Eye of the Tempest

Book 4: Jane True

by Nicole Peeler

Genres: Fantasy Romance; Fantasy; General Fiction

Synopsis

Nothing says "home" like being attacked by humans with very large guns, as Jane and Anyan discover when they arrive in Rockabill. These are professionals, brought in to kill, and they bring Anyan down before either Jane or the barghest can react. Seeing Anyan fall awakens a terrible power within Jane, and she nearly destroys herself taking out their attackers.



Jane wakes, weeks later, to discover that she's not the only thing that's been stirring. Something underneath Rockabill is coming to life: something ancient, something powerful, and something that just might destroy the world.



Jane and her friends must act, striking out on a quest that only Jane can finish. For whatever lurks beneath the Old Sow must be stopped . . . and Jane's just the halfling for the job.

Release date: August 1, 2011

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 352

Sample

I awoke slowly, languorously, my still-mostly-sleeping brain registering surprise when my nose smooshed into soft leather rather
than sheets. For a second I nearly panicked, before I realized I was nestled into a hugely over-stuffed cushion that was part
of a leather sofa. The sofa and the shabby, homemade afghan in which I was cocooned smelled deliciously of lemon polish, cardamom,
and just a hint of something more masculine. I knew, then, where I was. Not least because I was soon brushing a few stray
dark dog hairs off my face as I rolled over and stretched.


And where is the man himself? I wondered, sitting up to peer around Anyan’s dawn-infused living room.


It was only last night that we’d rolled into town from the Alfar Compound. For almost the past month, Anyan and I had been
on a desperate hunt to find my mother’s killers and shut down their pseudo-laboratories of torture, culminating in our finally
outing Jarl as the menace he truly was. As tended to happen when I visited the Alfar Compound, a huge melee ensued, and the Alfar king, Orin, had been murdered by none other than his loving wife, Morrigan. Turns
out the queen had been tupping her husband’s second and brother, the even nastier than previously assumed Jarl.


During the chaos of the fight, Jarl and Morrigan escaped. So not only were the bad guys on the lam, but the Territory had
been left leaderless until Anyan suggested they make like humans and vote on a new leader. Next thing I knew, my former lover,
Ryu, and his favorite nemesis, Nyx, found themselves tied as interim leaders of their Territory.


Much to my delight, I also discovered that Anyan did not want to stay in the Compound. Instead, he wanted to return to Rockabill. With me.


Where I thought we would make sweaty monkey lovin’, I groused, sighing as I stretched out legs tight from the previous night’s ride back to Eastport on Anyan’s motorcycle.


Instead, all my fantasies of playing “hide the Milk-Bone” had been scuppered when, on the way home, we’d run into Blondie.
The tattooed enigma had been shadowing me, saving my life quite a few times over the course of our recent shenanigans. We
didn’t know who she was, or what she wanted, but last night she’d let us know she was an Original: powerful, ancient, and
supposedly a myth.


“And a total cock-blocker,” I grumbled to myself as I stood, slowly and stiffly, before shuffling off to dig my toiletries
bag out of my duffel.


I’d been looking forward to having Anyan alone, finally, and I’d nearly done a backflip when he suggested I spend the night
at his place. His excuse was that it made sense for me to wait for the morning, as I had all of Rockabill’s supernatural community—plus
Grizzie and Tracy—bunking down in my house for safety after Iris had been kidnapped. I knew, however, it was really because he wanted some patented Jane True sexorcizing.
But then Blondie showed up, all nekkid and pierced and tattooed and totally foxy. After which, the conversation between Dog-Boy
and me went (roughly) as follows:


DB: “OMG! Whatever could that woman want?”

JANE: “I don’t care! Let’s go to your place! NOW.”

DB: “No! I must be valorous and protect those under my care by investigating!”

JANE: “Um, why don’t you be valorous and protect those under your care AFTER we mambo horizontally. Then vertically. Then maybe
to the Northwest.”


DB: “I’m sorry, what?”

JANE: “Nothing.”

So Anyan had tossed me through his front door with our luggage, telling me to “make myself at home.” I’d flipped off the shutting
door, reminding it loudly that I had been planning to make myself at home on his face. At which point the door was thrown open again, and Anyan had demanded, “What?”


To which I’d replied, “Nothing.”

So not only had we not had sex, but I’d also spent the night on the sofa, as I didn’t feel comfortable invading Anyan’s man
space without express permission. Not to mention, my hormones probably would have forced me to do terrible things to myself
in his bed, as he owned the raunchiest, Anyan-wrought, supernatural-Sutra headboard ever.


Still grumbling, I shambled over to Anyan’s downstairs bathroom to go potty and clean myself up a little. Staring into my own eyes in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I reminded
myself that, while it sucked I had yet to molest the barghest, at least I was alive. There’d been more than a few times during
the past weeks when my survival was anything but guaranteed. Not to mention, quite a few people—supernatural, human, and halfling—had
died before we’d stopped Jarl and his crazy experiments.


Including my mother, I thought, my heart falling as I remembered what I had to do today. My dad needed to know that the woman he still loved
and still waited for, after all these years, was never going to come home. She’d been murdered by Jarl, her body one of the
first to be discovered in an abandoned laboratory.


You didn’t die for nothing, Mom, I thought, outmaneuvering the tears in my eyes by washing my face rather roughly. My mother’s death had helped kick off
the investigation that led to stopping Jarl. It wasn’t much consolation, but it was something.


It’d be even better if Jarl were dead, I thought grimly, as I dried my face and hands. But at least he was on the run, his operations and people disbanded. For now.


Visibly shaking myself out of my depressing reverie, I tried to figure out what to do right then. Anyan must still have been
out chasing Originals, and it was barely six o’clock in the morning. I could go home, although no one will be awake. Or I could go for a swim… Then I froze, a feeling of elation sweeping up from the soles of my feet as I put two and two together.


I’m in Anyan’s cabin.


Anyan isn’t here.


And Anyan did say to make myself at home, I thought, audibly purring. I’d been so curious about Anyan’s life for so long now, and now I had his cabin all to myself…


Which means there is nothing standing between me and his kitchen.


Like a flash I was out of the bathroom, all traces of sadness eradicated by my excitement. I peered around one last time to
make sure I was alone, and then I darted toward what I knew was waiting for me. Every time I’d been here, it had taken pretty
much every ounce of self-control I had not to go and hump the stove dominating Anyan’s kitchen. I don’t normally hump kitchen
appliances, but this was no ordinary mod-con. It was something sublime. Something that transcended beauty, form, and function
and could make an angel weep.


It was a Wolf Challenger Restaurant Range. And I loved it.

I skidded to a stop before my destiny, blinking as the ever-awakening sun gleamed off its brightly polished surfaces. Gliding
a hand over its hard, proud, stainless-steel frame, I caressed its burners, prying one up just to see how unabashedly it opened
itself to me. I thought of all the pots I could get on it, and how each one would simmer. Simmer just for me.


I dropped to my knees, pulling open the oven door. I could practically crawl inside. I wouldn’t, because I’d (almost) seen
firsthand what ovens can do to a body—albeit a goblin body—but I could if I wanted to. And if I can get in here, I thought as I peered inside greedily, just think what else will fit…


“Jane?” asked a voice. It was curiously nonchalant, considering I was half in, half out of an open oven door. But it still
scared me enough that I started, whapping the top of my skull for my trouble.


Anyan sighed as he dropped down to haul me out of the Wolf’s gaping maw. The barghest had a tendency to treat me like a sack
of flour, and today was no exception. Without batting an eyelash, he lifted me up and set me on the counter, in order to look
at the top of my head.


I was watching the little birdies fly in front of my eyes, so it took me a second to re-combobulate myself. In the meantime,
he ran his fingers over my scalp, prodding until I winced, and then I felt a pulse of healing warmth filtering through my
body.


“If we lived in a Road Runner cartoon,” his rough voice grumbled, “I would come home one day to find your teeny-tiny arms
and legs sprouting from underneath a gigantic Acme anvil.”


I gave him the stink eye.

“You are a disaster,” Anyan clarified, in case I didn’t catch his drift. “And are you all right?” he amended, treating my
head to one last gentle prod, followed by another rush of healing magics.


Anyan’s gray eyes sought mine but I ignored him, instead giving him a good once-over. Now that I could finally enjoy being
around the barghest without all the stress of the investigation—not to mention the stress of not knowing whether or not he
had any feelings for me—I felt like I hadn’t actually seen Anyan in ages. Starting at the top, I noticed that he clearly needed a haircut. His thick curls were extra poufy, sticking
out in barghestian afro-puffs shot through with grass and twigs from last night’s Blondie hunt. Then my eyes raked downward,
over his long nose and almost too wide mouth, loving the perfectly sensual imperfection of his features. His nose twitched
at me, as if in response to my gaze, and I felt my own lips twitch in response. Traveling farther down, over clothes rumpled from undoubtedly being left to lie under a shrubbery
somewhere while he ran about in dog form, I noticed he had a hole in his jeans, which rode low and sweet on his hips.


There’s bones under that there denim, my libido reminded me, unhelpfully. Bones for nibblin’…


I told the libido to hush even as I felt my mouth water.

“Did you find Blondie?” I asked, as much to distract myself as to make conversation.

“Nope,” he grunted. “Chased her to the edge of Nell’s Territory, but then all scent of her faded, including magical. She must
have holed up somewhere I couldn’t get to. Underground, or in the water.”


“Do you think she can do thaaaaaaa—” I tried to ask, before my whole body turned to goop as Anyan’s fingers started running
through my long black hair. It was ridiculously erotic, until I winced as his fingers found a knot.


“Did you pack a brush?” the barghest chided.

“Did you raid a dog food convention to acquire your wardrobe?” I countered, jerking my hair out from underneath his hands
in punishment.


After all, I thought with irritation, I’m supposed to have sexy, postcoital bed head. Not “I slept on your couch” head.


His hands stilled in my hair as he looked down at his chest. His now filthy T-shirt sported an advert for Eukanuba. I’d already
seen shirts for Alpo, Iams, and Purina, among many others.


“Okay, I admit, the joke got out of hand. But I’m not going to go out and buy myself a whole new wardrobe. These shirts are
perfectly serviceable.”


I rolled my eyes. “Serviceable? Anyan, I get it that you’re utilitarian. If we were in the old country you’d write odes to
factories. You’d sing the praises of the communal farm while you gnawed on a perfectly ‘serviceable’ radish. But this is the
new millennium. In America. Buy a button-up.”


The very tip of his crooked nose twitched, something that would never cease to amuse me. The hand on one knee shifted to pinch
my outer-thigh fat, something that I found significantly less endearing.


“Jane, I’m a barghest, not a Stalinist. And what do you mean by ‘the old country’? I was born in this Territory, as you well
know. And you should talk about writing odes to factories. You were practically committing sex acts on my range.”


I cast a long, lascivious gaze at the Wolf. Gods, it was gorgeous. I had to come clean.

“I can’t help it, Anyan. I’ve never felt this way about a machine. It’s just so big…” My voice trailed off as my hot eyes
roved up from its sturdily planted legs to the boldly flaring expanse of its saucy extractor fan.


“Jane, you are starting to creep me out. Someone who pees on the local fauna in order to mark his Territory. That says something.”


I eyed the Wolf, suddenly inspired.

“And no,” he added hastily. “If you pee on it you do not get to take it home.”

I pushed my bottom lip out in a pout, feeling a thrill up my spine when I noticed Anyan stare like he wanted to bite. His
hands, resting right above my knees, squeezed lightly and I was happily visualizing pulling him in tight to make that bite
a reality when he spoke.


“Speaking of home, do you still want to tell your father today?”


And just like that, the libido crawled back into its hole. I’d asked Anyan if he’d be with me when I told my dad about my
mother’s death, mostly for support but also because the barghest—even with sticks in his hair, like he had now—oozed authority.
I was going to have to tell my father a combination of truths about my mom, Mari’s, death and careful omission, and I figured
Anyan’s presence would make the idea that I had outside sources more credible.


But mostly you just want him there, reminded the part of my brain that always insisted on being brutally honest. I frowned, quashing the thought, unwilling
to examine my emotions regarding the barghest too closely.


“Yes,” I replied, finally, my chin dropping to my chest. “I need to get it over with.”

Anyan’s big hand found its way under the heavy wing of my long, black hair, stroking gently at my nape. It felt as comforting
as apple pie, and I marveled at how easily he touched me now. My own hands itched to reciprocate, but I still had to get used
to the idea that touches were okay. Anyan had been a fantasy for so long; it was going to take me some time to adjust to the
reality.


“Come on, then. Let’s clean up. You use my bathroom. I’ve a shower out in my workshop I can use.”

I raised my black eyes to meet Anyan’s iron-gray gaze, letting all my anxiety shine through. The hand on my nape squeezed,
gently, in response.


“It’s going to be okay, Jane. We’ll find a way to tell your father so he understands. You’re doing the right thing. He can’t
live in ignorance and false hope for the rest of his life.”


I nodded, finally. Anyan stepped back so that I could hop down off the counter, and then we went our separate ways to clean
up. I’d already used his upstairs bathroom once, so I knew where everything was located. The only thing that took a while
was finding something clean(ish) in my duffel, but soon enough I came downstairs to find Anyan all spiffy, sitting on his
sofa and waiting for me.


We walked outside to his motorcycle. I slung my arms through my duffel bag’s straps, wearing it like a backpack, and then
plunked the helmet Anyan held out to me on my head. I fiddled with the straps, watching as Anyan started to set his own helmet
down over his still-wet hair.


I was just imagining the helmet head with which he was going to wind up when he suddenly lowered his arms, breathing deeply
and looking around with confusion written across his expression.


“Why do I smell strange humans?” he asked, a split second before we were attacked.



If whoever attacked us had given Anyan even a millisecond of warning, things would have turned out differently. Anyan’s a warrior
with battle-honed reflexes and a healthy dose of paranoia.


But there was no warning. One moment we were standing beside his motorcycle on his gravel driveway, and the next Anyan smelled
humans. Then he was down, taken out by what sounded and looked, from the state he was in, like dozens of high-impact bullets.


Meanwhile, I was no longer the little rabbit heart that I’d been just months ago. So although I was too late to stop the bullets,
as soon as Anyan hit the ground, I had full magical shields up and ready to protect both of us… from the supernatural attack
that never came.


For instead of supes, I watched as half a dozen humans in very fancy SWAT gear emerged from the forests surrounding Anyan’s
house. I’d raised mage balls immediately, but I didn’t let fire. Not least because I knew what the red laser beams trailing over both my own body and Anyan’s meant. Plus, I knew damned well they could use those massive
guns—while I sensed not a single iota of magic, the way they melted out of that thick green foliage was almost preternatural.
These were professionals, even if they weren’t magical, and they’d drop me with a bullet before I could take out more than
one or two of them. So I let my mage ball fall to the ground and fizzle out, my mind racing for a way to incapacitate all
of them without getting myself or Anyan killed in the process.


“Target is down,” I heard one of the men speak into his helmet’s microphone. “Secondary target is secure.”

I doubted even a full minute had passed.

The secondary target stood mute, my mind racing to figure out a way to save our skins. Meanwhile Anyan lay bleeding to death
on his driveway.


Powerful supes, like the barghest, are tough to kill. They’re hard to get a bead on in the first place, and they can also
heal themselves as they take on damage. The only way to kill someone as strong as Anyan would be to ensure his heart or brain
had stopped in that first attack, or to knock him unconscious when he was full of holes, so that he bled to death. My friend
Daoud was nearly exsanguinated the time we were tracking the crazy halfling Conleth, and I never wanted to see that happen
again. Especially to Anyan.


“I repeat, primary target is down,” the man said again as one of his cohorts strode over to where Anyan lay. The crunch of
gravel under his boots seemed abnormally loud in the eerily quiet morning. I half-expected the barghest to spring up and attack,
revealing that it had all been a clever ruse.


But Anyan’s body stayed where it was, red blood seeping under gray stone.


Meanwhile, there was only one thing I could think to do. I knew it was a risk, and I’d been told not to do it once before.
But I could feel, in my gut, it was my only real option.


The man who had been speaking had a “listening” face, after which he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.” Then he looked at the man
standing next to Anyan and said, “Confirm the kill.”


The man raised his rifle to his chest, sighting down on where the barghest lay, undefended. He was aiming his massive rifle
at Anyan’s head. Taking a deep breath, but otherwise giving no outward indication, I sprang my trap.


Luckily for me, no one thinks I’m anything special. I’m a halfling, and everyone assumes—quite incorrectly, as with most racist
stereotypes—that halflings are exactly what the name implies: half as good, half as strong, and half as necessary.


So while at least two of the men had their laser sites trained on me, they hadn’t incapacitated me in any way. I was but a
small woman, and only a little chit of a halfling.


Praise be to the god who invented underestimation, I thought, as I began to gather my power to me.


Running on adrenaline and instinct, I fell almost instantaneously into the cocoon of magic I’d felt the other time Anyan had
been hurt in front of me. It had been only weeks before, in Pittsburgh, that Phaedra had nixed Anyan’s ambush by hurling him
into a wall. He’d landed in a sickening heap, causing me to go all primeval and reach with my power. The only thing that had stopped me was Blondie’s intervention and her warning that I should never, ever heed
that siren’s song to pull.


What I saw in my magical trance back then was just like what I saw now. Water, water everywhere, and all of it full of power.
Water connected everything: hydrogen and oxygen atoms, tiny strings of pearls hung like billions of bead curtains across my
vision. It was like being in the Matrix’s computer code, only instead of numbers there was water. And if you switched your perspective, it became obvious that just
as the water droplets went up and down, they also went horizontally.


Connecting each and everyone of us, I thought, as I went down deeper into my power, until I was my power…


And then I searched out the strings of beads connecting me to my attackers. Finding them, I reached, again…

And then, seeing no other alternative, I did exactly what I’d been told not to do. I pulled.

Focused on the man who was going to shoot out Anyan’s brains, I only saw what I did to him. Despite the circumstances, and
never regretting my actions, what I saw—what I did—still haunts me.


Apparently, people remember their first kill.

He was just setting his eye to his site when he jerked hard. Thankfully, he didn’t have his finger on the trigger at that
moment, or he may well have shot Anyan. Instead, his arm holding his assault rifle dropped uselessly to his side as he spasmed.
I saw, in my peripheral vision, similar movements from his fellow attackers.


My assault lasted only seconds, but it felt like hours.

I called to the water in all the men’s bodies, and it responded to me with the alacrity of a squadron of eager retrievers.
I watched, cold, as the man upon whom my eyes were pinned began to shrivel, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop when he fell
to his knees, and I didn’t stop when he fell to the ground.


I didn’t stop even when I saw that the fingers protruding from his leather half-gloves were desiccated like those of a long-dead
mummy.


True guilt about my actions would never set in—I knew what I did was right. Those men made their choice when they took money
to murder strangers, and—somewhere between the Alfar Compound and the Healer’s mansion—I’d become hard enough by what I’d
seen of evil to understand that fact. But visions of the bodies would still appear to me in random nightmares. At that moment,
however, all I felt was power… The men’s lives came to me through their body’s water, and I tasted what it was to take another person’s life by stealing,
quite literally, their essence….


The water in me answered the water in them, and I felt my magic’s channels open wide, inviting, receiving, until I was as
full as I’ve ever been of elemental force.


Still, I couldn’t stop.

Full to bursting with magic, I kept soaking up more. It was like I’d opened up some internal pair of floodgates. I’d never
felt so full, so strong… until it began to burn. Pain suddenly seared through my system hotter than a thousand suns.


Screaming, I fell to my own knees as the power stretched me to my limits. Just when I thought I’d pass out from the pain,
the tide of my power turned. Just as all that elemental force had rushed into my open channels, it now all rushed out. I felt
myself emptying, and suddenly I knew that what I’d hoped would save Anyan’s life would probably end my own.


On the night I’d found my love Jason’s body in the Old Sow, I was totally untrained and ignorant of my true magical inheritance.
So I’d unwittingly used my magic—all of my magic—to pull him from the giant whirlpool off the coast of Rockabill. I’d almost died that night, so I knew that draining a supe of all of his magic killed him as effectively
as draining him entirely of blood.


“Anyan,” I whispered, reaching out my hand toward the barghest. I was prostrate on my stomach, the gravel digging into my
belly. Feeling my heart flutter, I figured I was done for. Everything seemed a bit hazy, however, and I now reckon that the
only reason I wasn’t panicked was that my brain wasn’t entirely cognizant of what was happening. Instead I was quite calm;
I just wanted to know Anyan was alive before I went.


Which is why I was so very, very pissed when someone had the audacity to roll me over like I wa. . .