It was a mushy, murky, nothing kind of night. Not cold, but not warm enough to be pleasant. Wet and icky…but at least there wasn’t any bullshit snow. Sure, the recent lack of shit weather might be thanks to mundanes cooking the planet, but Caren figured she might as well enjoy it. It wasn’t like there was anything she could do about climate change. And sometimes she honestly wondered if she would if she could…if it wasn’t in some way inevitable, and just, for humanity to reap what it sowed by way of global disaster and genocide.
A loud thud from the trunk rocked the Grand Marquis, seeming to drive home the point.
“Pipe the fuck down, Lenny, or I’ll pull this fucking car over and beat the living shit out of you,” bellowed Caren.
Blessed silence.
Caren exited the highway. The night grew quickly starker, the pines taller, the roads narrower and more tortuous. The full moon shed its cold glare through wide gashes in the tree canopy as Caren navigated deep into the heart of the Pine Barrens.
The telltale mists soon began to roll in, and it wasn’t long after that that she spotted it—a bestial phantom far off among the trees, motionless and watchful, its antlers a mazy halo soft against the night.
“White stag,” Caren mumbled.
The creature turned and loped away, its spectral glow retreating into darkness.
“Not about to follow you, dude,” she counseled him. “I’m way too wise for your bullshit.”
What came next would have scared her shitless if she hadn’t seen it before more times than she could count.
As it was, the web-winged silhouette, like a bleeding dark blot against the chiaroscuro sky, made her heart speed up a little, and she caught herself holding her breath as its massive shadow spilled over the car.
The dragon-like beast swung down from the heights and sped alongside her for a time, tracing a sinuous route here and there among the trees. Its equine face was grim and strangely human. Its spindly cloven-hooved legs dangled slothfully behind it.
The Jersey Devil, as the mundanes called it, knew Caren well. Its canny eyes surveyed her through the window, till at last it gave a flap of its batlike wings, the gust of air from which buffeted the car so hard Caren had to jerk the wheel to compensate, and shot upward through the trees into the sky, circling once around the vague disk of the cloud-masked moon before taking off like an arrow to the west.
With its departure, the stark expanse of the Pine Barrens melted like a mirage.
In its place appeared the wrought-iron gate of a small bright city. The glamors that had masked this metropolis from view were now just ribbons of vague translucent color, festooning the moon and stars of a suddenly-cloudless sky.
“Place is lit up like a frickin’ Christmas tree,” Caren muttered, scanning the incandescent skyline as she brought Porkchop to a halt not too far from the tree line, some distance from the quaint parking garage near the gate, which was for members only. “Middle of the fucking night… What the hell is…?” Then it hit her. “Motherfuckin’ Saturnalia. Jesus Christ—every goddamn Old-Worlder in town’s gonna be up all night getting their freak on.”
Caren got out and circled around to the trunk, telescoping baton at the ready, just in case Lenny felt like cruising for a second bruising.
She swung open the trunk lid, tapped the baton suggestively against her palm. “You planning on behaving now, Lenny?”
Her uncle stared up at her with hate in his bloodshot eyes, and gave a wordless nod.
“Dope.” Caren hauled him up, helped him onto unsteady legs. The Morphean miasma was still wearing off, which she figured might account in part for his docility.
He shambled drunkenly beside her as she made her way toward the gate.
“The fuck…” She slowed at the sight of a heavy Ostiary guard—Ordinators, the martial class of Ordo Arcanus’s mask-wearing servants were called—patrolling the entrance into the magic city of Arcadia.
One of them stepped forward to meet her, sword drawn, its empty eyes surveying her from within its engraved-stone mask, which was secured in place on its skull by iron nails.
“State your business,” it recited in an inflectionless baritone.
“Dude…I’m here all the damn time. Caren Navarrete, ratcatcher extraordinaire. I’ve hunted down some of Arcanus’s most wanted criminals.”
The Ordinator stared at her, unblinking—and apparently unimpressed. “Provide proof of identity.”
“I’m here at least once every two weeks, you fff—fucking hell! No one’s tried to stop me from entering Arcadia in years. I got past your Jersey Devil, for fucksake. What do you zombie motherfuckers want, a fucking DNA sample?”
“State your business,” the soldier once again intoned.
“Handing over this sack of shit.” Caren jerked a thumb toward her uncle. “Leonardo Gerardo Posadas Navarrete. Wanted on several counts of petty cogimancy and second-degree violation of the Occultation Protocols.”
The Ordinator looked at Lenny, then back at Caren. “Provide proof of identity.”
Caren ground her teeth and balled her hands slowly into fists, entertaining a vivid fantasy of choking out the muscle-bound meatbag-in-a-suit-of-armor with her bare hands. “Dude. Go ask Abram fucking Sauvage, the Master-General himself. He knows who the fuck I am. He’ll fucking tell you.”
“Stand aside, Eleven-Thirty-Eight. This woman is who she says she is.” The voice was well-known to Caren—a throaty mezzo, crisp, articulate, even.
Caren made sure to wipe the sudden grin from her face before turning to greet the voice’s owner. “Peri—thank fuck. What the shit is going on around here?”
“The ‘sack of shit’ is who she says he is, too,” Imperia Sauvage informed the masked sentinel, with a tilt of her maple-hued pate toward Lenny. “Now let us pass.”
The Ordinator, and the rest of its contingent, stood aside without argument or delay. The gate to the city swung open, by enchantment, of its own accord.
“Would you like an escort, Master-Savant Sauvage?” the Ordinator asked.
“No, thank you.” Peri proceeded through the gate, her long flat-ironed locks, her velvet robes in Arcanus gold-and-purple trailing gracefully behind her.
Caren, dragging a protesting Lenny, followed.
A rephrasing of her question was on the tip of Caren’s tongue, but as she took in what lay within the gates, the words she had planned to say died unspoken, and she slowed to a halt, staring around mutely.
Though decorated with garlands and brightly colored torches, banners, and streamers for the annual Saturnalia celebration, and littered everywhere with confetti, coins, half-eaten confections, and discarded clothing that gave evidence of recent festivities, the stone streets were empty of revelers. Instead, Ordinators patrolled every walkway, stood vigil at every door. A whole retinue occupied the vast peristyle of the Council Hall on the hill. What few civilians Caren spied out and about were moving quickly, with their heads down. One pair who crossed paths stopped to speak to each other in hushed tones, then clasped hands and embraced before going their separate ways.
From somewhere far off came the hair-raising sound of a collective wail.
“Place looks like somebody fucking died,” said Lenny.
Peri was several paces ahead already, moving in the direction of Enforcement headquarters with her usual purposeful gait. “Heading to the same place, right, Caren? Hurry up. If you don’t stick close to me they’ll stop you again.”
“Peri, what’s going on? What’s with the whole military-lockdown vibe?” Caren hustled to catch up, yanking a swearing Lenny after.
“It happened in Philly, so I thought you might have heard.” Usually Imperia Sauvage was laser-focused, intent and engaging, acerbically witty. Tonight she looked distracted, and paler than usual, the spray of freckles on her nose standing out in harsh relief.
“Heard what?”
“Eleven Martial Magi were murdered tonight.”
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