Kevin laid his book beside him on the loveseat, and got up to check on Shaine. He and Jess and Gisela had been taking turns keeping an eye on him, waiting for him to wake up; over two full days and heading towards the third, and this was starting to feel endless.
Nothing like a little déjà vu.
No change, other than that Shaine had been thrashing around again and had the blankets tangled. Kevin had done what he could to ease the psychedelic dreams that often came with psychic damage, as he had with Jess once, but there were limits on how effective it was.
Gently, he straightened the blankets, freed them from one hand that now showed delicate webbing between long fine fingers, reaching all the way to the first knuckle—he'd love to know how Shaine had managed even minor physical shapeshifting, and whether that was a natural talent of the children of water.
He'd done it a dozen times; this time, however, Shaine stirred, and opened his eyes, blinking in the sunlight.
“Good morning,” Kevin said softly.
“Where's Jess?”
Kevin stifled his sigh. “He's at Coven Winter's house, he was there overnight.” I'm not going to tell you he's sleeping off demon poison from that fight last night that Liam called to tell us about. “It's late Sunday morning, the healers don't think you did any permanent damage.” And they were more familiar with over-extended mages than they were with forcibly-awakened wolves, so they should be right—even if they were familiar only with mages of fire, not water. “Gisela called Bryan, you're off sick until a healer tells him otherwise. Healer's advice is that you're to spend the next few days inside the walls so you're shielded, and you're to rest and eat a lot.”
Shaine rolled over, and contemplated one hand resignedly. “Damn. I don't even know how I made myself human the first time, there's no way I can do it again. Just what I need to make life a complete mess.”
“You have to be the most pessimistic person I've ever met.” Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned back against the foot-bars. “Turn it around the other way and look at the bright side. There's no more reason to hide.”
“No, now I get to be a fucking freak. The only meren who could never figure out why mass murder was better than being discovered.”
“Unity,” Kevin said softly. Liam had offered, along with a report, a rather interesting hypothesis, involving Jess, Sam, Alessandria's seventh child, demons, the children of water, and a mysteriously-destroyed village that smelled of unfamiliar wolves but no elves or dryads and resisted all investigation attempts.
“I don't know what name they called it. North of here. They took a couple of years to build it, it had less than a year, then they got too close. Are you absolutely totally sure nothing else has gone after Jess while I've been out?”
“Jess is fine.”
“That isn't what I asked.” Shaine twisted around, sat up. “Tell me,” he demanded.
Kevin didn't hide this sigh. “Coven Winter had a demon set on them last night. Jess killed it. He's sleeping off poison after-effects, and Liam's keeping a close eye on him, but apparently his body's dealt with the poison already.”
“Oh, shit.” Shaine closed his eyes, and cold despair flashed across his face. “He is one. And they found him. They'll kill him.”
“Who will?”
“The demons who helped kill everyone else. They made a deal, the mereni-mages would take care of about sixty wolves that the demons had a problem with, and use that blood to call three demons and give them enough power on this plane to kill all the rest of the village. They found Jess and they're going to keep trying until they kill him.”
“You know as well as I do, Jess is hard to kill.”
“He'll lose this time. You tell me. The nastier sort of demons who like to fuck around on this plane, are they going to be real thrilled that anyone can stop them? I don't hardly think so.”
“Liam,” Kevin said, choosing words carefully, “is very good at putting together pieces the rest of us miss. He noticed that three things happened, all in April and May six years ago: a village called Unity, where there were apparently wolves but no dryads or elves, died, Jess' memory ends, and Samantha showed up with nothing except what she was wearing.”
“Her too. I think. She's been just waiting for me to hurt Jess so she can freak out all over me. Try asking her anything else. I just told you everything I know.”
“Do you have any idea who might have sent that particular demon?”
Shaine hissed impatiently. “Probably not a meren, I can't see them thinking it's worth much effort after this long. Only reason I can think that Lew'd get involved at all is that one of the demons convinced them Jess might remember something.”
Lew, presumably, would be the mage they'd fought by the lake. “Why would a demon bother?”
“Think about it. Easier than trying to act directly on this plane. Less risk for the demon, too. If Lew killed Jess, that would be the end of the problem, no longer matters if Jess can kill demons or not. If Lew died, oh well.”
“Got it. But that failed, so they tried something more direct. You said there were three.”
“Sure, but whatever Jess killed last night was almost definitely a minor one meant just to test him and find out if he'd give himself away to protect friends. Anybody's guess who actually summoned it or whether it slipped through alone. It doesn't much matter. Three demons in particular want Jess dead, I'm sure they'd be happier if it's before he can leave any little demon-killing wolves behind. Take out the summoners, and it'll slow them down until they find a new puppet, but they'll be back.”
Kevin chewed a thumbnail thoughtfully. “Sure. Problems never go away that easily. But maybe if we can buy Jess some extra time, that phenomenal luck of his will kick in and bring something new into the picture.” The term demon-luck, for improbable fortune both good and bad, had a whole new dimension now.
“You're really reaching,” Shaine said sceptically.
“Better than letting the wolf-cub die because we don't think we can do anything.”
“Can you seriously take that mage we messed with in the city in a fight under any conditions?”
“Well, I thumped him good the first time, but the second time he would've thumped me just as soundly if you hadn't been there. The constructs he set on Jess have to have taken a huge amount of power, and worse, a lot of skill, which is a bad sign. He's definitely spent more time on offensive stuff. I never got into the heavy combat techniques even at my worst. Unless I could duplicate the circumstances of the first time, which I doubt, then about the best I could hope for is daylight or a lot of moonlight, and then I could at least hold my own without him shredding my shields on me like he did last time. I couldn't let a little thing like minimal light stop me when he wanted to hurt Jess, now could I?”
Shaine gave him a wry smile, which was reply enough.
“We do have another likely factor as far as summonings. Sam thinks Coven Whitethorn, the ones who set the trap before, are screwing around with demons, and she doesn't think they've gotten in deep. So if they aren't expecting it, maybe we can deal with just them and not with demon backup. Moira, the Whitethorn mage, I'm fairly sure I could wipe the floor with, but that would still leave the rest. Sam asked us not to attack them head-on, and I can see her point, I suppose we'd probably have to try to take all of them at once to keep anyone from having a chance to escalate things, which sounds, well, tricky, and I don't know what we'd have to do to stop them permanently. I wonder if there'd be the slightest point in my trying to talk to Rebecca. This other mage, now...” He fell silent, thinking, then shrugged. “I'll call a meeting, as soon as everyone can get here, and we can think about him. The more brains the better, andt here seems to be more brains in this family all the time.”
“What makes you think I'm part of it? Or that I'm staying here past this mess being over one way or the other?”
“Because you need a home,” Kevin said softly. “And the best home you'll ever find is...”
“Here? Oh, please.”
“Is where Jess is. You'll break his heart if you tell him you're only with him because you feel guilty and you'll be leaving once the guilt loses its power.”
Shaine stayed silent.
Kevin shrugged, and got up. “Jess will be home whenever. I do have a suggestion, meantime. When an elvenmage is backlashed, light and heat help us heal faster. Water might help you more than being inside shields. It's your life, though, do what you want with it.”