private.”

Jez breathed once to calm the knot in her stomach. “
I’ll
grab her,” she said. At least that way she might be able to whisper something comforting to the kid. “Thistle, you try to get her right out to the sidewalk. Everybody else, stay behind me—if she sees a bunch of motorcycles, she’ll probably freak. But be ready to gun it when I pull out and grab her. The noise should help cover up any screams. Raven, you pick up Thistle as soon as I get the kid, and we all go straight back to Morgead’s.”

Everyone was nodding, looking pleased with the plan—except Morgead.

“I think we should knock her out when we grab her. That way there won’t
be
any screams. Not to mention any blue fire when she figures out she’s being kidnapped—”

“I already said how we’re going to do it,” Jez cut in flatly. “I
don’t want her knocked out, and I don’t think she’ll be able to hurt us. Now, everybody get ready. Off you go, Thistle.”

As Thistle skipped across the street, Morgead let out a sharp breath. His jaw was tight.

“You never could take advice, Jez.”

“And you never could take orders.” She could see him starting to sizzle, but only out of the corner of her eye. Most of her attention was focused on the housing building.

It was such a desolate place. No graffiti—but no grass, either. A couple of dispirited trees in front. And that playground with a blue metal slide and a few motorcycles-on-springs to ride…all looking new and untouched.

“Imagine growing up in a place like this,” she said.

Pierce laughed oddly. “You sound as if you feel sorry for her.”

Jez glanced back. There was no sympathy in his deep-set dark eyes—and none in Raven’s midnight blue or Val’s hazel ones, either. Funny, she didn’t remember them being
that
heartless—but of course she hadn’t been sensitive to the issue back in the old days. She would never have stopped to wonder about what they felt for human children.

“It’s because it’s a kid,” Morgead said brusquely. “It’s hard on any kid growing up in a place like this.”

Jez glanced at him, surprised. She saw in his emerald green eyes what she’d missed in the others; a kind of bleak pity. Then he shrugged, and the expression was gone.

Partly to change the subject, and partly because she was curious, she said, “Morgead? Do you know the prophecy with the line about the blind Maiden’s vision?”

“What, this one?” He quoted:

“Yeah. What do you think ‘born in the year of the blind Maiden’s vision’
means
?”

He looked impatient. “Well, the Maiden has to be Aradia, right?”

“Who’s that?” Val interrupted, his linebacker body quivering with interest.

Morgead gave Jez one of his humoring-Val looks. “The Maiden of the Witches,” he said. “You know, the blind girl? The Maiden part of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone group that rules all the witches? She’s only one of the most important people in the Night World—”

“Oh, yeah. I remember.” Val settled back.

“I agree,” Jez said. “The blind Maiden has to be Aradia. But what does the ‘year of her vision’ mean? How old is this kid we’re snatching?”