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“What’s going on?” I nodded to Delilah and we joined them. “Yugi, what are you doing here?”
“I was hoping, with his empathetic abilities, that he might be able to get a sense for what this is.” Chase sounded tired, and he stifled a yawn.
Yugi shook his head. “All I get is a lot of static—the airwaves are filled with confusion. Either I’m not tuned in enough to hear clearly, or whatever is around here is causing a lot of chaos.”
That’s the first time we’d seen exactly what Chase used Yugi for, other than his typical duties. We knew he was an empath, but until now, I’d had no clue that the FH-CSI actually made use of his abilities.
“Don’t sweat it,” Shade said. “The energy here is thick enough to cut with a knife, and it’s bound to be hard to navigate.”
I closed my eyes, trying to tune in myself. “Shade’s right. It’s like a big hollow brick filled with bees.” Try as I might, I couldn’t pick up anything other than a loud buzz of static. That didn’t mean there weren’t any demons around, though.
“I guess we’d better see what it is.” Morio glanced at Chase. “You stay here—with that leg, you’d be a sitting duck. In fact, we’ll only take one of your men with us, to act as a messenger. I don’t want any easy targets.”
Yugi started to volunteer, but Chase nixed that idea. “I need you—you’re second in command. Keo, please go with them.”
Keo stepped forward.
Delilah squinted, then let out a short laugh. “Werewolf?”
He nodded. “Right.” And then, with a grin, he added, “Pack mentality makes for good teamwork, you know.”
“You’ve got a point.” Delilah glanced at me. “What order?”
“Morio and me first, with Shade and Vanzir right behind us. You, Roz, and Keo take up the rear. Keep an eye out, too. We don’t want anybody slipping behind to ambush us.” I pulled her to one side. “You keep an eye on Keo. If it looks like he’s in danger, get him out.”
She nodded.
As we fell into line, I took a moment to gather the Moon Mother’s energy. The afternoon was fairly sunny. There was no chance for me to call down the lightning, and so I had to focus her power into an energy blast.
I’d also brought the Black Unicorn horn with me, and it was secreted in a hidden pocket in my skirt. I didn’t want to have to use it, if I could avoid doing so. A few good blasts would drain it of energy, although they’d be megacharged blasts. I had to renew it every month under the new moon for it to both retain and recover its power.
Morio was prepping for a spell, too, though I wasn’t sure what it was. I glanced back. Shade needed no weapon. He was a weapon. Vanzir, too, with his powers recovering in a strange fashion that none of us were sure about at this point, including Vanzir, himself. Delilah had her dagger out, and Roz was fiddling in his duster, probably making sure he had easy access to the multitude of weapons he carried.
“Ready?”
They nodded.
“Then let’s go.” We ducked under the police tape and jogged down the street. The trees on either side seemed sickly, and as I reached out, a sickly tendril of energy came creeping my way. Snakelike, it was twisted, reminding me of a withered, grasping hand. I yanked my attention away and quickly told the others.
“I think it might be able to latch onto our energy, so please, be cautious. Pay attention to what’s going on in your thoughts. We’ve all been leeched onto at some point, and this is one time we can’t afford to go down to some astral freakazoid.”
I quickly focused on raising some wards—Morio and I had been practicing our internal shields over the past few months, and I was getting a lot better at them. Protection magic had never been my strong suit, but I worked overtime to learn it now, because our need was so great.>I bit into the sandwich, and it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. Either that, or I was starving. I had already polished off one sandwich by the time Delilah and Shade appeared and was starting on another.
Iris poked her head into the kitchen from the back porch and—on seeing me—slipped through the door and took a seat next to me.
“Are Smoky and Trillian back from Otherworld yet?”
She shook her head. “No, but it’s been less than twenty-four hours.”
She gave me a sideways glance. “You feeling okay?”
“I threw up when I woke up, but slept like the dead. What the hell did you give me? Whatever it was, it did the trick, but it left me really disconcerted.”
Iris nodded. “Yes, that’s why I don’t usually prepare it. It not only leaves a person disoriented, but can have serious long-term effects on the body, if you take it more than once or twice a year. But given what happened…I figured you’d need to be up and strong as soon as you could.”
That didn’t sound good. In fact, when I looked around at the expressions of the others, I realized that whatever it was, it wasn’t good at all.
“So, you all look pretty grim. What’s going down? Tell me.”
