Chapter 15: Yukio's Gamble
The silence in the brownstone after Youssef collapsed was absolute, broken only by the ragged pull of Fatima’s breath. She knelt beside her brother, her hands hovering over his still form as if afraid to touch him. “What did they do? What did they do to him?”
Brigid was already in motion. She barked orders, her voice crisp and clinical, slicing through the panic. “Jan, clear that table. Hank, lift him. Stacy, my bag—the black case. He’s under a remote neural induction. We need to stabilize his autonomic functions before we attempt a counter.”
“Counter?” Fatima’s head snapped up, her eyes wild. “How?”
“I have to go in,” Brigid said, rummaging in her case for a vial of viscous silver fluid and a syringe.
“Into his mind?” Amir’s voice was strained from the doorway. “Brigid, that’s… the risks…”
“Are calculable,” Brigid cut him off, drawing the silvery fluid into the syringe. “His consciousness is being held in a fabricated psychotropic loop, likely keyed to a pleasure-feedback trigger. I must enter the loop, find him, and provide a stronger, real anchor to pull him out. I need a tether here, and a guide inside. Someone he knows, trusts, but who is not family. The emotional resonance of a family member might fuse with the false construct.”
All eyes turned, almost as one, to Yukio. She stood near the fireplace, still clutching the jar of salve, her dark eyes wide. “Me?”
“You fought for him. He’s aware of you as a protector,” Brigid stated, as if explaining a chemical reaction. “And your… less restrained nature may be an asset against a pleasure-based trap. Will you do it?”
Yukio glanced at the unconscious Youssef, at Fatima’s terrified face. She set the jar down. “Hell yeah, I will. What do I do?”
“Lie down next to him. Physical contact helps. I will initiate the conjunction.” Brigid turned to Jan. “I need you and Fatima to be the anchor. Hold our hands. Your Green Moon magic is about connection and desire. Use it to fortify the tether. Keep us from getting lost in his synaptic feedback.”
They moved quickly. Youssef was laid on the cleared oak table. Yukio climbed up beside him, lying on her side, facing him. She took his limp hand. Jan and Fatima each placed a hand on Yukio’s shoulder and Brigid’s arm. Brigid, with terrifying calm, injected the silver fluid into the carotid artery in Youssef’s neck. Then she placed her fingertips on his temples and her forehead against Yukio’s.
“Syncing now. Do not let go.”
Brigid’s consciousness unraveled like a ribbon of light, flowing into the dark river of Youssef’s subdued neural pathways. Yukio felt a terrible, yawning pull, and then she was falling into the light.
Yukio’s feet touched soft, warm grass. She stood in a sunlit garden of impossible beauty. The air was thick with the perfume of jasmine and night-blooming roses, a cloying sweetness that made her throat tighten. Golden light filtered through twisted vines that formed arches and bowers. In the center, a marble fountain burbled, its water casting shimmering, fleeting reflections that looked almost like faces.
On a blanket of dark silk by the fountain, Youssef reclined. His head rested in the lap of Yara, who looked like a goddess here—her hair a cascade of obsidian, her skin flawless, her eyes glowing with soft amber light. She fed him a grape, trailing her fingers over his lips. Around them, women moved in a slow, sensual dance. Yukio recognized a famous pop star, a model from a sports magazine, a cheerleader from a Rutgers game. And there, dancing naked, her large breasts swaying, was Molly Carmichael, a vacant, blissful smile on her face.
“Stay with me, Youssef,” Yara crooned, her voice the sound of honey and broken glass. “This is paradise. Everything you’ve ever wanted is here. No stress. No exams. No confusing sisters. Just pleasure. Eternal, perfect pleasure.”
Youssef’s expression was slack, placid. He accepted another grape.
Yukio took a breath. This was the construct. A gilded cage of fantasy. She stepped forward, the grass silent under her bare feet. She hadn’t been barefoot a moment ago. She looked down. She was wearing only the simple clothes she’d arrived in at the brownstone. It would have to do.
“Mind if I join?” Yukio’s voice cut through the hypnotic murmur of the fountain and the whispering women.
Yara’s glowing eyes snapped to her. A flicker of annoyance, then cold recognition. “You don’t belong here. This is a private sanctuary.”
“Youssef knows me,” Yukio said, her voice steady. She kept walking. She stopped at the edge of the silk blanket and, holding Yara’s gaze, began to unbutton her flannel shirt. “And I think he might want something a little more real.”
She let the shirt fall open, then shrugged it off her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The sun in this false garden felt warm on her skin. She popped the button on her jeans, slid the zipper down, and pushed them and her underwear down her hips in one motion, stepping out of them. She stood naked before the fantasy, her body strong, her rose tattoo vivid on her shoulder.
Youssef’s eyes, hazy and distant, tracked her movement. There was a faint pulse in the golden light.
Yukio knelt on the silk beside him. She took his limp hand from his chest and guided it between her legs. Her folds were already damp—a real, physiological response to the adrenaline of the plunge or the rawness of the act, she didn’t know. She pressed his fingers against her.
“I’m real,” she said, her voice dropping to a husky whisper. “Feel that? That’s me. Not a memory. Not a fantasy she cooked up for you.” She guided his index finger inside her, letting out a soft, sharp gasp as he breached her entrance. She was tight, hot. “That’s my fucking cunt, Youssef. It’s wet for you. Now come back and do something about it.”
His eyes flickered. The placid acceptance cracked, showing confusion, then a dawning, painful awareness. His finger moved inside her, a shallow, questioning curl.
Yara snarled. The beautiful goddess visage rippled, showing a glimpse of something sharper, hungrier beneath. “He is mine! I built this for him! He wants this!”
“He wants to not be a puppet,” Yukio shot back, riding his finger, her breath coming faster. She leaned over Youssef, her breasts brushing his chest, and looked directly into his eyes. “Don’t you, habibi? Don’t you want to fuck the girl who’s actually here?”
With a sound that was part growl, part sob, Youssef’s other hand came up and tangled in Yukio’s dark hair. He pulled her mouth to his. The kiss was clumsy, desperate, real. It tasted of grapes and the copper-tang of a mind fighting its way to the surface.
Yara lunged across him, her fingers elongating into shadowy claws aimed at Yukio’s face. “Get off him!”
Yukio reacted on pure instinct. She broke the kiss, shoved Youssef flat onto his back, and swung her leg over his head, straddling his face. She lowered herself, her wet cunt hovering over his mouth. “You want him?” she hissed at Yara. “Then taste what he’s getting.”
She sank down, taking his mouth with her pussy. Youssef’s tongue met her, flat and searching at first, then with frantic purpose. He lapped at her folds, his nose pressed against her clit. The sensation was electric, vulgar, and utterly grounding. Yukio cried out, a ragged, real sound that shook the garden’s perfect leaves.
“Taste me, you bastard,” she moaned, grinding her hips against his face. “Swallow me. That’s real. That’s life.”
Yara recoiled, horrified by the raw carnality of it. This wasn’t the choreographed, aesthetic pleasure she’d constructed. This was messy, loud, and human.
Youssef’s hands came up and gripped Yukio’s thighs, holding her in place as he ate her out with a starving intensity. His tongue plunged inside her, then flattened against her clit, circling, suckling. Yukio rode his face, her head thrown back, her cries echoing in the garden. “Yes! Just like that! Oh, fuck, Youssef, don’t you dare stop!”
The paradise garden began to pixelate at the edges. The dancing women fragmented into motes of light. The fountain’s burble became static.
Enraged, Yara grabbed Yukio’s wrist, her touch like cold iron. Yukio, dizzy with the building orgasm, turned her head and stared at the half-succubus. Instead of pulling away, she yanked Yara forward with surprising strength and forced the demon’s hand between Yara’s own legs, under the silken dress.
“You want to play?” Yukio snarled, her voice guttural. “Then play with yourself. Let’s see what you really like.”
Confusion broke Yara’s fury. Her own fingers, trapped by Yukio’s grip, brushed against her own sex. A shiver, unbidden, ran through her. The programmed construct of the seductress didn’t account for self-touch. It was a vulnerability. As Yukio grinded on Youssef’s mouth, moaning filth and encouragement, Yara’s trapped hand began to move. She gasped, her glow flickering erratically. She was fingering herself, her movements becoming frantic, matching the rhythm of Youssef’s tongue.
The two sounds mixed—Yukio’s shameless, screaming pleasure and Yara’s sharp, confused gasps. It was too much dissonance for the dream.
Yukio’s climax hit her like a physical blow. She screamed, a sound that tore the golden sky, and gushed onto Youssef’s mouth and chin, her juices flooding him. The garden shattered.
Yukio gasped, bolting upright on the oak table. She was drenched in sweat, her body trembling with the aftershocks of a very real orgasm. Next to her, Youssef convulsed once, then his eyes flew open. He coughed, rolling onto his side, a string of saliva and her release dripping from his lips.
In the corner, the physically bound Yara jerked against her silken cords, a thin, anguished whimper escaping her as her back arched, experiencing a phantom echo of the dream.
“He’s back,” Brigid said, her own voice thin with strain. She removed her hands from their temples, her fingers shaking. “Synaptic reintegration successful. The remote signal has been… overloaded and severed.”
Fatima fell onto Youssef, hugging him, sobbing in relief. He clung to her, his eyes clear but haunted, his face buried in her shoulder.
Yukio slid off the table, her legs unsteady. Hank swiftly wrapped a blanket around her. She nodded thanks, her eyes finding Youssef’s across the room. He looked at her, really looked, and a blush stained his cheeks, but he gave a slow, shaky nod of gratitude.
The moment of relief lasted seven seconds.
Jan’s phone, discarded on the sideboard, buzzed with an incoming video call. The caller ID was unknown. A cold dread settled in the room.
Jan picked it up. She answered, putting it on speaker.
Peter’s pleasant, sharp-featured face filled the screen. He was in a moving vehicle, the interior light harsh. “Excellent. He’s awake. The neuro-stimulant deactivator works quickly, I see. A neat piece of tech, isn’t it? Remote sedation and arousal, all keyed to a simple kill-switch for non-compliance.”
“What do you want?” Jan’s voice was flat, deadly.
“We have Tariq and Maryam Abaza,” Peter said, his tone that of a colleague discussing a minor logistics issue. “They are comfortable, for now. Their continued comfort, and indeed their continued lives, are contingent on one thing: Youssef Abaza presents himself at 77 Water Street, warehouse district, in precisely two hours. Alone. Any sign of magical accompaniment, any deviation from these instructions, and we will begin sending pieces of his parents back to you. We are not barbarians; we’ll start with fingers.”
The screen split. A second feed showed a dim concrete room. Tariq and Maryam were seated back-to-back in metal chairs, their faces pale with terror but unbruised. Maryam’s eyes were wide, her mouth moving in what was clearly a silent prayer.
“Youssef,” his father’s voice came through, strained but firm. “Do not—“
The feed cut from the parents, leaving only Peter. “Two hours. Come ready to renounce the superstitions that have poisoned your family. Come ready to embrace clarity. Or come ready to identify their bodies. Your choice.”
The call ended.
The silence that followed was a physical weight.
Youssef pushed himself up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His young face had aged a decade in minutes. “I have to go.”
“The hell you do,” Stacy said, her hand already on her pistol.
“It’s a trap, obviously,” Mara stated, her lawyer’s mind clicking into gear even as she fastened her blouse. “They don’t want him to renounce magic. They want to finish their conditioning. They want a programmable asset with a direct line to multiple magical orders through his family.”
“I don’t care what they want!” Youssef shouted, his composure breaking. “They have my parents! My mother… my father…” He looked at Fatima, his eyes begging. “Fati, you can’t ask me to…”
Fatima was stone. Her tears had dried, leaving tracks through the dust on her face. She looked at her brother, then at Jan. “They will not get him. And they will not keep our parents.”
Jan was staring at the chessboard. The black pawn was gone. In its place sat a white knight, tipped on its side. She picked it up. “Peter thinks he’s predictable. He’s using our emotions, our family bonds, as a lever. A classic pressure play.” She looked at Youssef, her green eyes hard as gemstones. “You’re going to go.”
“Jan!” Hank exclaimed.
“He’s going to walk right into their trap,” she continued, a fierce, chaotic grin spreading across her face. “Because that’s what they’ll be watching for. The lone kid, scared, coming to sacrifice himself.” She turned to the room, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But we’re not going to follow him. We’re not going to ring the warehouse with magic and snipers.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Aaron asked, his ink-stained fingers clenched.
Jan’s grin widened. “We’re going to do something they think is beneath them. Something chaotic, emotional, and stupid.” She looked at Brigid. “You need a location. A concrete one, not a shifting feed. Can you track that call?”
Brigid was already pulling a laminated map of New York City from her bag, along as a silver compass that emitted a sickly green hue. “The signal had a five-second raw data burst before the encryption kicked in. Given bandwidth and the carrier wave pattern… It originated from moving within a quarter-mile radius of…” she paused, waiting as the compass needle stuttered and spun, “…the west side piers. Likely a vehicle circling the warehouse district, not the warehouse itself.”
“He’s not in the obvious place,” Fatima realized, a spark of her own cunning returning. “He’s mobile. He’ll watch Youssef enter the warehouse from a distance.”
“And he’ll have the parents somewhere else entirely,” Zack finished.
Jan nodded. “So we don’t play his box game. We blow up the board.” She pointed at Katie. “Boom Boom. You’re on misdirection. Something flashy, noisy, and non-lethal at 77 Water Street. Make it look like a Green Moon raid. At exactly two hours.”
Katie’s Goth features lit up. “I can do flashy and noisy.”
Jan turned to Hans Jager. “They’re moving the parents. Probably by boat or to a separate safehouse. You find them.”
The tracker inhaled deeply, as if scenting the air from the paused video feed. “The concrete dust, the smell of diesel and salt… Lower Manhattan. Near the old ferry terminals. I will find them.”
“Annie, Aaron—you’re on containment. Wherever Hans points, you grow a fucking forest around it. Nobody in or out without our say.”
Annie nodded, pulling a handful of seeds from her purse. Sophie the kitten mewed in agreement.
“Dale, Stacy, Molly, Ginny—you’re with me and Fati. We’re not going after Youssef. We’re not going after the parents.” Jan’s eyes glittered. “We’re going hunting for the prick in the car who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. We find Peter, we take his control system, and we use it to turn his own little army off.”
She looked at Youssef. “You walk in there. You look scared. You buy us fifteen minutes. Can you do that?”
Youssef swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He looked at the faces around him—his furious sister, the chaotic redhead, the soldier, the witch, the friends. He straightened his shoulders. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“Good,” Jan said. She tossed the white knight in the air and caught it. “Let’s go show the Consortium that family isn’t a weakness. It’s a fucking distributed network.”
Outside, in his sedan slowly circling the periphery of the warehouse district, Peter watched the live feed from eighteen hidden cameras around 77 Water Street. He sipped coffee. Everything was quiet. The predictable chaos of magic-users was so easy to manipulate. They would come in a wave of flashy, stupid heroics. And he would be waiting.
He never considered they might ignore the bait entirely and come straight for the fisherman.
He never considered they might ignore the bait entirely and come straight for the fisherman.
Chaos erupted into organized motion within the brownstone. Katie was already scribbling runes onto what looked like lumps of modeling clay, her tongue between her teeth in concentration. Hans shrugged on a long coat, his eyes closed as he muttered under his breath, tracing invisible lines on the map. Annie spilled a pouch of seeds into her palm, whispering to them as they began to sprout tiny, questing roots.
Jan grabbed her stuffed pouch of tricks and slung it over her shoulder. “Everyone knows their part. Move. We have one hour and fifty minutes.”
As Stacy, Dale, Molly, and Ginny headed for the door, Jan stopped Fatima with a hand on her arm. Her friend’s face was a mask of controlled terror. “Fati. Look at me. We’re getting them back.”
“He has my parents, Jan,” Fatima whispered, the words brittle.
“And we have his number. Now, come on. We need a ride and a distraction.” Jan’s eyes flicked to the side, where Mike was quietly securing Rick into a baby sling against Casey’s chest. “Mike, Casey—you’re on bunker duty with Lydia. This house is a fortress. Keep the baby safe.”
Casey nodded, her arms tightening around Rick. Mike hefted a fire poker, giving a thumbs-up. “We’ll annoy anyone who tries the door.”
As the rescue team funneled into the hallway, Amir stood still amid the flurry, his gaze fixed on the corner. His cousin Yara was awake now, her head lifted, struggling subtly against the glowing silken bonds. Her eyes, no longer amber but a hard, human brown, tracked the activity with venom.
He walked to Lydia’s kitchen, poured a cup of bitter black coffee, and carried it over. He pulled a chair up and sat in front of Yara. “Thirsty?” he asked, his voice quiet.
Yara’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “I can’t raise my hands, you idiot. Your clever witch saw to that.”
“I’ll hold it,” Amir said. He brought the mug to her lips. She stared at him with pure hatred but, after a tense moment, bent forward and took a tentative sip. She winced at the heat.
“I’m sorry,” Amir said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry the family wasn’t what you needed. That you felt you had to run away. We should have looked harder. I should have looked harder.”
Yara jerked her head back from the cup. “Spare me your guilt, Amir. It’s a little late for a family reunion.” Her eyes cut across the room to where Vivian was helping Dale check a handgun’s chamber. “And I don’t need pity from that diluted half-breed whore, either.”
Vivian heard her. She finished with the magazine, slapped it into the pistol, and handed it to Dale. Then she walked over, her movements calm. She stood beside Amir’s chair, not looming, just present. “She doesn’t understand family,” Vivian said, her timid voice nonetheless firm. “She only understands what the Hunger tells her to want. It’s a greedy, lonely voice. It lies.”
“You think you’re better than me?” Yara sneered. “You’re the same thing, just weaker. You leash yourself.”
“I beat you twice,” Vivian stated, no boast in her tone, just fact. “Once when I was empty, so hungry I was almost animal. That wasn’t strength. That was having something to fight for.” She pointed across the living room. “The best way to see what you’re missing isn’t in a dream-prison. It’s right over there.”
Yara’s gaze, reluctantly, followed the gesture. Mike was now bottle-feeding Rick, his large, gentle hands cradling the tiny head. Casey leaned against him, her finger caught in the baby’s fist, her face soft with an exhausted, perfect love. Rick gurgled around the nipple, a droplet of formula on his chin. The scene was mundane, bathed in the room’s lamplight, and utterly fragile.
Yara’s sneer faltered. Something in her jaw twitched.
“I remember,” Amir said softly, watching her face. “I was young, but I remember Uncle Karim swinging you in that little garden in Alexandria. You were laughing so hard you couldn’t breathe. And Aunt Leila… she’d sing to you. Before she vanished. Before the accident.”
Yara said nothing. Her chest rose and fell in a quick, tight rhythm. She blinked rapidly, turning her face away, but not before Amir saw it—a single, clear tear tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. It left a clean trail.
Vivian leaned forward. “Lydia, who lives here, she’s a Green Moon elder. She helped contain Bedivere. She can teach you, like Jan and Fatima taught me. The Hunger doesn’t have to be a master. It can be a tool. You don’t have to be alone in it.”
Amir reached out and placed a hesitant hand on Yara’s bound shoulder. She flinched but didn’t pull away. “There might even be a Dale out there for you,” he whispered, the hint of a sad smile touching his mouth. “Someone who sees the person, not the demon.”
Fatima, pausing at the front door with Jan, saw the interaction. She watched her brother’s earnest, grieving profile, saw the tear on her cousin’s defiant face. The hard, furious knot of betrayal in her stomach didn’t dissolve, but it loosened, just a fraction. She took a sharp breath, turned, and followed Jan out into the cold New York night.
Aunt Noor emerged from the kitchen with a woven bag over her shoulder, her expression grimly determined. “I’m driving. I know the streets they don’t put on maps.” Hank was right behind her, jingling a set of keys he’d snatched from a hook by the door. “I’ll ride shotgun. Literally, if Noor’s driving like I think she will.”
The door slammed shut, leaving a different kind of silence in its wake.
Jan’s team piled into Noor’s large, battered SUV, its windows tinted dark. Molly and Ginny squeezed into the third row, Stacy and Dale took the captain’s chairs, and Jan and Fatima climbed into the middle bench. The engine growled to life, and Noor peeled away from the curb with a chirp of tires, nosing into the late-evening traffic.
“How do we find a moving car in a city of eight million?” Stacy asked, checking her pistol’s safety.
“We don’t look for the car,” Jan said, her voice tight. She was digging in her pouch. “We look for the magic he’s using to watch Youssef. Brigid said it was a remote neural link. That leaves a trace. A psychic footprint. Fati, you’re better at dowsing for that shit than I am.”
Fatima nodded, already pulling her mirrored compact from her pocket. She flipped it open. Instead of her reflection, the glass swirled with misty grey patterns. “It will be faint. Technological interfaces muddy the magical signature.”
“Then we amplify it,” Jan said. She pulled out two items: her green-sparking river stone and her enchanted strap-on, its harness of worn leather. She began unfastening her jeans.
“Jan, not the time for a fucking quickie,” Stacy said, though her voice lacked real conviction.
“It’s not for a quickie,” Jan said, pushing her jeans and underwear down to her thighs. The cold vinyl seat bit her bare skin. “It’s a battery. Sex magic is about energy transfer and amplified connection. Fati needs a boost to cut through the tech static. The most direct connection we have is this.” She looked at Fatima, her eyes deadly serious. “I need you to fuck me. Hard. Now. Pour everything you’re feeling—the rage, the fear for your parents—into it and channel it into the search.”
Fatima stared at her. The absurdity of it warred with the brutal logic. Green Moon magic was not subtle. Its power came from raw, unfiltered emotional and physical resonance. She looked at the compact in her hand, the misty patterns fading. She needed a lightning rod.
“Do it,” Hank said from the front passenger seat, his voice gruff. He didn’t turn around. “Whatever it takes. Just get my future in-laws back.”
Fatima didn’t hesitate further. She shoved her own leggings down, not bothering to take them off, and moved over Jan. There was no tenderness, no preamble. Jan hooked the harness around her hips, the enchanted dildo springing to life, feeling unnervingly real and already slick. Fatima guided it to her own entrance, her cunt slick with anxiety and adrenaline. She sank down onto it with a choked gasp, taking the full length in one brutal thrust.
“God, yes,” Jan hissed, her back arching. The connection flared. It was not pleasure, but a violent circuit completing. Fatima began to ride her, not for rhythm but for force, slamming her hips down again and again. The SUV rocked with the motion.
“Find him, Fati,” Jan gritted out, her hands gripping Fatima’s thighs. “Follow the fear. Follow the control.”
Fatima’s eyes were locked on the compact balanced on Jan’s stomach. As she fucked herself on the phantom cock, her magic surged. The mist in the mirror coagulated, threading with streaks of sickly yellow-green—the color of the neural link Brigid had described. The image pulled back, showing not a location, but a perspective: the view from a moving car window, watching a warehouse entrance.
“I see… what he sees,” Fatima panted, her movements becoming more frantic, a means to fuel the vision. “He’s… stationary now. Parked. He’s watching the door. I can feel his… satisfaction. His arrogance.” She moaned, the sensation of the invading magical signature mingling with the physical invasion between her legs. “It’s cold. Metallic. North… of the target. Higher ground. A parking garage. Roof level.”
“Which garage?” Noor barked, swerving around a taxi.
“Seventh… floor. I see a yellow ventilation duct. A broken light. Fuck, Jan, I can’t hold it—” Fatima’s orgasm ripped through her, brutal and unwelcome, tearing a ragged scream from her throat. Her inner walls convulsed around the dildo, and her magic spiked. The mirror flared, and for an instant, a street sign resolved in the corner of the vision: WASHINGTON ST.
“Washington Street garage! Seventh floor!” Jan yelled, her own body shaking from the transmitted climax.
Fatima collapsed forward onto Jan, spent. Noor stamped on the accelerator, the SUV weaving through traffic with terrifying precision.
In the parking garage, Peter adjusted his headset. “All units, stand by. Subject is three blocks out, walking. No tails visible. Begin passive scan for magical emissions.” He sipped his coffee. It was going perfectly.
Hans Jager stood on a desolate pier, the wind whipping his coat. He held a scrap of fabric from the couch in the Abaza living room, provided by Lydia. He breathed in, his eyes rolling back slightly. “They passed here. Recently. The fear is fresh. They are close. Not on the water. In it.” He pointed to a rusted door set into a concrete pylon beneath the pier. “There. A maintenance access. It smells of bleach and… copper wiring.”
Aaron and Annie hurried forward. Annie knelt, pressing her palms to the damp ground. “Thorns first, then vines,” she murmured. Seeds tumbled from her fingers and sank into the gravel. Instantly, barbed creepers erupted, weaving a thick, impassable net over the rusted door and the surrounding wall.
Youssef turned onto Water Street, his heart hammering against his ribs. The warehouse at number 77 loomed, a decrepit giant with shattered windows like blind eyes. He felt utterly exposed. He prayed his sister’s chaos was already in motion.
Katie stood on a rooftop two blocks over, a perfect line of sight to the warehouse’s main entrance. She held two now-glowingly runed lumps of clay. “Flashy and noisy, coming right up,” she whispered, and hurled them in a high arc.
They struck the asphalt street in front of the warehouse doors. There was no fire, no shrapnel. Instead, a dome of silent, blinding white light erupted, followed by a concussive WHUMP of sound that shattered every remaining window in the facade and set off car alarms for a block. To any observer, it looked like a magical blast of significant power.
Peter jerked in his seat, coffee sloshing. “Report! Was that an attack? I don’t have visual!” His screens for the warehouse cams fizzed with static. “Dammit! Energize the suppression field around the primary site! Trap them inside!”
He was reacting. Exactly as Jan had hoped.
Noor’s SUV squealed up the ramp of the Washington Street garage, tires screaming. She took the turns hard, flinging everyone against the doors. “Seventh floor!” she yelled.
As they skidded onto the seventh level, they saw it: a single sedan, parked facing out, engine idling. A figure was visible through the rear windshield, head tilted as he listened to his comms.
“Stop here!” Jan hissed. Noor slammed the brakes.
Jan, Fatima, Stacy, and Dale spilled out of the SUV. Dale and Stacy broke left and right, moving with tactical silence, guns up. Jan and Fatima walked straight down the center of the concrete lane, their footsteps echoing.
Peter saw them in his rearview mirror. His eyes widened in genuine, stupefied shock. He fumbled for his console.
“Game’s over, Peter,” Jan called out, her voice bouncing off the low ceiling. “You wanted a fair swap? Here we are. You give us the Abazas, we won’t let our half-succubus turn your brain to soup.”
Inside the car, Peter’s hand shot toward a red button on his dashboard.
He never reached it.
A shadow detached itself from a support pillar behind his car. Vivian stepped into the dim light, having translocated the moment Jan’s team left the house. She didn’t look timid now. Her eyes were pits of emerald fire, her fingers elongated into shadow-talons. She plunged them through the driver’s side window, shattering it, and closed them around Peter’s throat.
He gagged, his eyes bulging.
“The remote,” Vivian said, her voice a dual-toned whisper of woman and demon. “Where is it? The one that controls the sedation trigger for Tariq and Maryam.”
Peter clawed at her wrist, his face purpling. He managed to sputter, “Glove… compartment…”
Dale was there, yanking the car door open. He ripped open the glove box. Among papers and a flashlight sat a black remote with a single, prominent button. He grabbed it.
“Good,” Vivian said. She leaned closer, her breath cold against Peter’s ear. “Now, tell every single one of your units to stand down. Or I will show you what a hungry half-breed really feels like.”
As she spoke, Jan felt a buzzing from her pouch. She pulled out her river stone. It was glowing a steady, solid green. Annie and Aaron’s signal. They’d found them.
The board was tilting. The fisherman was caught in his own net.