She kicked her legs and tried to fight it but banged her elbow into a decorative boulder with all the thrashing. She groaned and sagged into my grasp.
“I hope the Cloisters does something about all these succession wars.” April eyed the centaur, who was sitting next to the disgruntled dryad I’d half choked, an unconscious leprechaun that I’d knocked out early in the fight, and an addled faun Brody had handled. “This is getting ridiculous.”
I nodded as I towed the fae up to the pile. The lighter shade of blue on the horizon was now cast with crimson. The sun wasn’t up—this was pre-dawn—but it still felt odd to be in uniform on the streets. Our shift was over but the fae fight had taken nearly an hour to track, and we’d ended up in a residential area north of the lakes.
Brody hooked his radio back onto his belt, then prowled up to our prisoners. He placed a single finger on the murderous-looking dryad who was staring at the trees and, with his werewolf strength, forced her flat on her back. “The fights are getting worse.”
“That’s because the fights are getting more desperate,” Grove said. He technically still hadn’t apprehended the brownie, but as the fae was sneezing so hard he couldn’t see and could only stagger a step at a time, Grove was using his presence to turn the brownie around and had him unknowingly heading back towards us. “Several of the local Courts—Seelie and Unseelie—were overtaken and absorbed into other Seelie and Unseelie Courts, making them stronger. Now, it’s a fight to see who can get the most territory and subjects first.”
April tossed a ball of blue fire back and forth between her hands. “Why fight in the first place?”
“Fear. Greed.” Grove shrugged. “The larger Courts have settled down thanks to some political moves but that surety hasn’t passed down to the lower Courts yet, and probably won’t until the big fae Courts are stabilized across North America.”
The little brownie he was following gave another gargantuan sneeze that threw him to his knees. The sneeze attack must have stolen the fight from him because he made a tortured mewling sound, then voluntarily crawled on his hands and knees to his comrades.
Grove must have sensed me watching the brownie with growing concern. “It’ll slow down in a minute,” he assured me. “It’ll take some time to completely wear off, though.”
The brownie squeaked out a miserable wail.
I checked that the fae noble was secure, then scanned the area—in case we’d missed any stragglers.
“All of those fae politics sound complicated.” Brody loosened the collar of his uniform. While I was dressed in layers to deal with the below freezing temperatures, as a werewolf he was reveling in the chilly air. “I’m glad werewolf political structures are much easier to understand.”
“You say that, but just wait.” April set her hands on her hips and worked on stretching out her back. “With the way magic is, things are changing. They have to change, or we won’t survive.”
I was staring down the length of the park, watching for any movement, when I heard the subtle hum of a car engine. “Backup’s here,” I announced.
Brody straightened, tapping into his senses—which were stronger than mine. “Nice! That’s Sarge’s car.”
Grove grabbed the strap of his satchel, yanking it so it rested against his thigh where he could rummage around in it, which made the sneezing brownie cower in terror. “How can you be so happy-go-lucky when you were late to sense something that should have been easy for you?”
“Because the first person who heard it was Blood,” Brody said, as if that explained it.
It didn’t.
It was just another example of the team’s respect for me, which was frankly much higher than I deserved.
I think they mean it as a compliment, but it’s starting to get uncomfortable. I’m not infallible, and if they fight believing that I am, eventually it will end badly.
Maybe that was a point I could argue in my paper for Sarge. Maybe he wouldn’t be so upset about me taking risky moves if he understood I had to for the good of the group?
Sarge’s car—a much larger SUV—rolled down the street. It was dark enough that it still needed to have its lights on, which cast beams across the park as Sarge pulled into one of the parking spots on the street.
The engine cut, and Sarge and Clarence got out. Sarge raised his hand to acknowledge us as he crossed the park’s lawn—which was covered with dusty frost—and Clarence skulked along in his shadow. The poor guy was probably starting to get nervous with dawn being so close.