been five feet in heels, and she couldn't make a hundred pounds with a thumb on the scale. She looked impossibly young but her power was very old and very strong. The combination was exotic and sexy, but every guy in the outfit was scared shitless of her.
'I do not like it, either,' Akeem whispered. He always whispered. He was Somali, some kind of witchdoctor or juju man back in the day. He said he always whispered so evil spirits wouldn't know what he was thinking. Rumor said the whispering was a side effect of repeatedly subjecting himself to ritual possession. 'But what is worse? Do we attack with less juice than we would like? Or do we wait for more tags and give this King Oberon a chance to open the gate?'
No one had an answer for that. I realized that either course could be a mistake, and the mistake could be a disaster.
'I don't think we can assume Oberon will give us time to lay down more tags,' I said. Akeem nodded in agreement. 'But I'm also worried about the juice,' I finished, and Amy winked at me. 'Honey, what do you think?'
The piskie had been sitting on my shoulder, like a pirate's pet parrot, and she jumped to her feet. Maybe she was surprised I'd asked her opinion. Or maybe she'd fallen asleep.
'I wasn't told anything of King Oberon's plans. I don't know when he will come. But I think it will be soon.'
'Okay, thanks, Honey.'
'I'm not finished, Domino,' the piskie said, sparing me an annoyed glance. Whatever else it had gotten me, it didn't seem like my promotion had earned me any deference from the people in the room. Then again, what could I really expect from gangsters and fairies? Hell, I'd been known to crack wise with Rashan from time to time.
'Like I was saying, I don't know when the gate will open. But maybe I can find out. I could go to the Between, you know, scout it out.'
I smiled at her. 'That's a good idea. It won't take long, and we'll be able to see what kind of force Oberon has deployed at the gate, maybe get an idea of when he will move.'
'We?'
'Damn right, we,' I said. 'I'm coming with you.'
Honey was right-even inside my condo, nighttime in the Between was really blue. An eerie, ghostly blue that cast a nimbus over everything, like the light from a TV set that's always just around the corner. I fetched Ned from the closet, then we hoofed it in no time to the Hawthorne city limits.
We materialized in an alley about a mile from the factory, right in the middle of an armed encampment of sidhe warriors. There were nine of them: six men and three women. They'd scavenged fuel from Dumpsters and old buildings, and they were sitting around an honest-to-God campfire. The fire didn't do much but brighten the ambient blue a little, but it did seem to be throwing off some heat.
The fairies were sitting there, at their fire, wearing silver chain and dark leather, whipping up a quick dinner in small copper pots and sharpening long, slender swords just like the ones the sidhe warriors had brought to my condo. Fey horses the size of Clydesdales were tethered in a line along the edge of the alleyway.
'The Renaissance Faire isn't for a few months yet,' I said.
The elves froze and stared at me for a long moment. Then they leaped to their feet and attacked. Honey missed most of the fun in the early going, because she darted straight up and hovered over the alley, roughly parallel to the roofline of the adjacent buildings. That didn't leave the fairies with a whole lot else to think about, other than me.
Three of them came at me with the weed whackers, while the other six hung back and lobbed glamours at me. I still couldn't use sorcery in the Between, but my own glamour worked just fine. I huffed and puffed and managed to block most of the spells that floated toward me like bad air. One got through. It settled over me and worked its way inside, and it turned me into a toad.
This was a bad choice of spells to use on me, all things considered, though the elf had no way of knowing that. I just hopped around and waited while the sidhe warriors sheathed their swords and started laughing. Then I shifted back to the Domino-shaped body I prefer, drew Ned and gunned a couple of them down.
'Ribbit,' I said.
Honey corkscrewed down toward us, dropping pixie dust on the elves like confetti at a parade. Three of them collapsed on the street, laughing uncontrollably, and I was pretty sure Honey's magic was the cause rather than my amphibian humor.
One of the warriors had gotten close enough to take a swing at me, and his sword lashed out, reflecting the blue night as it swung in a flat arc at my head. I brought Ned up and caught the blade on the barrel. When the silver touched iron, there was a flash of sapphire sparks and the sword shattered.
'Sorry about that,' I said to the elf, who stood there staring dumbly at his broken sword. Then I shot him in the head.
As necessary as it may be, witty banter in the midst of battle is never the most efficient angle to take in a fight. While I was commiserating with the sidhe warrior, one of the remaining three drew a silver hunting horn from her pack and lifted it to her lips. I cursed and was just able to aim and fire Ned before the sidhe sounded the horn. The shot took the elf in the chest and she crumpled without a sound.
Honey's sword was out and she was dueling two of the sidhe. They looked like they were trying to swat a fly with machetes. I couldn't get a clean shot with Ned. The elves lunged at Honey, and her blade flashed, slicing open a slender throat. She spun in midair and planted her sword in the other sidhe's eye. The piskie flicked emerald juice from her blade as the bodies fell.
'Domino, follow me.' Honey flew into a nearby building and I followed her up three flights of stairs to the roof. The piskie flew to the edge and looked back at me.
'I saw it when I flew up here at the start of the fight,' she said. I came up beside her and looked out over the city. Our vantage wasn't that high and we were encircled by the pale mist. But I could see what I needed to. We hadn't been unlucky appearing in the middle of the fairies, because they were everywhere. Some of the sidhe were camped, but others marched along the streets in columns that trailed into the mist.
A fey army was mobilizing in South Central L.A. Fourteen 'We have to go, right now,' I said when we made it back to the field headquarters in Crenshaw. I briefed my team on what I had seen while they gathered the weapons and arcane paraphernalia they'd need for the attack on the gate.
'We stumbled on an encampment a mile from the factory,' I said. 'They're all over Hawthorne. It seems like the whole Seelie Court is encamped in the city.'
Honey disagreed. 'The Court is vast. It's a nation, Domino. What we saw is just an army.'
'The point is, Oberon has moved an army into position around the gate. Rashan seems to think he won't send them through all at once, but he's obviously ready to send some of them. That gate is going to open soon, and we don't have time to wait for more tags.'
'We will make do,' Amy said. She already had her shit together, and she sat quietly, preparing herself.
We piled into Frank Seville's Hummer, and I rode shotgun while he drove. Literally-I'd grabbed the Mossberg out of the trunk of the Lincoln before we left. The weapon might come in handy if the juice ran low during the fight.
We'd done everything we could to keep a lid on it, but civilization was coming undone in Crenshaw, and things grew steadily worse as we drove through Inglewood toward Hawthorne. The orange glow of fires dotted the skyline in every direction, and the only people on the streets were looters and thugs.
Honey and I went to work on the other members of the strike team, putting glamours on them that would offer at least some protection from fairy magic. I was hoping it would be an unnecessary precaution. If we destroyed the gate quickly maybe we wouldn't even see a fairy, let alone have to fight one. I wasn't willing to bet on it, though. And I didn't want to think about what would happen to my team if they went up against the sidhe completely unprotected.
At Centinela and La Brea, a line of burned-out cars had been towed into position across the street, forming a makeshift roadblock. I was willing to bet we'd find more just like them blocking all of the major arteries into Hawthorne.
Seville stopped and began backing up, and then the Hummer was rammed from behind by a massive green waste management truck. We were thrown forward and smashed into the roadblock, just as a rocket-propelled grenade detonated against our left front fender and tore away most of the Hummer's front end. The airbags
