“And where is that?” Anyan asked patiently.

“I believe the humans call it Notre Dame.”

I raised my eyebrows. Looked like we were going to Paris.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The nice thing about the Alfar being involved was that they had nice rides. The helicopters they’d lent us were whisking us away to Paris in record time.

The bad thing about the Alfar being involved, was that the Alfar were involved. Griffin was staring at me from across the expanse of the helicopter as if he were contemplating how best to put down an arthritic old milk cow that had long since ceased producing.

I kept smiling at him pleasantly, wondering if I could make the ax suddenly appear, hovering over his man parts.

For just a split second, the air shivered over his crotch. I gasped, pulling back my magic even as Griffin looked down, then back up in alarm. Recovered, and with the ax safely stowed in its magic mind box, I beamed back at him.

Frowning, he looked away.

That’d teach him to taunt the zoo animals, I thought, cuddling against Anyan who was wedged next to me. The barghest kissed my forehead gently, and when I raised my face to his, he nuzzled my nose with his own crooked schnoz. He drew back to smile at me, and my desire for him hit me like a ton of bricks.

I couldn’t hear anything in the helicopter: between the headphone thingies we were using as ear protection and the noise of the helicopter, we were all deaf. There were microphones on the headsets, but they miked into every other headset on the helicopter. Good for going into battle; bad for intimate conversations with the man you’d give your left buttock to maul. Luckily, however, Anyan knew all my strengths and weaknesses, as he and Nell had actually had me write them down in essay form as part of my training. So he knew that lots of underwater training with Trill had made me an excellent lip reader.

“I want you,” he mouthed, slowly and carefully, shifting in his seat a bit so I could better see that wide, sensual mouth.

“I do too,” I mouthed back, aware of his gaze on my lips. My libido pondered whether there was a subtle way to mime a blow job on a helicopter stuffed full of friends and foes, but my virtue squashed that train of thought like a health inspector might a lamed cockroach.

So instead I looked him as deeply as I could in the eyes without actually headbutting him, trying to open up that window into my soul… where, realistically, my libido was doing the humpty dance while dressed in Milkbone pasties and a thong.

“Liverpool here,” said a voice over our headphones, interrupting the moment. “Liverpool” referred to one of the four helicopters in our convoy. And no, the Alfar weren’t fucking around—we had a full contingent of their best soldiers going with us, as well as the members of the rebel party who had insisted they take part. I could tell the Alfar had wanted to tell Jack to shove it, but Anyan explained to me that politics on the Island were carefully kept in balance by giving the rebels careful, small acknowledgements—enough to keep them happy and feeling part of a process, but not enough to give them any real power. This particular mission was an easy way to make them feel included and keep an eye on them, without actually granting them any extra authority.

“We’re nearing Paris, but we’re getting reports of a security risk at our intended touchdown. Proceed or pull back?” asked the pilot of the other chopper.

“Proceed, but carefully. Make sure the humans see nothing.”

My eyes left Anyan’s as I turned my body to stare outside my window. Just as the pilot said, what had previously been farmland, and then suburbs, was now definitely city. And we weren’t the only thing in the sky.

In the distance I could see at least three other choppers going the same direction we were, and I thought I saw what looked like a fighter jet. My mouth went dry as I thought about what could possibly be happening that would require a military presence at all, let alone that big a military presence.

Reaching for Anyan’s hand, I scanned the horizon. The barghest rested his chin on my shoulder as he did the same.

It was, of course, Magog who spotted something first.

“Goddesses bright,” swore the raven from where she sat next to Griffin. I glanced at her sharply, but her eyes were wide and focused on the distance. I hadn’t spoken to Magog since we’d discovered she’d squealed to Jack. But, in all honesty, I knew my anger wouldn’t last. I didn’t envy her, being caught between so many different loyalties.

Sitting on the other side of Magog from Griffin sat Jack, who caught my eye and again gave me that politician’s smile. I glowered at him, but it was only when I saw that mask slip to be replaced by sheer horror that I knew we were well and truly fucked.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my head slowly towards the window.

A chorus of obscenities rang out over my headphones as the various pilots caught site of what awaited us.

So that’s what it takes to get the military in town, besides student riots, I thought. A dragon attack.

Perched on top of an already flaming Notre Dame crouched the Red Queen’s dragon form. She was even bigger than she’d appeared to us at Brighton, having no space issues to accommodate. The city skyline was now her playground, and while she wasn’t quite as big as Godzilla, she was pretty godamned impressive.

“What the hell is that?” One of the pilots asked.

“Our destination, gentleman,” said Griffin, pressing down on the little speaking button on his headset. “If you will find a convenient place to land, I think we will be safer on the ground. And we will need to have this Territory’s ground forces ready to take us to the site and debrief us.”

We watched the dragon knock what looked like a toy chopper out of the sky—we were still fairly far away—and then eat another one.

“Yes sir,” the pilot said hastily, giving a string of incomprehensible commands to the other pilots listening in.

The pilots dropped us off on the massive rooftop of a local hospital that was only a few blocks from Notre Dame. We made our way downstairs past the few startled doctors and nurses who hadn’t gone to huddle up next to windows to try to catch a glimpse of what they’d heard was happening at the cathedral. When we got downstairs, there was already a small cadre of French supes waiting for us.

“Bonjour,” said a slim and handsome man, with a strong Gallic nose I couldn’t help but appreciate. He was clearly Alfar, the power swirling around him identifying him with its mixture of elements. I took a moment to ascertain our current situation while he continued speaking in a rapid French the rest of my group clearly understood.

Around us humans in civilian clothes or cars were traveling as fast as possible away from the barrage of noise we could hear from the cathedral, including screams, explosions, gunfire, and something shouting very loudly. At the same time, humans in various uniforms raced or drove towards the melee in official looking vehicles. Some of those vans were obviously news crews.

In other words, there were humans everywhere: snapping pictures, filming, and calling loved ones and friends with eyewitness accounts.

There wasn’t a supernatural force on earth that was capable of covering this one up.

Why would she do this? I thought. Why would she show herself like this?

Then I realized that by “she” I was thinking of Morrigan. The Morrigan I thought I’d known never would have exposed her kind to humanity. And maybe the Morrigan I hadn’t known—the Morrigan who made a deal with the Red—wouldn’t have, either. But the Red Queen was clearly in charge, and she just wanted carnage.

And if carnage was what she wanted, there was no better way to get it than to expose the supernatural world—to show one group of people another, different group of people. Especially if that other group was really different—maybe with different colored skin, or a different way of worship, or the ability to shapeshift into a motherfucking dragon.

The Red had last been destroyed long before technology. She could rant and scream all she wanted in a village many hundreds of years ago, and all the supes had to do to mop up was glamour a few hundred people. Even in a major city of the time, any appearances she made could eventually be wiped clean away. But nowadays, with Morrigan’s understanding of modern technology behind her, the Red knew she could make quite a splash by showing up on the roof of a major urban tourist-site.

Yeah, I thought. The humans are going to be pissed, and scared, and even more pissed about being kept in the dark. They’re going to want revenge, and their world cleansed, and for everything to go back to normal.

And the Red was going to love every minute of it.

That was when the debate changed to English.

“You can’t do this,” Blondie was saying. Anyan clearly had her back, as he was standing behind her bristling with menace.

“We can and we will,” the French Alfar said. “This is not our fight.”

“What do you mean this isn’t our fight? She’s the Red! She’ll destroy this city, maybe this country, and that’s just her alone. When she awakens the White, we all fall!”

“She will have her fun, and then she can go away. We can fight her in our own way, later. She has already compromised us, but she can be explained away as a myth come to life… a freak of genetic history that survived, maybe in Loch Ness to give the humans a thrill, and that can be hunted down. If we try to stop her now, we expose all of our kind.”