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  "Oh, sorry," Char said sheepishly, sipping her wine again. A moment later, the aura dampened, becoming barely noticeable.

  Angie stepped forward and saw more clearly the floating object. It was a large clay jar a foot in height and covered in strange hieroglyphics. Char's druid staff, a potent magical artifact carved from silver Spiritwood and almost as tall as Char, leaned nearby against a wooden case. If Char needed her strongest magic, she'd have the staff in hand, so whatever the jar was, clearly Char wasn't concerned. But just the same, something about the ancient jar drew Angie's eye.

  "One of your sister's blood drinkers," Andrej said, his voice sharp with distaste. "It was in the house, drawn here by..." He paused, glancing at Angie, his sentence unfinished. He needn't have bothered. She already knew the effect her blood had on Ephix's vampires. That was why Char had banned them from the house and zoo grounds. They were supposed to remain in the ruins of Fresno, protecting the enclave.

  "I see," said Char coldly. Then her face transformed, and she smiled at Angie, motioning her to come closer. "Stand by me, daughter." When Angie approached, Char wrapped an arm across her shoulder and a large wing over her back, letting it hang like a protective cloak. She rested her head atop Angie's, barely grazing her with a twisted ram horn. "I'm sorry. We shall let Ephix deal with her own servant, but I will bring the matter up with her."

  "Yes, Mother. I'm fine. I wasn't scared." She leaned against Char's side, wrapping an arm around her waist and squeezing her.

  "Of course you were," Char whispered. "You're no idiot. There's no shame in fearing vampires. But for now, I need your help."

  "Yes, Mother." Angie's attention fixed on the floating jar. "What is that?"

  Something about the jar captivated her. Up close, it looked brittle, and, quite frankly, a bit plain—especially when compared to Char's many other treasures and magical artifacts. The hieroglyphics carved into the jar were interesting, however, and Angie peered intently at them, trying to guess their origin. They weren't elven, or at least she didn't think they were, but you could fill books with the things Angie didn't understand about the elves.

  "This," Char said, a rapturous smile on her beautiful features, "was sent to me by our cousins to the east."

  "The Kingdom of the Southern Cross?" she asked, finding it hard to believe that the notoriously xenophobic citizens of the former southern states would permit a Fey enclave in their territory.

  "Think farther east, half a world away."

  "Oh. What does it do?"

  Angie leaned forward, her fingers drifting toward the urn, but Char jerked her back. "Don't touch it! And watch your footing. Don't break the ward."

  It was then that she noticed the occult markings drawn on the wooden floorboards. The markings created an intricate protective circle four feet across. Most of the ward had been etched in chalk, but Char had also used sifted lines of salt and ash to strengthen the protective bond. The few wards Angie recognized were among the most powerful Char taught, but there were still others she didn't recognize. Angie reassessed her earlier opinion: staff or not, Char had worked her most powerful magic into the creation of those wards. Whatever that jar was, clearly it was magical, a talisman, she guessed. Char collected artifacts and talismans.

  She drew her sneaker away from the ward. "It looks old," Angie said. "The sort of thing used to carry water from a well."

  Char sniffed. "The jar itself is little more than a container, a sleeve if you will. Perhaps even a prison, although I'm not sure such a word is accurate."

  "A prison? What's ... what's in it?"

  "Perhaps nothing, at least nothing anymore. Once, however, if the legends are true, it held a very great treasure, though I suspect it is long empty. But before I open it to see, I'd like you to use your special talent. Maybe you can sense something I cannot." She exhaled, her ample cleavage rising and falling with her breaths. "Although ... if I'm being honest with myself, I'm at least a century too late, and the container now holds dust. The entity it once held was old long before I was born, and even the very old must pass into eternity." She gave Angie a squeeze and a smile.

  "You're not that old, Mother."

  "You are a dutiful daughter but a poor liar. But please, use your gift, and remember, 'ware your footing near the ward."

  Angie nodded, squaring her shoulders as she fixed her attention on the slowly rotating jar. She breathed in and out, long drawn-out breaths, centering herself. She was a poor swordfighter and, at best, an average magical student, but she had one special talent none of the other students possessed: when she concentrated, she could detect the presence of life, whether human, animal, or Fey. No other mage, not even Char, could do this. She closed her eyes, focusing on the jar, searching for any trace of life.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing there. She opened her eyes, certain she was somehow letting Char down even if she knew it wasn't her fault. Char had said it was very old.

  But then, before she could say anything, she felt the slightest flicker of a sensation within her skull, as if something had connected psychically with her. And for a moment, she felt an emotion—excitement. There was something within the jar.

  At that moment, a long, drawn-out howl of agony tore through the house. Angie spun about, her fear spiking. In a flash, Char retrieved her staff, holding it before her as she faced the door. Andrej, to his credit, placed himself in front of Char, unarmed but ready to throw away his life to slow down an attacker. Char had that effect on her lovers. Angie's legs went weak as the scream continued before finally petering out into a hideous whimpering wail.

  It was the vampire. Horror and guilt coursed through her as she understood what was happening. Ephix did not tolerate disobedience.

  Andrej turned and stared wide-eyed at Char. "I ... are we under attack?"

  "No." Char lowered her staff. "It seems I no longer need speak to my sister about her servants. But ... perhaps her methods."

  Angie forced herself to inhale, her heart racing. She ran her fingers over her face, telling herself it wasn't her fault. As frightening as they were, the creature hadn't hurt her, hadn't even threatened to harm her. She stared down, wringing her hands.

  And saw that her sneaker had scuffed away the chalk line of the ward.

  She stared in confusion for several heartbeats, trying to understand what had just happened. Char must have sensed something, because she sprinted toward Angie, her mouth open, reaching for her.

  The jar exploded in fire, a tornado of flames that swept about Angie, roaring in triumph. Angie gasped, flinging her arms to the sides as she floated into the air, surrounded by fire. When she opened her mouth to cry out, the flames poured down her throat.

  Chapter 2

  7 August 2053

  Sanwa City, Southern California

  Eighteen years after the Awakening

  Angie bolted upright in bed, gasping for air, her chest a tight knot of pain that she massaged with her palm. The room was dark and silent, but just for a moment, she could smell the smoke of burning engine oil, feel the flash of heat on her skin, and hear the warning alarms shrieking as the helicopter spun through the air. "No," she said in a breathless whisper. "Get a grip, soldier."

  It was the dream again, not real. She wasn’t there.

  Not now.

  The pain receded as it always did. She wasn't dying. She was in her tiny apartment in Sanwa City. The past couldn’t hurt her.

  Her sheets were twisted about her legs, and when she untangled them, she sat up, waiting as her heart rate slowed to a semblance of normal. It was hot, of course, so she slept almost nude, wearing only her panties, but a layer of cold sweat coated her skin, unusual in the dry heat of a San Joaquin Valley summer, and she shivered. She cleared her throat, but it sounded more like a sob. She was so tired, so goddamned tired.

  She picked up her watch from her night table, the only possession she had of her father's. The watch was a relic, and most people would think it junk. Its metal housing
was battered and dented, as was the glass over the dial, and its leather band had been replaced at least twice, but it ran perfectly. It was a wind-up, of course, with an inscription on the back that read, Pflicht, Familie, Liebe—Duty, Family, Love. It was a Beobachtungs-uhren—observation watch—built before the Second World War for German bomber crews. Her great-great-grandfather had fought for Germany, when there had been such a thing as Germany, and the watch had been handed down through the Ritter family from father to son for four generations—until it came to her, the last living Ritter.

  She saw by the dented old hands that it was only two a.m. She had a shift at the canning plant in eight hours, but she wouldn't be able to sleep yet, not without dreaming again.

  Instead, she lit a candle on her nightstand with the matches lying nearby. When she blew out the wooden match, the stench of sulfur filled her bedroom. She picked up a pair of rumpled sweatpants and a T-shirt from the floor and dressed. Her clothes stank. She needed to wash them. She needed to do lots of things, including cleaning this dump. She carried the lit candle, hand cupped around the warm flame, into the bathroom and set it on the counter while she sat on the toilet and peed. When she was done, she leaned over the sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her brown eyes were puffy and red; her shoulder-length brown hair looked like a bird's nest, only not as orderly. "You look like shit, Angela Harriet Ritter."

  She picked up a brush and assaulted the worst of the snags, ignoring the stinging in her scalp as the knots pulled free. Who knew long hair could be such a pain? She had kept it short all her life, first in Char's school and later in the Home Guard because of regulations. She had only grown it out when the unit had kicked her out—when Nathan had kicked her out. Long hair was her small act of defiance. But it was childish and pointless. Nathan wouldn't care.

  Who's he sleeping with tonight? she wondered.

  When she was done, she tied her hair in a ponytail and considered herself, finding her cheekbones too angular and sharp. She pulled her T-shirt up, exposing her tightly defined abs and too-much ribs. She had lost weight since mustering out and didn't know how much she weighed now, but she wasn't sure she wanted to. She had never been a large woman, but these days she was becoming little more than muscle and sinew. She was training too hard, she knew, far harder than she ever had in Char’s school or the Home Guard, but she didn’t have any choice. Exhaustion was the only path to sleep, if only for a few hours.

  The living room, if you could call it that, consisted of a leather couch so old the cracked leather was falling off in chunks, a single reading chair, a footrest she rarely used, and a martial arts dummy on a water-weighted stand in the center of the room. The dummy's rubber skin was scored and cracked and peeling in places, but it worked.

  "Morning, Bob," she said as she set the candle down on an end table and began pulling the furniture away from the dummy, a free-standing, limbless torso with a head. A Kevlar armored vest was strapped over "Bob's" torso with loops of electrical tape holding it in place. The material over Bob's heart had been struck so many times the Kevlar was wearing through, revealing the ceramic plate in the pocket over Bob's vitals.

  She picked up a wooden waster, a weighted practice sword, lying atop the couch and took up a high guard stance from Renaissance Italy called Guardia Alta. Pretty much all the sword-fighting techniques Char had taught came from Renaissance Italy. That was the price to be paid for learning from someone as old as her adopted mother. On the other hand, the old techniques still worked better than anything else Angie had ever seen. There was much to be said for a fighting style that was built upon life-and-death combat. Sword fighting honed the body, Char insisted, and mages needed to be fit to withstand the destructive effect of magic. Unfit mages soon burned out, shade or no shade. Besides, hexed blades were the only weapons that could penetrate a shade's protective shield over its mage-host. Master steel or die had been one of Char's many maxims.

  She held her waster high over her right shoulder, her lead finger and thumb wrapped around the waster's wooden quillons so that she could finger the blade for superior tip control. Then she lunged forward, pushing off her rear foot and “finding the measure,” the art of moving from out of range to in range in one lunge. Her waster's tip struck the Kevlar over Bob's heart, thudding into the ceramic plate beneath.

  She drew back and took up a new stance, Guardia Bassa, her blade held low next to her right knee. Again, she lunged forward like a snake, once more finding the measure perfectly, her arm and shoulder jarring with the impact.

  In moments, her T-shirt clung to her sweaty back as Angie slipped from stance to stance, angle of attack to angle of attack. Sometimes coming straight in while other times attacking from the left or right, her waster's tip struck Bob in his ceramic heart each time. She found peace in the repetition, her only path to peace since the incident. She began to alter her target, now striking Bob in the mouth in a derogatory move the Spanish had named “Kissing the Button.” Either way, heart or throat, each strike was a coup de main, a killing blow. One of Char's earliest lessons was that a mortally wounded opponent could still kill you before he or she bled out. When you cross blades, Char insisted, strike first to kill. If you can't kill, then wound, and stay alive until you can kill.

  Angie had never fought a real duel with another mage. There had never been a need. Her latent magical ability had always been too weak for her to serve as one of Nathan's combat mages, so there had been little risk of her running into a Brujas Fantasmas mage. In truth, at her best, she had never been much more than a competent fencer—certainly nothing like Nathan, who had been the school champion until the summer Char had kicked him out. In the last school tournament she had fought in, she had come in second to last. On the other hand, the last six months of nightly training sessions had done wonders for her skills. How would I do in a tournament now? she wondered as the impact of another perfect heart strike jarred through her arm and shoulder.

  Her breathing quickened as she launched herself forward repeatedly, sometimes changing her grip, sometimes changing her stance, and sometimes stepping out of line to alter her line of attack. She came in high, angling her blade down at Bob's heart. She ducked low, one knee scraping the wooden floor, to strike up. She feinted, making false attacks and cuts before lunging into the true strike. Sometimes she even carried through on the feints at the last moment. Again and again, her waster's tip thudded against Bob, rocking the dummy in place.

  She only stopped when the neighbors pounded on her ceiling. "Sorry," she gasped as she bent over to catch her breath. It was just after three a.m.—more than enough time to go back to sleep before her shift.

  But first, there was one last ritual.

  Her muscles trembled with exertion as she dropped the waster, picked up the mostly burned-away candle, and stumbled into the bathroom once more. She turned on the tap, cupping her hands beneath the water, and drank greedily. Then she knelt in front of the sink's cupboard, opening the flimsy wooden storage door. She fell back on her butt as a large roach scuttled away from the candlelight, disappearing through a hole in the baseboard. She glared at the hole. "You’d better run. Next time I'm squashing you." Her words rang hollow to her ears. If she deserved to live, then so did the roach.

  She removed the dirty wax paper lining the bottom of the storage space beneath the sink. Then her fingers traced the outline of the false bottom as she carefully pried away the wooden board, revealing the oilcloth-wrapped side-sword with its sheath and sword belt hidden in the hollow space—Nightfall, her elven-forged blade, worth more than her entire apartment. Hell, probably more than the building. No one knew she had it. If they even suspected, someone would have broken in to steal it long ago. Nathan had spread the word that the sword belonged to the Home Guard when she had mustered out, even though he knew it was a gift of Char's. Nathan was pissed with her, but that didn't mean he wanted to see her murdered by Sanwa City's criminal underworld for a hexed blade.

  Nightfall was shorter a
nd lighter than a battle rapier, built specifically for Angie's smaller frame. She drew the dark blade from the sheath, holding the hilt with its meticulously crafted and etched quillons, side rings, and loop guards to her face. The workmanship was superb. It came from the Coronado Fey, the greatest artisans on the continent, if not the world. The rounded pommel was carved wyvern bone, flawless and so dark it absorbed light, the grip lined with threads of golden griffin hair to ensure a firm hold when the wielder's palm was sweaty. The balance was perfect, the silver-etched metal blade so dark blue it looked like a night sky. The blade, three feet of flawless Starsheen metal, always held its edge. Several of the occult hexes worked into the blade's length flashed with magical white light when she touched the hilt.

  At least Nightfall still considered her a mage.

  She returned the side-sword to its hiding space, wrapping the cloth once more about it before setting the false flooring and wax paper back in place. Then she pulled her dirty sweats off and fell into bed.

  This time a dreamless, exhausted sleep found her.

  Chapter 3

  Angie poured a cup of coffee from the large thermos and then took it to one of the metal chairs set up in a circle facing inward. Folding tables, stacks of additional chairs, and moldy cardboard boxes sat shoved out of the way along the storage room's walls, making room for Leo's “Trust Circle.” The meetings were always held in the community center's storage room, shared with other support groups. Tomorrow it would be Alcoholics Anonymous, the day after Friends of Fey. A single unlit lantern sat on a nearby table, but it was early evening yet, and sunlight still stabbed through the dirty windows along one wall, illuminating the room. When she had been a child, people used to leave the lights on even when a room was empty. No more. These days there was never enough kerosene to waste.