Blue Moon Rising (The Patroness) Read online

  “Hey, Maiwenn!”

  Turning around I stared incredulously at Kylian and Chastel standing on top of the stairs.

  “They only now let you go? For what reasons? Especially since you didn’t even carry a weapon.” I asked, with a curious look at Kylian.

  He grinned. “Well, being in your company turns out to be enough of a crime.”

  I grimaced. “I’m sorry guys. I hope they treated you well.”

  “Yeah, maybe you should kiss it better anyhow. Just to be sure, you know.” Chastel suggested with a wink at me.

  I just looked at him, staying silent.

  “That’s a no, huh? What a shame. So, how did it go for you?”

  I waved a hand in the air. “Ah, it wasn’t his usual team on the night-shift, so I’d a rather quiet night.” Looking back at Kylian, I said, “Thanks for calling Viviane by the way.”

  His lips curved into a small smile. “You’re welcome.” Then his expression changed, determination getting the upper hand. “We lost a whole night, we should get moving, and find some answers today.”

  Within five minutes we were in front of my apartment. Even from across the street I could tell that something was wrong. My office was still closed. I’ve gotten to know Pauline and I knew she would have helped me out just like yesterday and opened up for me. Without thinking I crossed the street in a sprint, punched in the security code and practically flew up the stairs. On my way to the fourth floor I found Viviane lying on the stairs. It looked like she’d fallen. I ran to her, and checked for wounds. Except for a really nasty looking laceration on her temple that was caked in blood, she seemed okay.

  “Viviane, Viviane wake up!”

  I kept myself from shaking her of fear to hurt her. Her hands twitched, and then her eyelids fluttered open. She needed a second to focus on my face. “Maiwenn? What...What happened? What -” Abruptly she sat up, with a wild look on her face, obviously remembering, she grabbed my arm in a fierce grip. “Pauline! Oh God, no! They took Pauline.” At her words an ice cold fist of fear and dread clamped my heart, trying to squeeze every last drop of hope out of it. “We have to find her, we have to -”.

  Swallowing hard, I pushed away the fear and the dread, staying concentrated on the present. “Yes, we will. But first of all let us bring you upstairs and take a look at your wounds, okay. And then you’ll tell us what exactly happened here, okay?” I told her, in a patient and calm voice, not knowing how I managed it.

  Kylian scooped up Viviane in a swift but gently motion and carried her upstairs. The door to my apartment was standing wide open and the wild scratches on the lock indicated forced entry. Bastards. Kylian laid Viviane down on the couch in the living room. Quickly glancing around I noticed the door to Pauline’s bedroom stood wide open and was slightly dented; a flowerpot lay broken on the floor near the kitchen, and a lamp, whose former place had been on the table in the living room, had met the same fate. So Pauline had put up a fight. Good girl!

  I got my first-aid kit from the bathroom and knelt down in front of the couch, beside Viviane. While I disinfected and patched her wound, I heard Kylian rummaging in the kitchen. A few moments later, as I had finished, he came back, helped Viviane to sit up and pushed a cup into her slightly trembling hands. Tea, I realized as the calming scent of camomile filled the air.

  “This one’s for you,” Kylian said, motioning towards a second cup standing on the coffee table.

  “Thank you.” I set back on my heels and watched Viviane. This strong woman suddenly seemed so fragile. As long as I could remember I knew that whatever might happen she would be there to help me, to protect me, to get me out of whatever mess I’d gotten myself into. But now I recognized that things had changed, the roles had been switched, and I was the one who had to be strong, who had to protect. I swallowed at the heavy weight this sudden responsibility brought, knowing that there was no way around it.

  I waited for Viviane to take a sip of her tea, and then I had to ask her. “What happened Viviane?”

  A deep crease formed between her eyebrows, as she concentrated on last night’s events. Closing her eyes she began to tell, her voice hoarser than usual. “It was late, early morning I think, when I woke up. At first I couldn’t tell why, but then I heard noises from upstairs...muffled sounds, screams. And I knew something was wrong. I ran out the door and saw them. They had Pauline. She was unconscious...oh God, I hope she was unconscious.” She held a hand to her mouth to put a stop to the sobs bubbling up. “I fought with them, but they were too strong. One of them landed a good punch and I fell down the stairs. That’s the last thing I can remember. Then you woke me up.”

  Trying really hard to stay calm, I asked, “Who were they? What did they look like?”

  “I don’t know. Creatures I’ve never seen before.”

  “Where they feathered?” Kylian asked.

  Viviane took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. Slowly getting a grip on herself again, she continued, “Two males, black-haired, tall, about seven feet. They had big, black wings, wingspread also around seven feet, maybe more. Otherwise they just...looked rather human to me.”

  Okay, that sounded a lot like angels, except there were two minor problems. First of all, angels were good and wouldn’t kidnap a faery and second of all, they just didn’t exist in our realm. Magic sustained them, and since Earth was a little short of that, they were very unlikely to visit. So they must be something else, but what?

  Kneeling before Viviane I suggested, “How about you go into my room, get some sleep?” After she nodded, I helped her to get up, and then lent a shoulder to hold on to, since her legs were still shaking, and we went into my room. I tucked her into bed. “Do you need anything? Tea, water?”

  She shook her head, and took my hand. “Don’t worry about me, ma grande. I’m fine. Go kick some ass and bring our Pauline back home!”

  Leaning down to kiss her hair, I whispered, “I’ll, I promise.”

  I turned around to open my closet, grabbed some fresh clothes, and I headed out, silently closing the door behind me. I took out my phone and texted Mathieu to get his ass over here ASAP.

  Then I took a deep breath. Okay, concentrate Maiwenn. Ever since the pendulum had let me down when I searched for Josianne I’ve been developing a new spell, and I really hoped to get better results this time. I needed to get better results this time.

  After a little side-trip into the bathroom, where I left my stack of clothes and picked some of Pauline’s flaxen hair off her brush, I went into the kitchen. Opening one of the cupboards beside the stove, I took out a copper cauldron and filled it with water. After adding some garden herbs, which floated upon the water, and her hair, I nicked my thumb with a knife so a few thick droplets of my blood fell into the mixture. The herbs and hair went up in teal colored flames, and smoke began to pour out of the cauldron, gliding to the floor, swirling around my feet and sliding up my legs, like a lover’s restless hand.

  I began to chant in an old language and concentrated on the magic within me, and on Pauline. Recalling the first time we met, how she danced in a fountain before the Senate in the middle of the night, high on faerie dust. Remembering her face, her smile, her willingness to accept my jobs and the risks attached, though that might have been hasty of her. Remembering her kindness and good heart.

  A tear rolled down my cheek and dropped into the cauldron. With a hiss the smoke vanished and the water cleared, its surface as smooth as a mirror now.

  I should have been able to see where exactly she was. However, as well as in the ritual for Josianne, I sort of bumped into a wall. But at least this time it wasn’t all for nothing. Looking into the cauldron, through the water, in a bird’s-eye view I made out buildings and streets, and I could finally narrow it down to a rough district. “She’s somewhere in the north-eastern suburbs.”

  Chastel grimaced at my words and Kylian frowned at him. “What’s wrong with her finding where they hold Pauline?”

  “Nothing wrong
with that at all, it’s just that the north-eastern suburbs aren’t exactly a bed of roses. Ever heard of the 2005 and early 2012 riots?” Chastel asked.

  As Kylian shook his head, I explained, “Well you have to understand that, since the 1970s the north-eastern suburbs gradually turned into ghettos for immigrants; unemployment and high crime rate locking them into a vicious circle. At the same time, however the western and southern suburbs, as well as the city of Paris, with that I mean the city within the Périphérique expressway, flourished, which, of course, resulted in great wealth for the residents and the advantages of such. Now imagine this widening social gap of abyss-proportion, and you end up with the riots.”

  Kylian nodded in understanding. “Okay, so hostile territory. What-”

  The doorbell rang. While I went to answer the door, I called out over my shoulder towards Kylian and Chastel, “I’ve called Mathieu so he could look after Viviane while we’re out.”

  Mathieu and Philippe came in. “Hey Maiwenn. Guys. So what’s going on? Why are we here?”

  “Do you want something to drink? Tea maybe? Kylian made some nice tea.”

  Philippe frowned. “What’s wrong, Maiwenn? You’re babbling, that’s not good.”

  Crap. I took a deep breath; better to get this over with. “They kidnapped Pauline last night. Right out of her bed.”

  Mathieu paled. “What...Fuck. Fuck! But...I mean...how was that even possible? How could that happen? Where were you?”

  That hurt. Okay, he had a crush on Pauline and was a young male, perfectly normal for him to hit the roof, but damn, did he have to find the right questions? “We were in jail, the three of us. I wasn’t here.” There was a shitload of bitterness behind that truth.

  “And why the fuck are you here now instead of going after them?”

  Kylian stepped in, “Hey calm down, Matt. Might want to rethink that tone. The reason why we’re still here is that Viviane tried to save Pauline and got hurt. Besides, we can’t just march on, revenge in our eyes without a slightest clue, without knowing where exactly they hold her, who ‘they’ might be or the faintest outline of a plan. Could be fatal otherwise, and not only for us.”

  His matter-of-fact tone and clear reasoning actually helped to calm down Mathieu. “Okay, fine. So what are we going to do?”

  “That depends on you. I hope you’ve got something for us?”

  Mathieu looked as if caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Oh, that’s interesting. I’d been hoping on some information on the ghosts, but there seemed to be more hidden behind his angel face since even Philippe pulled up his transparent eyebrows and had a question mark stamped right over his face, and so I stayed silent.

  Mathieu pulled half a dozen flyers out of his pocket, and I tensed. “I, err, I followed up on the flyers...”

  I sucked in a sharp breath as a good-sized bubble of anger and worry suddenly burst open in my chest. Then I looked down at Kylian’s arm that had suddenly come up in front of me, holding me back.

  “No, wait! Let him finish.”

  I hadn’t even realized I’d taken a step towards Mathieu. Putting my anger in a drawer way back in my head – for now – I tried to concentrate on what Mathieu was saying.

  With his eyes playing ping-pong between Kylian’s and my face, Mathieu continued, “Err, I found more of them. Checked out every place with a black board that came to mind; clubs, gyms, universities, churches and so on. And I went to two of their meetings.”

  Whoa, stop right there! Hands planted on my hips to keep them close, I tried to keep my tone light. “Come again? I’m pretty sure I got that wrong, since I imagined you saying you went after a probably people-abducting psycho group all on your lonesome although I explicitly told you to stay put.” To hell with the light tone! “What the fuck is going on in that thick skull of yours? You’ve never pulled a stunt like that before. Is that some kind of rebellious pubertal aftermath?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “No ha-ha, I’m serious, Mathieu.” I turned and added, with my anger now directed at Philippe, “And where the fuck were you? You’re supposed to come to me when shit like that goes down.”

  “I wasn’t there. I had no idea of what he did until now. Maybe you’ve forgotten but I’ve been hunting ghosts like you wanted me to!” Philippe retaliated.

  Damn. I concentrated on Mathieu again. “You should have listened to me, trusted me. Goddamn it, Mathieu, you could have been hurt.” Or worse.

  Now I saw his own anger boiling up. “Jesus Maiwenn, I’m not a child anymore. I’m not in that fucking basement anymore. I can take care of myself!”

  I was sure I wasn’t the only one who found herself snapped back into that filthy basement, where I found him three years ago. Maybe I was a sitting hen, but how could he blame me for that? We were family and all I wanted for him was to be safe. Last night clearly showed though that I couldn’t. I couldn’t always be there.

  Calmer I continued, “You’re right, you aren’t a child anymore. But you don’t know a damn about fighting, shooting a gun or anything else. Before you’ll ever again set a foot outside to go after some psycho you’ll train with me, you’ll learn how to defend yourself. Deal?”

  His face brightened and a smile widened his lips. “Deal.” Mathieu looked directly into my eyes, “Besides, I didn’t attend the meetings, I just hid outside and just watched. And noticed that more people went in than came out. At both meetings.”

  That little revelation was followed by three pairs of eyebrows climbing their owner’s foreheads and a few silent moments of Damn!

  “Nice work,” Kylian said. “Though next time, clear it with Maiwenn and keep her posted about your whereabouts. Wouldn’t be cool to not know where to start looking for you, if you’d disappeared!”

  Frowning and still trying to wrap my mind around Mathieu’s discovery, I said, “Wait. Where did you say you found those flyers?”

  “Well, on campus, and then I checked out some clubs, churches and social associations, stuff like that. Why?”

  Clubs, gyms, churches...churches...something extremely well hidden in the back of my mind tried to claw its way out. Churches...then it fell like scales from my eyes.

  “Now, I know why those flyers looked familiar,” I muttered under my breath, and then I told the others, “I’ve seen them on the black board in the church Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis.”

  Picking up my train of thought Kylian went on, “So, Josianne goes there to check out their meeting place, takes a look at one of those ‘are-you-different-we-can-help-you’ flyers and thinks ‘why the hell not?’. Her relationship with Romaric is practically doomed. He’ll soon turn eighteen and time is running out on them, so she grabs for every straw. Josianne goes, attends one of the meetings, and never returns. Yeah, that might work.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  Mathieu glanced back and forth between Kylian and me. “So we just have to go to one of their meetings, follow those assholes and see where they take the people, right?”

  Huh? “We? There is no ‘we’ in this matter. You two are going to stay here and look after Viviane. She’s pretty shaken after last night, thanks for asking.”

  That big mouth Mathieu had opened up while I spoke closed abruptly at my last words and he blushed. Served him right.

  Turning my attention to our own little poltergeist, I demanded, “Okay, Philippe what did you find out?”

  “Scary stuff. The ghosts are frightened, never seen them like that before.”

  “So I take it that five ghost were...you know...murdered?” I was still lacking the right vocabulary here.

  “Brutally exorcized, yes.”

  “Do you know where?” I asked him, while I grabbed a pen and walked over to the city map still taped to the wall.

  “Rue Saint-Sebastien.”

  I marked it down and then turned around to look at him. “Thank you, and chin up, we’ll catch those bastards.”

  He gave me a small smile. “Yeah, and give them a good kick up their
asses for me.”

  I smiled back. “Goes without saying.” I took a step back to get a better look at the map, and heard Kylian moving to stand beside me, our elbows touching. Ignoring the heat radiating off him I stared at the map, utterly focused, or trying to. And as my eyes moved from one point to another it finally dawned on me what exactly I was looking at, or to be more precise what I’d be looking at with another point on the map marking five dead faeries.

  “Oh, bite me!”

  Kylian gazed over at me, arching one brow over those glinting eyes of his, sending shivers down my spine.

  I raised my chin. “What? I know it’s a common expression, so don’t look at me like that.” To get away from him I stepped forward and began to draw lines through every point, connecting them with each other in a way they formed a star, only upside down.

  “Five and five, in a circle wide.” As Kylian repeated that line, I connected the points in a big circle. “A pentagram.”

  “Yep.”

  “The evil’s mark,” Chastel cut in.

  While turning around to look at him, Kylian explained, “That’s not quite right. The pentagram is actually a rather neutral symbol. And it’s mostly used as a portal in conjuring rituals. Since the last millennium however humans tended to conjure up little nasty stuff, and so the pentagram became falsely connected with evil.”

  “Ah, nice to know.”

  “Anyone of you guys ever seen a pentagram that big before?” Philippe timidly asked.

  Chastel shook his head.

  Me neither, so “Nope. You?” I asked Kylian.

  “A pentagram nearly the size of a third of a city, reinforced with twenty-five blood sacrifices? No. Can’t say that I have. That’s a first for me, too.”

  “Okay, but we know that size and number of sacrifices are directly proportional to strength and power of the conjured entity. So we can assume something very powerful and mighty is knocking on our door.” With a look at Chastel, I added, “Maybe you weren’t that far off after all. Seems to me that portal is most likely created for a devil or a god.”