Page 16

CHAPTER 16

A fter my conversation with Nikolas Müller, I started paying more attention to local Zürich news, and especially to the politics. Müller was an up-and-coming star as the head of his own faction or party. The membership was heavily mundane and growing, but the leaders were mages. His platform was virulently anti-supernatural—or rather anti-monster. I couldn’t find any public information about his beliefs in a magiocracy.

I asked Siobhan about local politics and the anti-supernatural feelings—both in the general population and inside the Guild.

“There are definitely people who feel that way, but I think they’re a minority,” she said. “That’s more the Knights’ territory. I know there’s a mage group inside the university, but people view them as whackos, mainly.” She chuckled. “Like your friend, Roland.”

I was taking a drink of my beer when she said that, and she got sprayed as a reward when I choked.

“Yeah,” I said after we’d used a couple of napkins to clean up. “His brother asked me out.”

“Really? He is handsome, and rich. Is he as much of an asshole as Roland?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t seem to be, but his attitude is severely anti-Compact.”

“Probably a family thing. I think their father’s sister was turned by a strigoi. Kept very hush-hush, but you can’t hide that sort of thing when it happens in a prominent family.”

Gertrude took a stronger stance.

“The strigoi elders need to enforce the Compact. We shouldn’t have to do it. I’m not in favor of a genocide like the Knights advocate, but I think the Guild should consider placing stronger restrictions on the strigoi and the lycans. The lycans aren’t a big problem in the central city, but in the outlying districts—especially on both sides of the lake—it just isn’t safe to go out at night.”

From what I could learn, it might take a small army to take control of the lycans in the hills. The Guild couldn’t field that many fighters, but the Knights could bring in more troops from other parts of Europe.

One thing was certain: between my conversations with various people and the news I was able to read online, things were getting worse—and the mundanes were fed up with it.

* * *

O ne Tuesday night, I was out with Hans, Gertrude, and the rest of our squad when we witnessed a major assault on a strigoi nightclub by a pack of lycans.

“Are all the customers strigoi?” I asked.

Hans shook his head. “About half, maybe more, are mundanes, with a few mages and witches thrown in. Some people have weird kinks.” He was on his phone, reporting the attack.

From what we could see from half a block away, a slaughter was going on. I could see a number of bodies outside the club, and then the music inside stopped. It was replaced by a cacophony of shouts and screams.

All we could do was watch until help arrived. Even shielded, it would have been suicide to walk into that place. Both sides would attack us.

The first people to arrive were a company of Knights. They had no compulsion against joining the fray, which they did using every available door. The Kantonspolizei showed up next, along with a fleet of ambulances. And then finally, about sixty Enforcers joined us.

In addition to Captain Le Pen, there were several older mages, and I figured out immediately that our approach was going to be different than the Knights’.

Le Pen and another captain started ordering us into circles of twelve.

When the other captain came to me, he took one startled look at me and said, “Not you. Stand over there,” then pointed off to the side. I figured it must be because of my aura, since he put Gertrude in a circle.

They stationed three circles in a triangular pattern around the nightclub, with an older mage completing each circle. The rest of the mages were stationed at each of the exits, and I was hauled along with two much older mages. We stopped at the main entrance.

“You’re the Dunne girl?” one of them asked me.

“Yes.”

“Good. We’re going in there, holding hands with you in the middle. For God’s sake, do not let go of our hands. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but what do I do?”

The other man said, “Scream if you think you’re going to die.”

I gave him my best aggravated look. “Come on.”

“Seriously. That will be our signal to get the hell out of there.”

I felt like screaming right then, because I didn’t understand what they were doing.

They took my hands and dragged me into a butcher’s nightmare. There had been two or three hundred people inside before the lycan attack. When we entered, there were bodies and body parts of people, strigoi, and lycans lying all over the place. A Knight leaned up against the bar staring at me. His head was on backwards.

“Touch the ley line,” one of my companions ordered. I reached out and opened myself to it.

The two mages holding my hands began pulling magic from the ley line, but they were pulling it through me. Then the building began to fill with magic from the three circles outside. I was so open that the magic from the circles fed into me, along with the magic from the ley line.

I had experienced a magical overload once in Queen City, and a pack of vampires died then. This time, the mages I was with pulled the magic through me and flooded the space in front of us. The fighting tailed off and stopped. Everyone standing turned into statues, then dropped to the floor.

As suddenly as it started, the pull on me stopped, and the magic bled out of me. Most of it, anyway. I felt as though I could do anything—fly, jump tall buildings, swim the length of the lake and back, tackle demons. They let go of my hands, and I slumped, shaking, against a wall, then slid down to the floor. The feeling was better than any ten orgasms I’d ever had.

I wanted to feel that way forever, and it scared the hell out of me. For the first time, I understood addiction.

One of the mages left, yelling orders as the Enforcers from outside rushed in. The other man squatted down beside me.

“Are you all right?”

I couldn’t find my voice. I tried. I opened my mouth. And finally, I just nodded.

He scrutinized my face. “How old are you?”

I managed to say, “Nine…nineteen.”

“Oh, hell,” he said. “That’s the first time you ever joined a circle?”

I nodded. Finding my voice, I said, “We were a circle?”

“We were the focus of a trilateral circle. Six circles like this destroyed Rome in 1682.”

It was one of the events that led to the Treaty of Krakow and the Compact in 1685. I knew we had pulled a lot of magic into that building. What we could have done with it and didn’t shook me to my core.

“They’re all dead?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Oh, no, honey. We drained their energy, and they just all went to sleep. We wanted to stop the killing, not add to it.”

“Oh, good.” I passed out.