Decisions, part seven

Antoinette opened the door and Chris went out, Elyssa following with the doll-child. He felt off-balance, distracted, out of control; he didn't like it. He wanted to grab the doll and race it to the rendezvous, to get this over with as quickly as possible, but he couldn't do that without revealing his full speed -- and Elyssa was making a real effort to cover for him. He wanted to tear apart their enemies, but their enemies were actually their co-workers; this was just a training exercise. 

He was trying to hold to that knowledge, but the image of a child tied to a chair... 

He shook his head, forced himself to focus, and wasn't sure if he'd succeeded. Thorin was nowhere in sight, which was simultaneously the worst possible scenario and exactly what he'd expected. "That way," said Antoinette, pointing. 

Elyssa started out, and Chris leapt up to an awning, and then across to a window sill on the far side of the street. If Thorin was tracking them, he'd take to the rooftops; Chris would have to make his way there more slowly. More likely, the great cat was off alerting the other two opposition teams, but it still wouldn't hurt to have eyes up at rooftop level. 

Half a block down, the rooftop was empty. Thorin was nowhere to be seen. So it's a question of who gets into position first. If Thorin and the others could set up an ambush, they could still lure the target in using the doll-child. If Antoinette and Elyssa got the child to the head of the house first, the House could withdraw and they would have effectively won. If everybody reached the rendezvous all at once, it would be a fight and the outcome could be anything. 

Chris shaped a tiny bit of Grey and whispered to Antoinette and Elyssa: "Move."

Decisions, part six

 They didn't just drive in here anyway, even knowing it was a trap. Surely they didn't... He could see it though: whoever had planned out this exercise understood the arrogance of the Old Houses. The head of the house wouldn't leave without the child; but at least they'd agreed to wait and let his team bring the "child" to them. 

Would the two other enemy teams realize? Would Thorin tell them? Probably. He's impressed with himself, but not enough to try to take on all three of us alone, and his magus is down. 

How fast could he get to them? "Give me the child," said Elyssa. "I'll carry her." She looked at Chris. "You run interference, but be careful." She turned her eyes to Antoinette. "Do you have enough Grey left to keep up with us?"

Antoinette said, "I'll do what I can." 

"All right," said Elyssa, and they started down the stairs.

Decisions, part five

The impact was no more than he'd expected; the wards here were for warning, not protection, and he didn't intend to give them time for their warning to make a difference. The room he crashed into was barren, furnished only with a table, a few chairs, and a battered couch; he caught up one of the chairs and flung it at Sherri, who was sitting on her couch and looking at her phone. 

The chair smashed into an unseen protection, and fell to the floor; Sherri immediately rose to her feet, then glanced at her phone in confusion. To his right, the Thorin Tanelorn of the great cats was standing beside a chair with a hostage in it. 

The hostage was supposed to be a doll! It was a doll -- it had no scent -- but the magi had put a seeming on it for this exercise, and it looked like a human child bound to the chair. For a moment he was back at Pettibone, seeing another face in another chair, and he hesitated for the barest moment as Thorin dodged around the hostage and charged him, impossibly fast over this short distance. 

He felt the impact before he could refocus, before he could bring his arms up or get his body moving again, and caught Thorin's wrist for a brief moment, pulling the cat back and to the floor alongside him. Thorin broke the hold immediately, caught him under the shoulders, and hurled them both back out the shattered window just as Antoinette shimmered into place in the room and Elyssa smashed in through the no-longer-warded door. 

Thorin released him as soon as they were past the window, and they both began to fall; Chris landed hard, and Thorin landed softly and silently on his feet, still human-formed and completely unmussed.

"Sorry," said Thorin, "but that's how it goes." 

Chris shot a hand out, caught the cat by his ankle, and yanked him down. He came to his feet, dragging Thorin up after him, and flung him into a building. He was overreacting, he knew it, and showing too much of his strength. The trouble was that he couldn't stop it. Some part him was still seeing a frightened child tied to a chair, again, and that part had taken control of his actions. He sprang up, caught a ledge around the building, sank his claws in, and launched himself further. There was a lintel above the next row of windows, and he caught himself on it and pushed himself further up. 

He was just below the upper row of windows when Thorin caught his ankle and nearly pulled him off the side of the building; if Chris hadn't been sinking his claws into the stone, the cat would have succeeded. Instead, Chris thrashed and kicked down, raking claws across the cat's face and then his arm; Thorin dropped like a rock, landed easily on his feet, and started straight up the side of the building again. 

By then, though, Chris had found the broken window and rolled inside it, ignoring the broken glass on the floor. Thorin didn't follow him; the cat leapt past the window and up to the roof. 

Sherri was on the ground, thrashing around but otherwise immobile; Antoinette was speaking into her cell phone. "We've got the kid. Pull back. You don't need to make this meet, we'll bring her to you."

Elyssa asked, "Chris? Are you okay?"

"With this?" he gestured towards the doll that had been tied to the chair and was now held firmly in Elyssa's arms. "No. Not at all. I was about to--" He made himself stop. 

"Chris," said Elyssa firmly. "Take a deep breath." 

He took a deep breath. 

"Say it with me: it's just an exercise."

"It's just an exercise." He wasn't sure he believed it, but he was calming back down, starting to refocus. "It's just an exercise."

"It's just an exercise," Elyssa repeated.

Antoinette put her phone away. "We're going to take the kid out to her House," she said quietly. "What are we looking at?"

Chris shrugged. "The cat is still active, and there are two other magi and two other outsiders he might call in. We go now, quickly, and hope to be gone before he returns with help."

Decisions, part four

Chris? The voice was soft, just at the edge of his thoughts. We found them.

Where? He shifted his weight, thought the better of leaping to the next building, and waited. 

The image formed slowly, but he recognized the location. I should have guessed. He paused, then added, On my way. It was the large central building in the training complex; the exercise's designated bad guys had set up in a corner room on the fifth floor, which gave them a view over most of the rest of the rooftops. If Chris hadn't been wrapped in Look-Away and Nothing-To-See-Here magics, they would doubtless have spotted him already. And even with those in place, it would be better to circle around than approach directly. 

He found Antoinette on a rooftop looking up into one of the windows; by scent, because she was wrapped in her own set of obfuscations. He stopped beside her, deliberately putting his foot down to make the graveled surface of the rooftop crunch quietly. 

"You're here." She sounded relieved, even as she kept her voice a soft, breath whisper. "Could you make it across?"

"Elyssa?"

"I got her inside, past their wards. If you crash in through the window, she'll come through the door. I have enough Grey left to take myself across, but only barely -- I'll try to distract them while you take them down."

Chris nodded slowly, though Antoinette likely wouldn't be able to see it. "Here," he said, then breathed out the word for Connection as he reached for her hand. 

His hand found the small of her back instead, and he shared some of the Grey that he had stored for himself. He hadn't transformed yet, and was still fresh from his last exposure; he could spare it. Antoinette stiffened, surprised and momentarily uncomfortable, but she accepted the connection and magic it offered. "How...?" Then he felt her step aside, and let his hand fall. "We go on your mark," she said. "Elyssa and I come in behind you."

"How many?" he asked. 

"Two," Antoinette told him. "But it's Sherri and Thorin." 

"Shit." He hadn't seen either of them since shortly after their first adventure into the Grey and their encounter with the bonetaker. Thorin was a cat, and fast; Sherri was one of the more formidable magi he had met. If he came through first, he'd need to take at least one of them out, even if it was only temporary; ideally, he needed to shut them both down long enough for help to arrive. "Could be worse," he said after a moment. "It could have been Peter and Morri." He paused. "Tell Elyssa I'm about to go."

He took five steps back, crouched, and then hurled himself forward and launched himself into the air. His foot, half-transformed, caught the edge of the low stone wall that surrounded the rooftop, and he pushed himself up and out, through empty air, aiming directly for the no-doubt-warded windows behind which the opposing magus and her RO were waiting.

Decisions, part three

Going from building to building was harder than Chris expected. The cats could do it, of course; even in human form they could leap incredible distances, move without any sound of footfalls, and land undamaged on their feet after falls that should have broken bones. Antoinette had apparently anticipated him on that; the words she'd laid on him didn't just hide him from sight, they also muffled the sounds he made. Even so, he was glad that the buildings in the training quad were solid.

He was vaguely aware of Antoinette and Elyssa moving away below him; a moment later he lost them completely. He made a short jump across to another building and paused there. It helped that there was nobody else in the training quad; any sounds or movements would only come from their targets. As long as he managed to stay unseen and un-heard, the only thing that could give him away was...

Magic. Chris paused on the low wall at the edge of another room, catching his balance so that he didn't step down and come into contact with it. Somebody was worried about people coming at them from above. It was a simple ward, an alarm, but not something that he -- as a wolf -- should be able to bypass. No, he'd need Antoinette for that. Except...

He lowered himself and then hung over the side of the wall, eased down to the top row of windows. The structure was only three stories high, but he took his time; a fall at this point would be more than just inconvenient, if it gave him away. Nothing. He moved down another level. There. The windows for a corner room were warded as well, but...

He sprang across the width of the alley to the opposite wall, caught his fingertips on a brick ledge, and hauled himself up until he could see inside. The windows were warded, but not covered; he could see a mostly-empty room, with two figures inside. The doll that was taking the place of the hypothetical child hostage might be in there, but if so it wasn't anywhere obvious. 

His fingertips were getting tired from hanging here. Chris pulled himself up to the top of the building and circled around the warded one, finding his own way. He was due to meet his partners at the far side of the quad, and needed to check as many buildings as he could manage on the way.

Decisions, part two

"Okay," said Antoinette, standing in the shadow of one of the training buildings. "I'm open to suggestions."

Elyssa touched the amulet that hung between her collar bones, but Chris looked at her and shook his head. "Not here. How well can you climb?"

Elyssa frowned. "Pretty well if you're just asking about climbing, but if you want some kind of parkour... Can you do that?"

Chris considered. "Well enough, I think." 

Antoinette nodded. "I saw you go through those bones. You're not one of the cats, but you can move when you want to."

"I need you to cloak me with look-aways and nothing-to-see charms," Chris said. "I'll make a quick circuit and see what the scents tell me, then catch back up. If you two come in carefully you shouldn't be seen, and you can do your own looking. at ground level. Can you locate magics without triggering them? Like, find where wards are without setting them off?"

"Usually," Antoinette said. "Depends on the wards, of course."

Chris nodded at that. The clock was ticking; they needed to be moving. They also needed to balance that with being careful. "All right. Meet at the far corner in fifteen?"

Antoinette nodded. Then she spoke and gestured, and Chris felt a layer of Grey settle over him. He nodded and turned away, eyeing one of the buildings, then started up the side of it. 

It brought back memories that he didn't want, and for a moment he almost faltered. He knew how to climb fast because one of his friends growing up had been half-outsider and able to climb walls like a spider; racing her up a wall required concentration, precision, and complete commitment. He still lost, of course, but--

No. That was in the past. He held his focus and kept going, until he came out on the rooftop.

Decisions, part one

"Are you all right?" asked Elyssa. "You seem... I don't know, different, this morning."

"Yeah," said Chris, who was feeling surprisingly bright and alert considering how little sleep he'd gotten and the fact that his dreams had been overwhelmed with glimpses of events that he'd never experienced. He closed his throat against saying anything else; he still had to keep his secrets, no matter how much more comfortable he was feeling with them. "I'm good."

"Good," she said. "I'm glad. Any idea what we're doing now?" 

"None," Chris told her. "Antoinette?"

Their magus was waiting at the edge of one of the training areas, the one set with fake buildings and other obstacles. She'd seen them coming, and stopped to wait. "No idea," she said. "Magus Frummelt said he wanted us to try another approach to training, but he didn't explain." 

The magus at the edge of the training area wasn't Frummelt, but Chris still recognized him; it was agent Spencer, the one with the aggressively square face who'd brought him to Frummelt after Julius Thornblade had been killed. For all that he'd looked cold and authoritative then, he looked friendly enough now. 

"Magus Gillespie," he acknowledged. "Magus Frummelt wants you and your people to practice working at as a team. For this scenario, a child from one of the families has been kidnapped by by a group of rogue magi and their unregistered outsiders. They're still in the Mundus, but they have access to a portal."

Antoinette glanced at Chris, who asked: "Do we know how many magi and how many outsiders?"

"For this, you do: three magi, and three outsiders. The information you have suggests that they aren't close with each other, but they're united in their desire to  take the child and use him as bait. They want the head of the house to come so they can ambush him; you have to get there before that happens."

Antoinette turned her head the other way and looked at Elyssa, who swallowed and said: "That sounds like we're operating with prejudice. Are we allowed to kill them? Do we need to keep any of them for questioning?"

Agent Spencer smiled approvingly. "The child's survival is your top priority, but the Ministry would be appreciative if you could keep at least one of the magi alive for the truthspeakers. We've put some enchantments in place to prevent -- but mark -- things that would have been serious injuries, so you can treat this as if the threat were real." He hesitated. "We're not using an actual child, obviously, but the doll representing the hostage has been similarly enchanted. We'll know if it's 'injured'."

"How much time do we have?" asked Antoinette. 

"You don't know for sure, but... some. Enough to approach strategically. You'll be uninterrupted until the head of the house decides to come, or sends agents of his own. Hypothetically. The rogues might decide to dispose of the hostage, but not before that happens. Is all of that clear?"

Antoinette glanced at Chris, and then at Elyssa. "Do we know where they are?" she asked.  

"Somewhere in the training quad," agent Spencer told her. "Good luck."

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part four

In his current mood, Chris didn't even mind Grundus' company. The older wolf walked with him as he changed course towards the dormitory and made his way to his room. They stopped at the door, and Grundus asked: "You aren't an elder, are you?"

Chris shook his head. "Nope. I'm every bit the daft youth I pretend to be."

Grundus shook his head in return. "No, you're not. I still don't know what you are, but maybe it doesn't matter. You protected Elyssa somehow, didn't you?" 

Chris sighed. "I'm just another wolf, Grundus. A little stronger, a little faster, a little tougher... that doesn't make me better. Did you really think I was an elder playing at being a new recruit?"

Grundus studied him for a long moment. "No," he said at last. "I haven't ruled it out completely, but... no, I don't see it. An elder would have pulled us in as allies, to cover for him. You..."

"...Don't like people?"

"For whatever reason, you're a fucking lone wolf," said Grundus. "That's not a condemnation, it's just an acknowledgement. You don't work with others and you don't want to, except when you do. I honestly didn't think you'd make it through the program, but you're loyal to the people you're working with. You and Antoinette -- and now Elyssa -- have managed some amazing things."

"Whereas you want the wolves here to be a single, united community." Chris kept his voice wry, but it suddenly made sense why Grundus had been so focused on him. He was going against the program. 

"Close enough," Grundus affirmed. "But you know what? When somebody asks you for help, you answer. I'll take that."

"Allies, then," said Chris, looking for the word to describe what he thought Grundus was asking for now. 

"Yeah," the older wolf answered. "That'll do."

"All right," he answered. "But not until after I sleep."

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part three

He made it back to the compound with ten minutes to spare, then spent five minutes dithering before he walked back through the wards. The magus in the gatehouse glanced at him as he went past, scribbled something on a ledger, and went back to looking at his phone. 

It was finished. The heart of the fallen god was fully absorbed, his original self transformed beyond anything he could have hoped to achieve by devouring the essences of others. He would never be truly human again. 

Possibly he should have regretted that, but he couldn't find any trace of loss or guilt in himself. He'd known what he was doing -- and what he was risking -- when he first moved to devour the resurrected Heart. Even absorbed, it had been... uncontrollable. He could reason with it, bargain with it, ask for its help, call it up to burn out a vampire elder and its nest of progeny, but he couldn't simply assume its power and use it as his own the way he did with everything else. 

Not until now. 

In one way, it was a relief. The nameless god who had been Vengeance and Reconciliation was finally at rest, and its power was fully under his control. He no longer needed to fear its imperatives giving him, giving them, away. In another, it was... a sacrifice. A small death. He could never go back to being what he'd been before the Incident at Pettibone. 

He wouldn't miss his humanity; he'd never felt all that human to begin with. Some of that, he knew, was teenage melodrama; and some was just the inevitable result of being the talented working-class kid at the school for the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful. Some of it might even have come from accidentally absorbing the essence of the speartongue in his youth, and growing up with the knowledge of that second self. 

"Chris?" asked Grundus. 

Chris stopped, turned. He was halfway across the campus, in the open space between the buildings, on his way to... the gym, apparently, he thought. He shook his head and tried to focus. "Grundus."

"I wasn't sure it was you, at first," said the older wolf. "Were you... were you actually smiling?"

Chris offered his most unsettling grin. "I do that sometimes."

"Not around me, you don't." Grundus took a step back. "If rumors are true, you've had a long day. Maybe you should sleep?"

Chris started to argue, stopped, blinked, and then said, "Perhaps you're right, Uncle. Running through the hills helped, but..." He yawned, and then found that it took an effort of will not to yawn again. "I should sleep now."

"Uncle, is it?" Grundus grumbled. "All right, come on. I'll see you back to your room."

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part two

Viewed from the outside, it was amazing that the training center could remain anonymous, even in the middle of nowhere in western Oklahoma, even with magical protections. It wasn't even a single training center; it was two parallel academies, one for magi and one for outsiders, even if nobody liked to use the word academy for such things anymore. 

It had taken Chris a few minutes to work his way up into the hills, but once he was safely out of sight he'd dropped down onto four legs and let his wolf's body race. Wolves couldn't do that here in the Mundus, unless they'd learned to store Grey the same way that magi did to inform their spells. Chris didn't care; he'd been out in the Grey enough recently that even if somebody noticed, it wouldn't seem out of place. As long as he didn't do anything that would require Cleanup's attention, he should be fine... and he was betting that anything within half a mile of the training center would be thoroughly scrubbed so that Cleanup never had to deal with it. 

He stopped on the edge of the Witchita Wildlife Refuge, and resumed a human configuration. That wasn't all the Dark Heart needed, though, so he dropped from the taller, leaner body of a wolf in human form to his own, original form: purely human though a magus, and nothing more. 

Very good, the Dark Heart pronounced. Now, through your own power, I will be one with you. 

He staggered back as it moved within him, mimicking the power that he'd used to absorb its essence, to take it into himself. He had pulled it in and captured it so that it could rest; that had been the bargain. Now it poured itself into him, destroying itself as it transformed him. Thousands of years of divinity washed through him, revenge and reconciliation side by side, destruction and mercy walking hand in hand: dark fires, cold imperatives, the nightmare weight of divine judgement. 

He felt the fallen god's last, ambivalent emotions as it finally let itself go: regret and relief, mixed and inseparable. Then it was quiet, and he stood in the wilderness burning silent and strong, wings spread behind him, tail lashing at the ground, claws and fangs extended. He reached for the Reconcilation side of this strange new power, this strange new self, and felt himself fall back into his original body. He'd need to find a mirror to make certain it was unchanged, but standing here, now, he felt like his old self. 

Thank you, he thought, to the last of the departed god, and you're welcome.

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part one

Chris was drifting on the edge of sleep when the Dark Heart spoke to him again. It is time.

...What?

You are worthy. The voice echoed through him, shaking him, too impossibly large for even a wolf's toughened flesh. 

All right. I... What do you need?

You offered me rest, but I need -- I CRAVE -- release. You are a worthy successor to my power... and my duty. You play at being a wolf, but for this you must drop the act. 

Alone in his bed, Chris considered that. He was still inside the training center, and even Antoinette had come to believe that they had no real privacy here. Whatever the Dark Heart had in mind, it was likely to attract attention from the magi, and he couldn't afford that. So, All right, he thought, and pried himself out of bed. Let's go find a place where I can do that.

It was a matter of small minutes and quick movements to get himself out the door, out of the dormitory, and across the campus to the gates. A tired-looking magus looked up from his phone as Chris trudged towards him. "What?" he asked, bored and impatient behind his desk.

"Christopher Black, Registered Outsider, requesting a one-hour pass to go outside."

"Vehicle?" 

"None. I'm not going anywhere in particular, I just need some time to myself -- and I can't get that here."

The magus set his phone aside and turned to his computer, typing slowly enough to make Chris slightly crazy with impatience. It had been a long day, with the trip into Tulsa and the skinless corpse and the ice skating, and he wanted nothing more than a full night's sleep... but apparently the entire Universe was conspiring against him on that. 

"Yeah, all right," said the magus, as something flashed on his screen. He plucked a piece of paper and gathered a bit of Grey, then inscribed two separate glyphs on the paper: one at the top, the other at the bottom. "This one will let you out, and this one will let you back in... but if you take more than the hour you're allotted, we'll know -- so watch your time out there." He sat back, dark-skinned and brown-eyed, with curly hair cut short. "Word of advice? We don't get a lot of these requests, and most don't get approved. Somebody likes you, so don't screw that up."

"I won't," Chris told him. "That's why they like me."

He took the paper and walked out through the gate, watching as the upper glyph burned away.

Driving Needs, part sixteen

"Okay, where to now?" asked Chris, once they'd returned their skates and left the ice rink. 

"Karoake," said Antoinette. 

"Karaoke?"

"Karaoke," she affirmed. 

"I have," Chris said, "this vague image of karaoke as a thing where people get up on stage and sing songs."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it." 

"Oh!" said Elyssa. "That sounds like fun." 

"Singing?" asked Chris. "Or watching other people sing?" He couldn't help sounding dubious. 

"Well, both really," Elyssa said. 

"All right, you win," Chris said. "Now I'm afraid." He was only half-kidding. 

"Really?" Antoinette looked at him across the roof of the car. "You'll fall all over the place on ice skates, but you won't sing? Why not?"

He shrugged and unlocked the doors, then climbed into the driver's seat. After a few minutes he said, "I think it's because I don't mind sucking at skating. You all know I'm athletic, and it's something I could learn, so it doesn't bother me as much. Singing is... I can't look at how badly I sing and reassure myself that I have a good voice and could pick it up with practice." He glanced at Antoinette. "And also, I'd want to get some practice if I was going to step onto a stage and sing in front of people."

Antoinette considered that, then nodded. "All right. No karaoke. Take us back to the training center." 

Elyssa mimed a pout. "Aww..." She gave it away by grinning at Chris in the rear view mirror. 

"Karaoke's best kept for when we're old enough to drink, I'm told," Antoinette said. "And anyway, magus Frummelt has something else in mind for our training, starting tomorrow."

"All right," said Chris, and pulled up GPS before setting his phone in its cradle on the dashboard. "We're heading back."

Driving Needs, part fifteen

Ice skating didn't terrify him, but Chris was more than willing to admit that he wasn't any good at it. He wobbled out onto the ice, struggling desperately to keep his balance and held upright mainly by the fact that the rented skates were laced as tightly as he could manage. Antoinette glided past him, then turned in place and continued moving backwards so she could look him in the face. 

"Well?" asked Elyssa lightly. "Are you terrified?"

"No," Chris answered firmly. "Awkward, unbalanced, and--" He tried to extend a leg and propel himself forward, wobbled, and promptly fell on his ass instead. "--And a little bit sore," he admitted, then set about the task of getting back upright. 

Two years earlier, he would never have gone out on the ice like this. He would have expressed disinterest and avoided it. Now, after the Incident at Pettibone -- which was how the Magi apparently all referred to it -- he cared less, about his dignity and about everything else. And he was supposed to be just a wolf, so he was supposed to be beholden to his magus, even if this wasn't strictly a situation where she was giving orders. He knew Antoinette wouldn't press the issue if he really refused, and that made him perversely more willing to go along with what she wanted. Was that how teams were formed? 

He tried again, and this time he went further before he had to reach for the wall and steady himself. Elyssa was more certain on her skates; she didn't skate backwards, but she seemed perfectly in control of her starts and stops, her turns and sweeps. Was this something that wolves learned when they grew up out in the Grey? Was he giving himself away by not knowing this already?

If so, the damage was already done. The knowledge was thin consolation, but he held to it anyway. And while this might disprove Grundus' theory -- that he was an older, more powerful wolf pretending to be young and inexperienced -- it would also lend weight to Magus Frummelt's theory that he was a wolf who had been raised in the Mundus, by magi; possibly even a halfbreed. 

"You're getting better," Antoinette said, coming up beside him. "You're nearly all the way around now."

A small child swept past him and he flinched, stumbled, and went down again. "Better isn't good," he said. 

"Maybe not," Antoinette admitted as she helped him back up, "but it's a lot better than worse."

Driving Needs, part fourteen

"Cleanup crew's here," said Captain Saintcrow. "I think it's safe for you three to take off."

Antoinette nodded. "What's the final count? What the hell actually happened here?"

"Not sure," she answered. "We won't know until all reports are filed, and even then we might get something wrong. But I've got at least four magi who got together to summon a skin-stealer from the Grey, and a fifth who they apparently sacrificed so it could wear his skin. The skin-stealer then managed to shoot all four of them, dumped the weapon somewhere, and cozied up to a businessman whom it promptly skinned in his own hotel room. He managed to fling himself off the balcony, possibly with its help, and you and your wolf caught up with it before it could finish getting whatever it wanted from me. Meanwhile, your other wolf found the dead magi, allowing us to keep that from becoming public knowledge... all in all, I'd say all three of you have done some really good work today. Tom's people seem to agree."

"All right," said Antoinette. "You've got my number. Ping me if you need anything else."

Chris nodded, because as one of the Ministry's ROs that was what he was supposed to be doing at this point. He was still thinking about the fox, and his feelings were ambivalent: he wanted her to want him; he wanted her far, far away. 

He followed Antoinette back to the car, still distracted, then forced himself to focus and unlocked the doors. 

When they were inside and pulling away, Antoinette said: "So... Elyssa and I have a bet. Neither of us has really seen you scared, and, well, given some of the situations we've been in that just seems wrong. So we have a couple of challenges for you, beyond just driving the car."

"Driving the car isn't--" Chris cut himself off. "All right. What did you have in mind?" Whatever this was, he would go with it.

"Ice skating," said Elyssa.

"Ice skating?" 

"Ice skating," Antoinette told him.

Chris forced his jaw to unclench. "All right. Ice skating."

Driving Needs, part thirteen

"Can I ask you something?" asked the fox, squatting down beside Chris where he was keeping watch on the skin-stealer's body. 

Chris suppressed a momentary nervousness and said, "Sure." 

"When you first got to that conference room, did the smell of gunpowder seem unusually strong?" 

Chris considered that. "Yes. I mean, also blood and voided bowels, but... yes."

The fox nodded. "I thought so. It seemed to be concentrated just inside the door, like the intruder stopped to shoot everybody on the way out."

"I didn't get far enough into the room to compare," Chris looked at the body in front of him, then met the fox's eyes. She was older than he was by several years, unexpectedly attractive with that red-brown hair and those dark brown eyes, that hint of sharpness to her teeth. He ignored that particular stirring -- and what the hell could he do about it, really? -- and added, "Thought it was better to close the door and call it in."

"You're young for Enforcement," the fox told him. "All three of you are. Most teams don't get sent into the Grey until their fourth of fifth year, when they've established themselves." 

Chris froze, then deliberately rolled his shoulders. "You've been looking at our files." 

The fox tilted her head. "Does that bother you?" 

"Yes," he said immediately. "It shouldn't, and I should have known you would -- but I didn't, and I don't like being surprised." 

"We're investigators," the fox said, looking away to check over their surroundings. "It's what we do."

Chris nodded. "I know. Like I said, I should have expected it." They squatted side by side in silence for a long moment, and then he said: "Makes it damned hard to cultivate an aura of mystery, too."

The fox laughed, a startled bark. "Mystery? Around a fox? That's catnip for us. You do that, you're all but asking for us to take an interest."

Chris chuckled. "All right. If I have to guess -- and I'm guessing you want me to -- even after reading our files, you're wondering how an inexperienced group like us wound up covering an established first responder like Captain Saintcrow in a very public, very unusual situation like this."

The fox smiled at him and offered a slight shrug. "You were on the scene before we were; we'd have had to interview you regardless. I'm not saying you're wrong, though."

Chris rose to his feet and turned away from the murderer's corpse. "Magus Frummelt," he said simply. "He knew we were nearby on other business, so he tapped us when this came up."

"Your magus reports to him?" 

Chris nodded. "She does."

"If I'm reading your files right, all three of you have stumbled into some things that should have killed you and managed to survive. Is that why he brought you onto his team?" 

Chris hesitated, knowing that the fox was probably reading his expression no matter how blank he kept it. "I'm going to say yes, but if you want more detail you're going to have to ask Magus Frummelt."

"Ah." The fox waited for a heartbeat, then asked: "So why didn't you follow the skin-stealer? By all accounts your senses are excellent. You and Elyssa must have both known that you were sending her down the fresher trail. You're not a coward, either; if anything, I'd have expected you to throw yourself after the intruder."

Chris nodded. "You're not wrong. It just..." He remembered the voice of the dark heart. "...It seemed more important to find out where that thing had come from and how it got here."

"Well," said the fox, "you weren't wrong either. And you probably saved the Cleanup crew a lot of headaches; if one of the mundanes had found that room first, it would have created a lot more work."

Driving Needs, part twelve

No Dark Armor today, sorry. There's a lot going on and my brain's not in that place. I'll try to get back to it next week. Meanwhile....

"Jesus, Lili." The man looking around the crime scene was white-haired, with pale blue eyes and skin wrinkled with age, but he stood and moved like a man in his thirties. "What the hell happened here?"

"Tom," she acknowledged. "You brought a squad?"

He nodded towards a van that was parked at the edge of the street, and the side door opened. Six people slipped out, formed up, and approached as a group. Watching them, Chris thought that five were magi and the sixth a wolf... No, he corrected himself a moment later, a fox. He'd only ever met one such fox, and it had very nearly been his undoing; he hoped this one was less observant even as he immediately doubted the possibility.

The older man turned back to Captain Saintcrow. "Where should we start?"

"Start with the skin-stealer over there," Saintcrow answered immediately. "The wolf--" she nodded at Elyssa "--ripped out its heart, but I don't know enough about them to make sure it's dead. I've got a skinless corpse on the street here, and a murder scene in a room on the eighth floor, but before you get to those I've also got a conference room with five or six dead magi who I think summoned the skin-stealer." 

The spry old man nodded. "We'll confirm that once we're sure the skin-stealer is dead. Cleanup left about ten minutes behind me, but they drive the speed limit... could be a bit before they're here."

Captain Saintcrow nodded. "I've got the scene. You and your team should do their thing, and then Cleanup can spend the next few headache-inducing hours figuring out whose memories need to be modified, what stories should go out, and why none of us actually exist." 

"As per fucking usual," the white-haired man acknowledged, before turning back to his team. "All right. You heard the priorities. Get to it, and keep me informed."

Driving Needs, part eleven

"Blessed Morrigan, what a mess." Captain Lilith Saintcrow said, looking over the blood-soaked conference room. She looked at Chris. "This is how you found it?"

Chris considered. "I'd like to say that I didn't step inside, but I did. It took me a moment to process what I was looking at."

Antoinette said, "So much Grey..."

The captain nodded. "Just hanging in the air," she confirmed. Still looking at Chris, she said: "You can feel it too?" 

Chris nodded. "The moment I opened the door. I'm assuming they summoned that thing."

"They better have," Litlith muttered. "Otherwise this thing gets even more complicated, and I have enough of a headache already."

"Did they summon anything else?" asked Antoinette, and Chris blessed her for the distraction. He hated being deceptive, and he was never sure if that was because he was no good at it, or if it was the other way around: he was no good at it because he hated it. He understood the concept, it just felt wrong.  

Captain Saintcrow stepped into the room. She raised her hands, traced them through the air. "I wouldn't swear to anything, but I don't think so. Investigations can check that, whenever the hell they get here." She looked around, then stepped back. "The thing was damned precise. Two bullets for each of the magi: one to the heart, one to the head. And then the other victim, cleanly skinned... and it must have been fast."

Elyssa asked, "So we think we're done? Or do you want to keep us on scene?"

The captain tilted her head to look at the wolf. "Are you in a hurry to get out of here?" 

Elyssa met her eyes. "Not a hurry, exactly, but our magus promised that we'd get to do some things while we're in town. We can do them later if we're needed here."

Saintcrow laughed. "I'll try not to hold you up too much, Wolf. I need you at my back until I've got a full response team here, though." 

Antoinette nodded decisively. "We've got you," she said.

Driving Needs, part ten

"Antoinette?" Chris asked, when her partner finally answered her phone. 

He heard her swallow. "Where are you?" 

"Standing in the doorway of a conference room, looking at a bunch of dead magi. Did you find the skin-stealer?"

"Yes. It was presenting itself to Captain Saintcrow as an older magus, Stephen Dalbritten, telling her it was there to help with the investigation. I think it was going to move on her, but Elyssa got to it first and the captain threw up a seeming to hide them as soon as she realized what was going on. That was right before she locked it down and Elyssa ripped out its heart."

"Anybody down? Besides the skin-stealer?"

"No, we're good. Dead magi?"

"Yeah. I think they might have brought it here. The other end of the trail ended at a hotel conference room, where four people had been shot. Maybe more. And that sense of the Grey? It's all over the place."

"No survivors?" 

Chris hesitated, then said: "None."

"Shit." Antoinette hesitated. "So it looks like the threat's contained, but Cleanup is going to have an even bigger job on their hands."

"That's my read on it," Chris told her. "Glad you took it down."

"Yeah," said Antoinette. "Me, too."

Driving Needs, part nine

"Are you almost finished? We need to leave." The voice was male, but muffled by the closed wooden door. Chris didn't recognize it. 

A woman's voice replied, "I'm going as fast as I can. You said that we'd have time to clean up after it took Stephen."

"This is not my fault! It was supposed to impersonate him, not start scattering bodies in the streets so it could add more skins to hide beneath."

"Yeah, well, it did," said another man's voice, "and now the Ministry's crawling all over this place and we really need to cover our tracks. So quit distracting Miranda while she's trying to disperse the traces and come help me with the last of the blood."

Well, this is clearly the right place, Chris thought. 

Indeed it is, replied the voice of the dark heart. Not bad for someone searching by scent alone.

Chris studied the door for a brief moment. Then, on a whim, he tried the knob. 

It wasn't locked. Whatever these people had done to summon that thing, they'd done it without bothering to lock the door. The thought he shared with the Dark Heart wasn't an actual sentence so much as a profound sigh. Then he drew his gun, spoke the Word for silence, stepped inside... 

And started shooting.

Driving Needs, Part Eight

"Which direction?" asked Antoinette. 

Right, said the voice of dark flames and screaming silence.

Damn it, Chris thought back, let me do this. But he said, "Right."

"Then we'll take left," Elyssa replied, and turned with Antoinette to follow the scent. 

Chris followed the other trail. The scent was fresher to the left, he thought, wondering if it was worth focusing some of his stored Grey into the word for Connection in order to get clearer answers, or whether that would just wake the dark heart further and make it even more difficult to manage.

It was, the voice replied, rich with weight of its own cold fire and divine certainty. The murderer went to the left after it departed the killing-room, and your friends will kill it. We have other prey.

Chris swallowed. He'd known when he absorbed the dark heart that it was too much, too powerful. Even if he could have absorbed it forcibly, it would would have overwhelmed him. He would have become part of it, rather than the other way around -- if any part of him had remained at all. It was only because it gave itself up willingly that he was able to take it in, but that meant now that it retained an individuality, a will of its own, that none of his other captured essences possessed. You'd leave vengeance to others?

To kill the killer is a small vengeance. It is the ones who summoned it here who must face my wrath. If you would prove yourself worthy, then you must find them and destroy them.

The scent-trail was still clear, but Chris slowed for a moment to sort it from everything else hanging in the half-stale air of the hotel hallway. No blood, no terror, just that rancid, half-rotten scent. Either the hall had been empty when the skin-stealer passed through, or nobody had recognized it as inhuman. 

All right, he replied. Watch me hunt.