Chapter 23

T he Army of the Mortal Federation is bivouacked on the road on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. The abandoned cars have been removed and pushed further west and crushed and stacked to create a blockade across the entire freeway. They've created a checkpoint at the mouth of the tunnel, complete with razor wire and sandbags and a machine gun emplacement, manned by a least twenty soldiers. A manually operated boom arm is complemented by a spike strip.

Dressed in clean jeans, sneakers, and a forest green V-neck sweater, I stand alone in the tunnel, just out of range of the mortal's senses.

I'm gathering my nerves and my anger.

In the three months since my return to the Enclave, the Mortal Federation has harried and harassed us on all sides, sending squads to raid one bridge or tunnel while the main force attacks the rest.

They accomplish nothing other than wasting mortal lives, not to mention equipment and resources. We've learned to deal with their obnoxious attacks in stride: throw up a shield, draw them in close, and attack—they give up quickly, because the mortals, most of them, are losing their belief in the cause.

Even the most hard-headed of racist, bigoted mortals has seen, time and again, that we will defend ourselves, but that we have no interest in a war. Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone.

We don't pursue. We don't press the attack. When forced to attack, we do our best to preserve life. We bring the wounded in, tend to them, feed them, heal them, and show them what we're building.

No mortal, once within the walls of the Enclave, has ever gone back to the Federation.

Bridgestone leads the attacks himself, and the word from defectors is that Bridgestone and his closest lieutenants force the army to obey through fear tactics. Rumor has it, in fact, that the whole army is on the verge of mutiny.

Therefore, I've decided to speed the process along a bit.

You're sure about this? Caspian says, across the group link.

Not at all, I answer. But it's worth a try.

Say the word, my goddess, Aeon says. I'll send a storm to wipe them off the map .

That won't be necessary, I don't think, I say, laughing mentally. But thank you for the offer. I'll keep it in mind.

Caleb is in wolf form nearby, prowling the perimeter. Any sign of trouble and he can be at my side in seconds.

The rest are scattered around the area in a wide circle, surrounding the army—and by the rest, I mean my entire force of immortals and mortals—nearly ten thousand strong. Bridgestone's Federation is down to five thousand at best.

So, either I can find a way to end this myself, or I give the word to attack, and we end it the hard way. Either way, I'm done with the fucking Federation. We have more important things to do than waste time and resources fighting assholes.

I let out a breath and shake my hands. I've practiced this endlessly over the last few weeks until I'm confident in the process.

Time to try it for real.

Overhead, a hawk screeches. I close my eyes and tune into the pack link: Caleb has added Emily to the pack, and we've discovered a way to let her project what she sees across the link. I can tune into it and see what she sees, now.

We've gotten to the point that Emily, scouting from above, can focus on a particular location, providing me with enough detail to let me cast a portal to that spot. I can rip through the pocket realm as Aeon has taught me and arrive in the exact spot Emily is focused on. We've got it down to a science, now, or perhaps an art form—I can dial in on a location as small as a single sidewalk square, no matter how far away it is, as long as Emily can see it and I can link to her mind.

Emily is soaring overhead, watching. She's located Bridgestone—he's in the command tent with his cronies.

Descending, standby , Emily says.

I see New York laid out beneath me in remarkable acuity. The soldiers are mostly relaxed, their rifles set aside, cookfires burning on the blacktop, working out on makeshift weight equipment, lounging, chatting, laughing, roughhousing, throwing footballs and baseballs.

My view suddenly warps downward as Emily stoops toward the earth. My gut lurches, and then she hauls up and lands on something—a telephone pole, maybe. Her perch gives her a direct line of sight right into the command tent's open doorway, giving me a clear view of Bridgestone and his six commanders.

Commanders, lieutenants, whatever—I don't know the first thing about military command structure and care even less.

I let out a breath, and shake my hands. Focus hard on the image Emily is providing—a huge green tent, the flaps tied open, a cot in a far corner, a big folding table in the middle, around which the men are clustered, pointing here and there at maps, planning their next assault.

I draw prana into my hands, visualizing the interior of the command tent. I stab my hand forward, fingers stiffened into a blade, now holding two images in my mind—the command tent and the pocket realm, gray haze and swirling fog and diffuse directionless light. My hand meets resistance, and then something pops, and my hand bursts through the skin of reality. I grip the edge of the hole—it feels like trying to grasp a bar of soap at the bottom of a tub of water, slippery and all rounded edges. Once I've got a good grip, I pull downward, expanding the hole—it requires a shocking amount of strength to do so, as the fabric between the realms is incredibly stretchy, reaching with something very much like sentience to close the hole. I step through, keeping my grip on the edge, and then help the edges knit back together.

If you don't, Aeon warned me endlessly, you could allow things into The Waking that don't belong here. And again, I think of the hole I must have made and left gaping open at the top of the mountain, back in Switzerland.

For a moment, I'm in the pocket realm. The fog swirls around me, and in every direction I see a different scene shifting and rotating and blurring. You can get anywhere from here, as long as you've seen it with your own eyes. Or, apparently, if you have a pack-link to a hawk shifter.

Ahead of me, the breaks in the swirling fog mirror the image I'm holding in my head of the command tent's interior. No need to tear a hole, here. Simply step forward, keeping the image of your destination firmly in your mind's eye.

Gray light and hazy fog dissolve, granulate, swirling with shadows and light. And then the light is greenish, filtered by the tent walls, and male voices murmur.

I release my prana, standing at the entrance of the tent. Behind me, the camp is noisy and chaotic.

A cigarette smolders between the lips of one of the commanders. One of the men laughs. Bridgestone's voice carries over all of them. "One last push, gentlemen. We feint on two fronts and send everything we've got south down the Hudson Bridge."

The men are all facing away from me, Bridgestone in the center, three of his subordinates on each side. I spend a moment just listening to them talk strategy, squad assignments, loadouts, and which trucks, tanks, and APCs will support which advance.

"I just have one question, sir," a commander on the far right says, sounding hesitant. "I don't mean to…errr…play devil's advocate or whatever but—"

"Spit it the fuck out, Nelson. Jesus." Bridgestone grabs a cup from the table in front of him and spits into it—chewing tobacco. Nasty.

"Just…as we're approaching, you've specified that your orders are to shoot to kill. But, um…how do we know who is who? Our intel, such as it is, reports that there are ever-increasing numbers of mortals choosing to live in the Enclave with the…um, enemy. If we go in and kill a bunch of our people, mortals I mean, and it gets out? Public opinion, which is already not entirely in our favor, will turn against us."

Bridgestone spits into the cup again; one of his commanders on his immediate left turns his head to the side and suppresses a retch. "If they choose to live among those freaks, then they've made their choice. They're not collateral damage at that point, Nelson, they're enemies who have been eliminated." A pause. "So tell the men to spread the word to anyone else who may have that concern— anyone on that island is an enemy." He leans forward to catch Nelson's eye. "And Nelson? It's not the fucking Enclave . It's fucking Manhattan, part of the United States of fucking America. You got me?" His voice is an enraged snarl by the end.

"Sir, yes sir."

I've heard enough.

I throw a coil of prana around the seven scheming mortals and condense it into hardened air, pinning their arms to their sides and their legs together. I reach out and close the flaps of the tent, plunging the interior into darkness lit only by a single bare bulb, the electricity for which is provided by a noisily rattling generator just the tent. The men are shouting and struggling. I ignore them and reach up to unscrew the light bulb, letting the cool, pleasing shadows engulf the tent.

I move around to the opposite side of the table, letting my vastly superior vampiric night vision adjust.

"Gentlemen," I say. "Good morning."

"Let me go, bitch queen." Bridgestone, breathing threats and epithets, as usual.

I muzzle him with a mouthful of icy air, reducing his protests to confused, muffled grunts. "I'll get to you in a moment, Mr. Bridgestone."

I lighten myself and bolt through the shadows to stand next to the rightmost commander—Nelson. I suppress the pheromone instinct, grab Nelson's hair, and nick his throat without the benefit of saliva to negate the pain, such as it is. He gasps in surprise and stiffens; I take a tiny taste of his blood and prana, purely to get a sense of the man.

"Matthew Alan Nelson, age fifty-two. Born in Red Hook, New Jersey. Mother, Eileen Nelson, deceased; father Roger Nelson, living. Elder brother is Sean Nelson, a retired insurance adjuster with three children and six grandchildren. Younger sister is Abigail Nelson, a secretary for a naval officer in Annapolis, mother of two; her husband is deployed as a senior officer on a carrier. You are married to Annie, father to Connor, Caitlin, and Craig—star students and athletes at prestigious universities."

"All publicly available information," he mutters.

"Mmm, true." I touch his earlobe and send a bolt of cold through him, making him shiver—for effect. "You cheated on your wife, Matthew. Twice, in fact. Once with a petty officer named Jennifer. It lasted for six months until she requested and received a transfer. To get away from you, but you've only ever suspected that, never knew it for sure. The second time was….ohhh, Matt, you're a naughty boy. The second time was with one of your daughter's close friends. To be fair, she instigated it, but you didn't shut it down. Did you, Matthew?"

"It was just once," he whispers. "I swear."

"You don't have to swear to me, Matthew. I already know. I know you wet the bed till you were eight. I know you cheated on several exams at West Point." I put my lips to his ear. "And I know you are starting to sympathize with my people."

He stammers a few times, but can't get anything coherent out, and falls silent.

I move to the next in line and repeat the process, divulging a few of each man's more embarrassing secrets.

I continue to ignore Bridgestone.

Move around to the opposite side of the table and conjure my mark of fealty, letting it hover, glowing incandescent golden-white above the middle of the table, providing a ghostly illumination.

"This, gentlemen, is a mark of fealty. Touch it, and you are swearing fealty to me, to my army, and to my cause. Betray that oath and you die a horrible death. Take the mark of fealty, gentlemen. You know what's right and what's wrong, each of you. I can taste it in your blood. You know damn well that what you are doing—what you're forcing your men out there to do—is wrong. Each man or woman who goes out and dies at our hands in the name of your vile, bigoted cause is murder. Their blood is on your hands. We are defending ourselves, our home, our rights, and the rights of all marginalized, oppressed, and ignored people."

"And…and if we don't?" asks Nelson.

I shrug. "If the situations were reversed, the choice you'd give me is to convert to your side or die or be imprisoned. Well, gentlemen, I'm not you. What I'm offering you is a way out. An excuse to listen to your consciences. If you pursue this idiotic crusade of yours against my people, you will lose. I won't kill you here and now, regardless. But if you come against me and my people, I will not show mercy. You have been warned. Your troops I shall show mercy to at all possible opportunity, for they are mostly innocent. I will provide them all the same choice you face now."

Silence.

"Nelson, you asked a wonderful question, a few moments ago. How are your soldiers to know the difference between mortals and immortals? I mean, a vampire, if he or she is unblooded, is easy to spot. A fae, unmasked, can be determined by his or her ears if nothing else. A shifter, well, you'll never know unless and until he or she shifts in front of you. But, how do you know ? Which makes one wonder, I should think, whether your crusade is predicated upon a faulty premise to begin with: that we immortals are freaks and inferior beings. That we are inhuman."

Continued silence.

"I'll leave you with the mark and your thoughts, gentlemen. The mark will stay. Taking it will not harm you, and will not otherwise bind you to me or any other immortals except through your magically binding word of loyalty to me and my cause. There is, typically, a formal, ritual oath spoken when one takes the mark, but I don't expect that of you, and it isn't necessary anyway." I release the bonds around them, re-wrapping Bridgestone so tightly he can't move; I allow the gag to warm up to room temperature—wouldn't want his tongue to get frostbit. He'll need it shortly.

I leave the mark hovering over the table, move around behind Bridgestone, grab him by the collar and shove him roughly toward the exit. Rip open the portal and shove him through. Close it behind me, and shove him through again to the other side, now exiting in the middle of Times Square.

A crowd is gathered, upon my orders—mixed mortals and immortals. All the immortals are unmasked, but without scent, it'd be somewhat difficult to pick one immortal out of the crowd of thousands.

Times Square is dark, now. The iconic marquees and signs are blank. The stores are darkened, most of the glass broken and boarded up and the wares long since stolen. The bleachers are stuffed with people, and more crowd around the section I cordoned off as my stage for the next act.

Bridgestone is gagging around his, well, gag—the transition was abrupt and likely disorienting for the stupid mortal asshole. But that's his problem—the gag, being nothing more than a ball of swirling, condensed air, will allow vomit to pass through, should he puke. No risk of choking.

Although I'm tempted, I must say—I really do loathe this man even more than I did Zirae.

We emerge from the portal, Bridgestone stumbling, gagging, and then shuffling in a befuddled circle.

"Wheh—mmm—hiii?" he grunts.

"Where are you?" I translate. "Where does it look like you are, Mr. Bridgestone? Times Square. The heart of our Enclave."

"Geh-eh-wuh."

"Bullshit. You're no general. Not anymore. The moment you led troops against peaceful American citizens, you lost that privilege. You do not represent anyone or anything but yourself and your racist beliefs." I gesture around at the crowd. "Look around you, Nathaniel. What do you see?"

I allow the gag to dissolve. He spits, works his jaw. "Freaks and traitors."

"The only traitor here is you!" A man shouts somewhere to my right and pretty far back. "I'm no freak, and I'm certainly not a traitor! I'm a red-blooded mortal American. I fought for my country in Iraq and Afghanistan. I joined you because you said we were fighting a threat to our country, and I believed you! More the fool, me. You're nothing but a bully and racist!"

"I'm no racist!" Bridgestone says, whirling to face the voice as best as he can determine, although the speaker remains hidden in the crowd. "I accept all mortals, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. What I don't accept are perversions of nature!"

"Which makes you a racist!" the same man shouts. "The people you claim to hate are as human as the rest of us. They're just different. You're the perversion, you asshole!"

"Say that to my face, coward!" Bridgestone snarls, struggling against his bonds.

The crowd jostles, and a man emerges. A very, very large mortal male. Six and a half feet tall, muscular, tanned, wearing fatigues and carrying a shotgun. He stomps up to the cordon—rope fixed to orange traffic cones—and climbs over. Shotgun on his shoulder, he swaggers up to Bridgestone and stares down at him.

"You…" he shoves Bridgestone backward; hurriedly, I release the bonds around him so he can move freely. "Are." Another shove. "An ASSHOLE !"

Bridgestone, immediately sensing the release of the bonds, reaches for the sidearm at his right hip as he stumbles backward upon the man's last hard shove.

The man bats the gun aside and slugs Bridgestone in the gut, doubling him over. " That's for sending me into a fight you knew we'd lose against people who weren't our enemy."

The man turns his back on Bridgestone and swaggers back to the crowd; Bridgestone, being who he is, brings the gun up to bear.

"Ah ah ah," I admonish, moving in front of Bridgestone with my finger to the barrel. "I don't think so."

His finger tightens on the trigger.

"Remember what happened last time?" I ask, my voice sweet. "Think hard, mortal, before you pull that trigger."

He hesitates. Let the gun droop down. "What do you want?"

I laugh. "A broad question, Nathaniel. I want a lot of things."

"Why am I here? What do you want from me?"

I circle him. "Why are you here and what do I want from you? Excellent questions, Nathaniel."

I sweep a hand at the crowd in a 360-degree gesture. "What you see around you is a mixed group of mortals and immortals. I called them here. There are no disguises, no magical masks, nothing hidden. Fae are fae, vampires are vampires, and shifters are in human form."

"Okay? And?"

"Can you tell who is who?" I step up to the cordon and place my hand on the shoulder of a young woman—a fae with brown hair loose around her shoulders, conveniently hiding her ears. "What about her? Fae? Vampire? Shifter? Vaer? Aeshir? Fomori? Mortal? What is she?" I smile at him. "If she is immortal, I invite you to try to shoot her. I need not interfere—she can protect herself against one measly mortal with a stupid little gun." Before Bridgestone can speak, I interrupt. "From there. No questioning, just look at her and decide. Shoot or don't. But if you shoot, and you're wrong…" I reach out and accept a shockstick. "I poke you with this." The prongs arc and spit viciously. "It won't kill you, at this setting, but you really, really won't enjoy it. And yes, if she is a mortal, she will be protected from your bullet."

He blinks at me—I can see him thinking. He grips the gun tighter, finger outside the trigger guard, the barrel aimed at the ground a few feet in front of him. His eyes shift to the woman.

She's young-looking—older than Stirling but younger than Alistair, appearing late twenties to a mortal eye. She's wearing a pair of jeans, a well-worn Reading Rainbow shirt, and a loose white cardigan. Her hair is tied up messily and she wears no makeup. She's gorgeous, but so are any number of mortal women.

Bridgestone frowns. Looks at me and then at the woman. He grips and regrips the pistol.

I squeeze the woman's shoulder and weave through the crowd until I come to another person. This one is an elderly male. Black. Elegantly dressed in a pinstripe suit and fedora. Mortal. And one of the engineers who helped crack the energy solution.

I sling an arm across his shoulder. "I've got you," I whisper.

"I know it," he mutters back. "Ain't scared'a that racist old fuck."

"What about him?" I shrug. "Mortal? Immortal?" I send some prana into the shockstick, making it spark. "Gonna shoot him?"

Bridgestone is getting upset and confused. His eyes scan the crowd, looking for someone to hate.

I move to someone else—a male shifter of Asian descent, and a recent emigree to the Enclave. Rest my hand on his shoulder. "And him?"

To a mortal female, middle-aged and pretty, stocky with short hair and multiple piercings and tattoos on her hands and forearms. "And her?" I whisper in her ear. "I hope I didn't incorrectly assume anything."

She chuckles. "Nah, but I appreciate the thought, ma'am."

"Ma'am," I scoff, snorting.

She stands tall and proud, chin lifted, eyes blazing with defiance. "Gonna shoot me, Bridgestone? Come on, pussy. Shoot me. See what happens."

Another person steps forward. "Shoot me, Bridgestone. Try it, asshole."

And another. "How many bullets you got, prick?"

Pivoting in circles as more and more people step out of the crowd and cluster closer to him, daring him to shoot them, Bridgestone quickly becomes overwhelmed and panicked. "ENOUGH! I get it!"

He ejects the magazine and jacks the round of the chamber—it clatters to the ground with a soft tinkle of metal on stone.

"Okay, everyone, back up. Give him space." I step through the crowd and into the cordoned-off area. I stop in front of Bridgestone. "You get it? You've changed your ways, have you? Just like that?"

He doesn't answer.

"Aeon?" I call. "Will you please deposit this mortal somewhere far, far away? We aren't murderers like him, so not a mountaintop, desert, or the bottom of the ocean."

Aeon slips through the crowd, white hair fluttering in an invisible wind. He grabs Bridgestone by the arm, murmurs something to him, and then portals him away. A few moments later, Aeon returns.

"Where'd you leave him?" I ask. "And what did you say to him?"

"I left him in the bush outside a small village in Kenya. If he is humble and kind and gracious, they will care for him and bring him to a larger city. If he is not? Well, they'll just let Africa deal with him. His fate will be up to what kind of man he is." He grins. "I told him he's fortunate you're making the decisions and not me because I would have ripped his spine out through his rectum." A wicked grin. "I feel like he believed me, seeing as he piddled his pants."

The last thing to deal with, then, is the remains of the Federation.

Only, according to Emily's aerial reconnaissance, the army quickly discovered Bridgestone's absence—and the fact that the six ranking commanders all vanished…having taken my mark. Within twenty-four hours, the army is gone. Most return to wherever home was, but over a thousand of them join the enclave.

Now?

All we have to do is rebuild society.