“For this, the decision of the Enforcers has been to apply production sanctions—”
“Be silent,” Enli snapped, and the Enforcer stopped in mid-sentence at the sheer power of command in the old man’s voice. So did the low growling.
Grandfather stood, straightening to his full height and somehow overshadowing the many taller and bulkier men in the room.
“I have a piece for you to deliver to the Magus,” he said flatly, and a dropped pin would have echoed in the silence that followed. He held the Enforcer’s gaze, and it was clear the man could no more have looked aside than he could have sunk through the floor.
“The murder of Alpha Tarvers Tenerim, Speaker for the Clans and Signatory to the Covenants,” Enli said slowly, the words falling one by one like hammerblows, “while he was pursuing an investigation of the presence of a vampire cabal—as authorized by the Covenants—by one of Magus MacDonald’s dogs is an unquestionable act of war.
“In the interests of avoiding bloodshed,” he continued, his voice colder than ice, “the Clans will accept a payment in blood and gold as reparations. The details of said payment will be decided by the new Speaker once he has been elected.
“If, however, further provocations come to pass”—Grandfather’s tone was harsh, and I could see the Enforcer trying to melt away under his penetrating gaze—“such as, for example, unjustified sanctions on heartstone production levied as an attempt to falsely justify this murder,” he continued dryly, “the Clans would be forced to see this as a sustained campaign against us and would hold emergency elections for a War Speaker to lead us in open war against the Magus MacDonald and his dogs.”
The threat hung in the air like bared steel.
“Crawl back to your master, dog,” Enli growled. “Tell him the Clans will no longer deal with his minions. If there are to be negotiations for blood price for this murder, he will come to us himself.
“Get. Out.”
The tableau was frozen for an eternal moment until Enli released the Enforcer from his gaze. The man all but ran from the building.
19
THE ROOM WAS quiet for a long time after the Enforcers left. It felt different now, though, the grief now mixed with a slowly bubbling cauldron of rage. Grandfather had vented it for a moment and likely saved the lives of the two Enforcers he’d sent running, but the blood of the Clans was at a boil.
Some conversations continued, though Mary and I were silent as we held each other. Enli wasn’t the only Alpha in the room—six of the other older men in the room were as well. In fact, unless I was severely mistaken, every living Alpha in Calgary was sitting in the Tenerim’s living room.
The quiet conversations continued, but eventually Mary led me out of the living room and to her room. There, away from the politics and the talk of others, I held her as she wept out her grief for the man who’d raised her as his own.
“Can you stay the night?” she eventually asked, leaning into my shoulder.
“Not really,” I admitted gently. “I have to be at work early tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Mary said quietly, and I kissed her. “You should probably get going, then,” she told me. “It’s getting late.”
She was right. Slowly and regretfully, I pulled away from her, and with a final kiss, she led me down to the front door, where I called a cab.
I spent the cab ride home deep in thought. On the one hand, the Queen had charged me to track down the cabal, and the current conflict with MacDonald’s Enforcers had grown directly out of that. On the other, my main charge was to prevent a plot to attack and murder the Wizard.
Any attacker would find it much easier to strike at MacDonald now that the Enforcers would have no support from the Clans, the strongest inhuman faction in Calgary. There was a good chance that war was coming, and that sort of conflict would lead to attacks on the Wizard.
None of this brought any of us any closer to finding and destroying the cabal and undoing whatever plot had allowed them into the city. The Covenants that bound the inhuman community in Calgary together lay preventing such incursions at the feet of the Wizard, and he had failed. His failure was the key to the wedge driving everyone apart and weakening not just his position but everyone’s.
Someone was playing a long game, and I was afraid the growing division amidst the inhuman population was not merely something they’d allowed for in their plans but something they wanted and had helped create.
That thought suggested that the corruption in the Enforcers might stretch higher and wider than my worst fears—if Winters himself was involved... But that was impossible. If a Wizard’s right-hand man was betraying him, surely a Power in his own right should be able to detect that?
There were only three major political leaders in Calgary among the inhuman community—the Lord of the fae Court, the Wizard, and the Speaker for the shifter Clans. Tarvers was dead, murdered by an Enforcer. The new Speaker wouldn’t have his experience or the respect he’d earned from the Wizard and Lord Oberis. The political balance would shift—inevitably toward the Wizard and his Enforcers.
Was it as simple as that? The presence of the cabal used as a catalyst to weaken Court and Clan, allowing the Wizard to seize power? Or maybe forcing the Wizard to seize more control, distracting him away from another factor, exposing him to an attack on a level only Powers could understand?
The politics of Powers left the bodies of mere men and inhumans in their wakes, and I had been drawn into the orbit of not one but two of those mighty creatures. If a third Power was involved, an enemy of MacDonald’s seeking to use all of this as a distraction to allow a strike at their level, I was so totally outclassed, it wasn’t even funny.
But I was used to that. Most supernaturals were out of my weight class. It wasn’t like I had to fight whoever was coming after MacDonald; I just had to expose them.
On that happy thought, the cab pulled to a halt outside my apartment building. I paid the driver and got out, shivering in the cold. A bitter north wind had swept into the city while I’d been at the Den, and I was grateful for the winter coat that warded off some portion of the chill.
A fog was beginning to settle in, and the cab quickly vanished in the shadowed white of the city’s winter night as I headed toward my apartment. A shadowy figure appeared out of the white mist, and I had a moment of déjà vu before a fist caught me flat in the center of the chest.
The Queen’s armor absorbed much of the blow, but it was still enough to stagger me and leave me open. A second blow smashed into my face, sending me collapsing backward, blood bursting from my nose.
Shadows whirled around the figure, masking and concealing features and motions. It lashed out with a kick that I rolled to avoid and come back onto my feet. My right hand flashed forward, and I pitched a bolt of green faerie flame at my assailant.
A whirl of shadow absorbed the flame, and then a tendril of darkness lashed out at me. It hit me in the left shoulder with a hammerblow the armor only barely kept from breaking bone.
Pain rippled out from my shoulder, and I focused on it, channeling it into my flame. I swung at my attacker, and to my surprise, a whip-like tendril of green flame flashed into existence around my hand, slicing through the shadows to a grunt of surprise from my assailant.
Unlike any flame I’d conjured before, the whip didn’t fade, taking a physical presence in my hand as I slashed it at my attacker again. It wrapped around the figure’s waist, holding them in place for a moment.