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One didn’t simply stab a Cartesian in the heart or brain to kill it. In fact, Nikoli didn’t think any Bender knew for sure if they could be killed. To destroy a Cartesian, Benders had been taught to shock it back into another dimension. The farther the dimension, the better.
Somehow Cartesians were able to cross over the wrinkles of time and space from one dimension to another through the smallest dimensional tear. And they traveled swiftly, always on the lookout for other netherworld creatures. Their purpose appeared to be total netherworld domination, no matter the kill. Vampire, werewolf, fae, leprechaun, djinn, anything and everything that did not make up the human race. A Cartesian killed any and all it found to absorb its victim’s power.
The creatures had a leader, of that Nikoli was sure, but no one knew his name, not that it really mattered. It wasn’t like someone could Google him.
What they needed to do was destroy him, by pushing him into the dimension of no return. The eleventh. Vanquish the head, the rest of the body dies. From all accounts, this so-called leader stood nearly twenty feet tall, but Nikoli would have to see that with his own eyes to believe it. All he had to worry about was destroying whatever Cartesians he found in his missions, hoping that luck or fate might hand him that leader one day.
It wasn’t that Benders had any particular liking for vampires, werewolves and the like. But the secret society of Benders knew that if the Cartesians dominated the whole of the netherworld and became one sole power, that power would then take on the human race in order to achieve world domination. And with all that power wrapped up in an army of monstrous, furry armadillos with fangs and claws, world domination would be a cinch. Every Bender had sworn a solemn oath to do all in his power not to let that happen.
Not letting on his thoughts to his cousins, Nikoli secretly worried about the mission that lay before them. It was hard enough to destroy a Cartesian, but even with their massive size, they were difficult to spot due to the speed with which they traveled between dimensional folds.
Benders were trained to recognize a Cartesian’s proximity by scent. The creatures emitted a horrendous odor, a mixture of sulfur and cloves. And for some odd reason, on occasion, Nikoli had picked up a vibration that ran up his spine right before he caught a whiff of the odor. He thought it might come from the disturbance of a dimensional fold, right before a Cartesian made its way into their world.
A Bender’s job was to push Cartesians back through the dimensional rift with a scabior, an odd-looking tool that for all intents and purposes looked like a child’s toy. It was an eight-inch-long metal rod with a marble-size bloodstone topping one end of its one-inch circumference.
Harmless-looking, but if held in the right hand and used in the right manner by a Bender, the scabior let out such a strong current of electrical power that it refolded the dimension from which the Cartesian had entered, pushing him back inside. With each dimensional backward thrust, the scabior emitted a loud, sizzling pop, heard only by the Bender. The number of pops told the Bender the number of dimensions he had been able to push the Cartesian through. To date, Nikoli had only managed six, still the highest number among his cousins.
Each cousin sat quietly, staring off into the distance, probably thinking about what lay ahead.
A full five minutes went by before Lucien broke the silence. “Any of you have an idea about how those ugly mother-effers were created?”
Gavril cleared his throat. “All I know is that eons ago somebody pissed somebody else off, and that somebody else turned somebody number one into a Cartesian. How they multiplied from there, I don’t have a clue.”
Ronan leaned over and crossed his arms on the small table. “The first one was created as punishment, for what I’m not sure. I don’t think any Bender still alive really knows for sure. But Cartesians multiply by kills.”
Frowning, Lucien cocked his head to one side. “Huh?”
“Kills,” Ronan repeated. “When the first Cartesian made his first kill in the netherworld, it gave him enough power to create another one just like him. That new Cartesian makes a kill, it now has the power to reproduce itself, but only if the original Cartesian allows it. And you can bet he does. Who wouldn’t want the biggest army in the universe?”
“You mean they don’t breed like everybody else?” Lucien asked.
“No,” Ronan replied. “As far as I know, and this comes from two of the oldest Benders I know in Switzerland, Cartesians don’t even have sex organs. Not only do they not procreate, they don’t even have genders.”
“That’s fucked up,” Gavril said. “No wonder those things are always out hunting, killing, destroying shit. I’d probably be that way, too, if I never had sex.”
“But if they’re genderless, why are they usually referred to as male?” Lucien asked.
“Probably because they’re big sonsabitches,” Nikoli chimed in.
Gavril shook his head. “Well, all I’ve gotta say is whoever or whatever did the punishing sure screwed up. Bet they didn’t count on the bastard wanting and working toward ruling the entire universe.”
“Did everyone get the info on why so many suddenly hit New Orleans?” Ronan asked.
“One of the Triads,” Nikoli said.
“You mean those witches we’re supposed to meet out there?” Lucien asked.
“Yes,” Nikoli said, then signaled for the steward standing at the back of the plane to bring drinks to the table.
“Why are they called Triads?” Lucien asked.
Nikoli waited for the steward to place four glasses of cold, sparkling water on the table then head back to his station before he responded. “Because they’re triplets.”
“Oh, man, sweet!” Gavril said, twitching in his seat.
“Down, boy,” Nikoli warned. “Remember the code. No funny business while on a mission.”
Gavril groaned and tossed his head back against his seat. “Spoil sport.”
“Do these triplets run their own coven?” Ronan asked.
Nikoli shook his head, then took a long, much-needed drink of water. “Triads belong to a sect of witches called the Circle of Sisters. They don’t have covens like other witches. The Circle of Sisters is small, comparatively. Maybe fifteen hundred worldwide.”
“All of them sets of triplets?” Lucien asked.
“No. There’s only one full set of Triads per generation, and each triplet has a specific duty.”
“I’d like to give one a specific duty,” Gavril said, then turned his head quickly when Nikoli scowled at him.
“One of them is responsible for the Loup Garou, another for the Nosferatu and the third the Chenilles.”
“Wow,” Gavril said. “You’re talking original breeds there, cuz. Before vampires, werewolves and zombies and shit.”
“I know,” Nikoli said. “That’s why this mission was put together so quickly. Those breeds have never been hit by Cartesians. The Triads always kept a tight rein on them.”
“So what happened,” Lucien asked. “Who screwed up and how?”
Nikoli shrugged. “No idea. Guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
Lucien whistled through his teeth. “Must have been a pretty huge screw-up to cause a rift big enough to let that many Cartesians through.”
“Not necessarily,” Nikoli countered. “All it takes is a miniscule tear. Once one gets through, any number that want to follow can.”
“How many of the Originals have been destroyed so far?” Ronan asked.
“By the time we land and get to the Triads, over a hundred Loup Garous.”
“Since they’re witches,” Lucien said, “can’t they just cast some hoodoo spell and close the rift themselves?”
“Nobody can mess with a Cartesian except a Bender,” Gavril said proudly.
“True, but they don’t even know what’s about to hit them,” Nikoli said. “The tear hasn’t been completed yet.”
Ronan leaned back in his seat. “Are they ever in for a surprise.”
“Sadly, yes,” Nikoli agreed. He felt bad for the Triad he’d yet to meet. Chances were she’d created the rift by accident. Probably didn’t even know that rifts existed—or Cartesians for that matter.
As they closed in on New Orleans, Nikoli sensed a circling of sorts. Like the four of them were pioneers, traveling out west by wagon and surrounded by a massive tribe of banshees they could not yet see.
Nikoli sensed something big was about to break loose. He feared this fight might be bigger than any Bender generation had encountered before, and there had been many.
He looked over at his cousins, who were talking softly among themselves. Except for Ronan, of course. Mr. Sole Man was staring out the window, probably thinking about the quest ahead.
The four cousins couldn’t have been closer if they’d been brothers. And in his heart of hearts, Nikoli trusted each one with his life. They were equally strong, talented and vicious warriors against the Cartesians.
Regardless, a small nagging voice inside his gut warned that four of them were heading to New Orleans ready to fight, but only three would be returning home.
Chapter 3
By the time Viv had ferried to the opposite side of the river, it was almost ten o’clock in the morning. She smelled coffee and beignets from nearby cafes, and it made her stomach rumble. What she wouldn’t give for one of Evette’s special hickory-blend coffees and chocolate-drizzled beignets right about now. But food had to wait, she realized as she hurried to her home in the Garden District.
She shared the Victorian with her sisters. It sat on the corner of St. Charles and Washington Avenue. The house had belonged to their mother, who’d died in an airplane accident when they were nineteen.
They never knew their father, as was often the case with Triads. For some odd reason, the fathers of each generation of Triads took to the hills as soon as they discovered their wife was pregnant. Wrong men? Wrong timing? Who knew. Not that it made any difference to Viv.
Although she was definitely heterosexual and struggled with raging hormones from times to time, she didn’t need a man to make her life complete. She had enough on her plate. Maybe her ancestors had felt the same way for none of them had remarried, which was why the François name still held strong today. Although exhausted, Viv picked up her pace, anxious to get home. Each sister had a floor with a bedroom and bath to call her own. Evette, whom they called Evee, had the first floor; Viv, the second; and Abigail, whom they called Gilly, had the third.
Evee owned a café off Royal Street called Bon Appétit. She opened at eight o’clock in the morning and closed at two o’clock, right after the lunch crowd dispersed so there was a good chance she wouldn’t be home.
Gilly, on the other hand, would be home. She owned a bar-and-grill off Iberville Street called Snaps. It opened at two o’clock in the afternoon and closed at two o’clock the following morning. Those long hours gave Viv some confidence that Gilly would still be sleeping right now, which meant she had a good shot at getting into the house and into her bedroom undetected.
Thinking about her sisters and the broods they were responsible for made the twinge of guilt Viv carried for her Loup Garous grow stronger.
She’d left without tending to those who worked during the day at construction jobs or city maintenance. Certainly by now, especially at this hour, many would be wondering when they would be released from the compound to go about their chores. The only good thing was that Loups were infamously resilient. If no one released them for duty, they’d make use of the day by napping, prowling or watching Stratus get her fill of Warden.
It seemed to take forever for Viv to finally make it home. Just as she pushed open the back door, Socrates ran past her into the house. She hadn’t noticed him on the ferry nor on her walk to the house, yet here he was, skittering around the kitchen toward the hallway, where he started caterwauling at the top of his lungs.
Viv released her partial invisibility spell, which was useless around her sisters anyway.
“Stop that!” she demanded in a loud whisper. “What kind of familiar are you, trying to get your own mistress busted?”
Gilly slept on the north end of the third floor, so although Socrates was loud, Viv doubted Gilly heard him. What she didn’t count on was Elvis, an albino ferret with ruby eyes and a pink nose and ears. Gilly’s familiar.
Viv barely made it to the stairway when Elvis came streaking down the stairs like a bolt of lightning. The moment he spotted Viv, he came to an abrupt stop, flipped over one step, then jumped up and started racing back up the stairs, letting out a shrill chirping sound as he went. She knew he meant to fetch Gilly, and Viv tried to outrun the inevitable by taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
She raced into her bedroom but before she had a chance to close the door, Gilly shoved against it and pushed her way inside.
Dressed only in a pink silk sleep shirt, with her black pixie cut spiked from sleep, Gilly’s mouth dropped open when she saw Viv.
Before her sister uttered a word, Viv had a peculiar thought about Hollywood and witches. Had anyone been watching a movie, they would have expected Gilly to immediately cast a spell that would wash the blood from Viv and have any wounds appear in purple neon so they’d be easily detected.
But there was no spell-casting, and this wasn’t Hollywood. Witches were human, just a different race, and just as each race had their distinct features and culture, witches were no different.
A witch’s potential for power often depended on the clan from which she was born. Viv and her sisters came from the Circle of Sisters, a relatively small, close and extremely secretive group with maybe fifteen hundred witches worldwide at best. Viv, Evee and Gilly were even a subgroup within the Circle, since they were triplets.
“Wh-what the hell?” Gilly said, snapping Viv out of her daydream. All three of the sisters had olive complexions, but right now Gilly’s face blanched as she took in all the blood covering Viv.
“What happened?” Gilly demanded. “Who attacked you? Where are you hurt? Heavens, look at all that blood!”
Elvis scurried around his mistress’s feet as if trying frantically to weave a web around them. Then in the blink of an eye, he scampered up Gilly’s right leg, across her back and came to rest on her right shoulder.
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” Gilly said, and Viv grabbed her by the arm before she had a chance to whirl about.
“Stop, it’s not mine,” Viv said. It took a few seconds for frenzy to leave Gilly’s eyes and settle on Viv’s face.
“What do you mean, it’s not yours?”
Socrates rubbed up against Viv’s left ankle then made his way between the sisters and politely sat as if to create a boundary. Elvis leaned over Gilly’s shoulder, watching Socrates’s every move. Socrates hissed at him, gold eyes blazing. “Just that,” Viv said, obviously a little too nonchalant for Gilly’s taste. In that moment, she saw her sister’s black eyes turn auburn, which meant only one thing. Gilly’s specialty was astral projection, and whenever she zoned off somewhere, the telltale sign was the change of her eye color. Right now, Viv would bet dollars to horseshoes that some ghost of Gilly present was at Bon Appétit summoning Evee home.
“Then you’d better start explaining really quickly,” Gilly demanded. “Whose blood is it? Where did it come from?”
For the next ten or fifteen minutes, Viv tried to explain what happened at the compound. She kept stumbling over her own words, uncertain how to tell her sister why her own spells hadn’t worked against the Loup Garou. Truth be told, she didn’t know why they hadn’t worked. Back at the compound, she thought her crappy attitude might have played a part in making the spells ineffectual. But after giving it much thought on her way home, the only thing she knew for sure was that the spells should have worked despite her mood. And how was she going to tell her sister why she’d whacked Milan upside the head with a two-by-four, then walked away?
Viv had circled the conversation back to Milan in the compound and how he and Warden had gone to war when Gilly blew out an exasperated breath.
“You covered that already,” Gilly said. “Just spit it out. All of it.”
Suddenly Viv heard a loud squawking followed by the entrance of Hoot, a copper-and-white horned owl. Evee’s familiar. He swooped down, barely missing Socrates’s head, then rocketed back up, nearly knocking Elvis off Gilly’s shoulder.
“Damn it!” Gilly yelled and swung out an arm to keep Hoot from flying at her.
That sent Hoot into a high-pitched screech, which pushed Elvis’s squeal button to top volume. Socrates stood with his back arched, teeth bared, and hissed like a bucket of snakes.
“Y’all shut the hell up,” Viv shouted to no avail. The room continued to vibrate from all the hissing, shrieking, squawking and yelling.
The sisters looked at each other, perplexed. Time seemed to stand still in a deafening vacuum that neither of them could quiet. It wasn’t unusual for their familiars to snap at one another from time to time, but normally they got along like brothers and sisters. But this was as though each familiar was out to protect their own territory.
Finally Viv held her arms out at her side, hands out, palms up, and said, “Silence is all I care to hear, I command this noise away from here.”
Immediately, all three familiars went silent. Gilly blinked rapidly, then said, “Why didn’t I think of doing that?”
Socrates meowed, then said to Viv, “If I’m not mistaken, this is our domain. Would you please get that intolerable ingrate of a bird and elongated rat out of this room?”
Viv nudged him with a foot, signaling for him to hush. Fortunately, to Gilly, Socrates had only caterwauled since only the mistress of a familiar understood its voice.
She didn’t know how much time had passed after the racket died down, but it felt like only seconds before Evee burst into the room, out of breath, dressed in a smartly fitted, powder-blue pantsuit and black pumps.
“I—I left Margaret in ch-charge of the café and hurried over as fast as I could,” Evee said, panting. “What... Look at you! All the blood! What happened? Where did this happen? Did somebody attack you? We need to call an ambulance. We need to call nine-one-one! No, I’ll get the car. It’ll be faster.”
“We don’t need an ambulance,” Viv assured Evee.
“She said it’s not her blood,” Gilly added.
Evee’s copper-colored eyes grew wide. “Did you kill somebody?”
“Of course not,” Viv said, feeling guilt twist a bit harder in her gut. That answer might have been different had she hit Milan any harder with the two-by-four.
Now that all three sisters were in the room, Elvis, Hoot and Socrates settled down next to their mistresses.
Viv’s reassurance may have calmed Evee’s voice but seemed to do very little for her nerves. Evee reached out to touch Viv with a shaking hand, then quickly drew it back.
“Really,” Viv said. “I’m okay.”
Gilly grabbed one of Evee’s hands and pulled her sister to the edge of Viv’s bed, where they sat.
“Okay, enough bullshit,” Gilly said. “Tell us what happened.”
Viv sighed, glanced around for a place to sit. Then decided to remain standing so as not to get blood on anything and told them what had happened that morning.
“Why didn’t you just open the damn ground up where they were fighting and drop the dumbasses into a hole,” Gilly huffed after she’d finished. “If they wanted to kill each other, they could have done it in there. Saved you a lot of grief. And a pair of jeans and shirt.”
“Oh, please,” Evee said with a shake of her head.
Now that Gilly had mentioned it, Viv didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about opening the ground while at the compound. The shock of that might have stopped the fight. Once again, she blamed the brain pause.
“I didn’t want them dead,” she said to Gilly. “They were only fighting for some alpha tail.”
Gilly narrowed her eyes. “Wait—you mean those two alphas were fighting so close to the gate where you were watching that you got doused in blood?”
Evee nudged Gilly with a shoulder. “Stop interrogating her like you’re some kind of detective,” she said. “Give her a break. I mean, look at her. Don’t you think she’s been through enough?”
Gilly nodded slowly and clicked her tongue between her teeth. “Let me guess. You did that partial invisibility thing and went inside the compound to stop them didn’t you?”
Viv looked down at the highly polished oak floor beneath her boots.
Evee and Gilly stood up simultaneously.
“My word, please don’t tell me that’s what you did!” Evee said.
Viv glanced up at them. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
Gilly stomped a foot. “I told you what you should have done. You had no business being in the middle of that compound. You could’ve gotten yourself killed. Two big alpha males like that. What were you gonna do, slap some sense into them?”
“What did you do?” Evee asked shakily, as if not really wanting to know the answer.
Viv glanced away, vividly recalling the scene as she described it to them.
When she was finished, Evee suddenly snapped her fingers. “This whole thing about your powers not working at the compound... Did you remember to read your Grimoire this morning before the feeding?”
“Now who’s playing detective?” Gilly said with a snort.
Viv glanced down again. “Yeah, well, it’s what we do every morning, right?”
“She asked if you read yours,” Gilly said, her eyes narrowing again.
“Okay, so maybe I didn’t this morning,” Viv admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to when I got back. I mean, we have this routine where we read it before feeding every morning, but that’s not like a hard and fast rule.”
“Oh, Viv,” Evee said. “You know the rules. That particular one may not be hard and fast, but it’s one we’ve stuck to for years. We have to stay sharp with study. Always armed and ready for anything.”
Out of nowhere, Viv felt a nudge in her gut, an urgency that they had to look at their Grimoires right now.
As if picking up on the unspoken message, Gilly and Evee suddenly raced out of the room, and Viv knew they were going to get their books. Hesitantly, she went to the top bureau drawer and pulled out her copy. It was nearly eight inches thick, the heavy parchment pages worn, its cover weathered Elder-wood. She placed it on her bed and within moments Gilly and Evee were standing on either side of her, books in hand. They each placed their Grimoire on either side of hers.
Without a word, the sisters reached for the front cover of their book and opened them simultaneously. The three gasped in unison. Recessed in the front cover of each book was a four-inch oblong mirror. Instead of the apocalyptic scene they were used to viewing each day, the only thing reflecting from the mirrors now were swirls of gray, like billowing smoke.
“What does this mean?” Evee whispered.
“I have no idea,” Gilly said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it do this.” She leaned over and sniffed at her Grimoire, then Evee’s and Viv’s. “You smell that?”
“What?” Evee copied her sister’s motion and sniffed her book. “It’s...” She frowned.
“It’s what?” Viv asked, following suit. Her Grimoire did smell a little funny. It not only carried its usual aged, worn-wood scent, there was something different, albeit faint, mixed in. “Is that nutmeg I’m smelling?”
“Cloves,” Evee said. She put her nose to Gilly’s Grimoire, then Viv’s. “Definitely cloves.”
“When the hell were these books ever around cloves?” Gilly asked. “Did you bring some back from the café?”
“Why would I do that? To stick cloves between the pages of our books?” Evette said smartly. She tsked. “That’s absurd. Absolutely not.”
Gilly shrugged and sniffed again.
Viv glanced at her sisters. “Do you think the gray in the mirrors has something to do with why my spells didn’t work at the compound?”