Succubus Ascendant: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 4) (22 page)

She pulled power out of her creation, surprised to discover the whirling winds contained more energy than she had put into them. The winds rippled the grass and bushes as it dissipated in an expanding circle away from where the whirlwind had been.

“Do you understand what I did?” Rhiannon asked Galina once the meadow returned to its natural morning stillness.

“Yes, I can do it,” Galina said. The group once again gathered their power and fed it into Galina. The whirlwind she built was larger than Rhiannon’s, and she moved it around the landscape for about five minutes before she disbursed its power.

“My turn,” Jill said eagerly. “I want to try.”

Once again, they built a whirlwind and Jill proved to be as adept as the other two women at controlling her creation.

Back in St. Petersburg, Rhiannon had food brought to their war room. The amount of energy they had expended left everyone ravenous.

“And that’s a problem,” Rebecca said. “It would be nice to have an external energy source to feed the people in the circle.”

“What do you propose?” Collin asked. “A couple of hundred succubi? If we had two hundred Irinas, we wouldn’t need the tornado. We could just drain all the defenders and walk in without doing any damage.”

“I don’t think the energy drain will be that bad,” Rhiannon said. “If I had a hundred Protectors feeding me power, the drain on each person would be minimal. I think I could probably build a real tornado with the help of just one or two hundred people.”

Jill and Galina agreed. “It really does start to feed on itself past a certain point,” Jill said. “You don’t need to keep feeding it. As RB said, the issue is controlling it and winding it down.”

~~~

Chapter 16

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. - Ernest Hemingway

Rhiannon deployed her forces for simultaneous attacks on the two brothers. In addition to two hundred Russian-speaking Irish Protectors, she had another thousand O’Donnell Protectors who had flown in from England over the three days since Galina signed the alliance. Galina had five hundred soldiers who had been checked and their loyalty assured.

“I can’t believe the force you’re able to commit to something like this,” Galina said. “Romanov only has a trained force of three thousand men.”

“The combined size of the Irish Clans is much larger than yours,” Rhiannon said. “O’Donnell alone has more members than all the Russian Clans combined. But you’ll also notice that a third of our forces are women. You make a mistake limiting your training to men.”

“Perhaps you can help me overcome that,” Galina said. “Russian women were soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. I think many women would welcome such training. And I’ll need the soldiers after so many of the men are purged.”

That gave Rhiannon an opening to discuss something that had been worrying her. “What do you plan to do with your brothers? Assuming they’re captured, that is.”

“Kill them,” Galina answered without hesitation.

“You could just burn out their Gifts and exile them,” Rhiannon suggested. “Neither I nor my Protectors will execute anyone.”

“That’s good. I’d rather kill them myself. But your idea would work for the others, my brothers’ loyalists. Also for those involved in the slave trade who won’t change.” Her eyes were hard as she looked at Rhiannon. “It’s personal.”

The logistics of moving that many people unnoticed were daunting. Galina solved the problem by renting the entire fleet of buses from two tourist companies. It only took twenty of the enclosed double-decker buses to transport the entire force and their equipment to their staging areas.

Rhiannon commanded the force that would assault Viktor’s compound, while Andrei took command of the troops sent to the younger Alexander’s estate. Galina was assigned to Andrei’s force. Jill stayed at the safe house in the city with Collin, Rebecca and Irina to provide communications between the groups.

Viktor’s dacha overlooked the Gulf of Finland, just as Peter the Great’s palace at Peterhof just up the coast did. From what Galina told them, Viktor’s estate was much grander than their father’s. Viktor had been considered the heir since his father became Clan Chief shortly after World War II. He had spent much of that time partying. Galina said he kept a stable of girls, but recently he had sold most of them to western slavers. He needed to raise money and his advisors were building up their treasure chest for the expected conflict with his brother.

As darkness fell, Rhiannon’s troops moved into position. Their listening devices confirmed that Viktor was at home, along with a five hundred-man security team and his closest advisors. The house nestled next to the Gulf behind a thirty-foot seawall, with terraces that extended to the water. That proximity gave her an idea, and she contacted her commanders to explain the deviation from the plan.

She moved from her post, and with a team of thirty circled to the left, skirting the compound. It took her half an hour to reach a vantage point overlooking the water. As the moon started to rise, she gave the signal, and a hundred O’Donnell Protectors triggered their Aerokinesis and fed her their power.

A light breeze blew in off the Gulf. Focusing the energy from her assistants, Rhiannon began weaving the complex air currents necessary to create a vortex. Soon, the winds began to swirl over the water, and as they gathered force, the whirlwind began pulling water from the sea.

She poured energy into her creation, and a gigantic waterspout formed only yards from Viktor’s home. Rhiannon had never seen a tornado, except those they had created for practice in Donegal. She definitely had never seen a waterspout. The roar of the swirling winds surprised her. She realized that they didn’t need so many telepaths feeding her energy.

*
Showtime, boys and girls,*
she sent, and directed the waterspout toward the house. It hit the seawall and danced over it, across the terrace, and blew into the house. Rhiannon began drawing energy out of the storm and it faltered. Thousands of gallons of water fell as if in slow motion. The roof collapsed, as if someone had stepped on a dollhouse. The entire compound flooded, washing debris, furniture and people over the seawall as the water returned to its origin.

Rhiannon stared, appalled at the massive devastation she had caused. She’d thought that simply flooding the place would be less destructive than a tornado hitting the compound. Too late, she realized how much the weight of the water would increase the force of the storm.

*
That was rather spectacular,*
Vladimir sent.
*I think I’ll wait a while before I send anyone in to mop up. If there are any survivors, I don’t think they’ll be in much of a mood to fight.*

~~~

Sixty kilometers away, Andrei’s force closed in on the younger Alexander’s estate. He had built his mansion on an artificial hill overlooking the Neva River east of the city. This wasn’t just an affectation as the Neva delta had been swampland when Peter the Great conceived building a city there to give Russia a seaport. The river still rose significantly in the spring.

Galina was nervous, fidgeting and pacing, occasionally peering through a pair of night binoculars toward her brother’s compound. It was raining lightly, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Andrei was nervous, too, but he suspected for different reasons. Although he had watched her and the other two women create and control the vortex storms, he didn’t trust her to perform according to script when the action started.

Lights from the village across the river were a constant reminder of how close they were to inhabited areas. Small towns dotted the banks of the Neva, along with dachas and small farms. If Galina didn’t control the storm, or if she got carried away, the destruction could spread far beyond her dispute with Alexander.

He had expressed his concerns to Rhiannon, who didn’t brush him off. “I didn’t remove the keyhole in her shields,” she reminded him. “If you feel the need to take control, you’ll be able to do it.” It was some comfort, but not enough.

When they received Rhiannon’s message that the assault on Viktor had started, Galina turned to him. He nodded and said, “Be careful. You need to maintain control.”

She sent the order to the Protectors, *
It’s time.*

Licking her lips as the Protectors’ power flooded into her, she triggered her own Gift, directing the air flows in the sky, twisting them into new patterns. As the vortex began to form, halfway between her and the wall of the compound, she became afraid that the wind alone wouldn’t be strong enough to breach the wall. Remembering what Rebecca had said about storm queens combining Gifts, she triggered her Cryokinetic Gift. The rain caught up in the vortex froze, turning the whirlwind white. She gave it a push with her mind, and it began drifting toward Alexander’s compound.

“What did you do?” Andrei shouted.

She didn’t answer him, concentrating on guiding the ice tornado. It grew as it picked up speed and slammed into and through the brick walls surrounding the compound as though they were made of paper.

“Shut it down!” Andrei yelled. Then he switched tactics, *
Galina, pull it back! Pull the energy out of it!*

She stood frozen, eyes wide, seemingly unable to respond.

*
CEASE FIRE!*
Andrei sent to all of his troops. *
Stop broadcasting!*

The vortex ripped through the main house and tore a hole through the riverside wall of the compound, dropping down the hill and into the river. Sucking up the water, it grew, towering a hundred yards into the air.

Andrei slipped through the keyhole into Galina’s mind.
*Galina, you have to pull the energy back. There are innocents. You have to stop. Now!”

She seemed to become aware of him for the first time. Turning slowly toward him, her eyes still wide, she suddenly jerked her eyes back to the ice storm.

“Goddess,” she breathed. “Ohhhh, no.”

He felt her frantically begin pulling energy out of the storm. But instead of dissipating the energy as she had done in Donegal, she poured it into freezing the waterspout. As the winds slowed, more of the water froze, until the column began to tilt. Ice fell away from it, and then the whole thing slowly toppled into the river.

Water splashed almost as high as the column of ice had stood. Andrei saw a huge wave spreading toward both shores. Boats washed up on the shore, a dock on the other side splintered, and water rushed into the village’s streets. Eventually, the water retreated to the river. Ice flows rode away down river, a scene from early spring. Alexander’s compound looked as though it had been hit by a bomb.

~~~

Andrei rode with a silent Galina to meet Rhiannon in Strelna. Vladimir had called on his mobile and told him what had happened at Viktor’s. From a tactical standpoint, the evening’s operations had been a resounding success. All of the enemy were vanquished and the allied forces hadn’t suffered a single casualty. But from any other point of view, the results were as horrifying as the Battle of Leningrad sixty years before. It had been a massacre. He thought about what Rhiannon had done at Ayr.

He decided he should talk to Collin. It was time to retire and find another career. Before some woman killed him.

As the bus slowed and pulled into Viktor’s estate, Galina turned to him. “I’m sorry. It got away from me. I really didn’t mean to kill all those people.”

She looked miserable, as though she was ready to burst into tears. Andrei had a daughter her age, and his heart melted. Without thinking, he spread his arms. To his shock, she stepped into him, her arms around his back, and laid her head on his shoulder. She was as tall as he was. He held her for a minute or so before she pulled away. Her eyes were dry, and her face was more relaxed.

“Thank you,” she said. “Your children are lucky to have you.” Then she turned and walked away.

“Status?” Andrei asked Rhiannon and Vladimir as he stepped off the bus.

“No idea of total enemy casualties,” Vladimir reported. “We found about ninety bodies, including those we retrieved from the Gulf. There are over a hundred prisoners, and our healers have their hands full with them. Some of the buildings are still intact, but the main house is a total loss.”

“Total loss,” Andrei repeated, looking around at the wreckage. “You haven’t seen a total loss. Alexander’s compound is nonexistent. I’m not even worried about containment. I brought all of our force with me. I’ll let the authorities try to figure out what happened there, and good luck to them.”

“Now you know why they name hurricanes after women,” Collin said as he stepped from the darkness with Jill and Rebecca. Rebecca punched him in the arm.

He held out a mobile phone. “Galina, your stepmother has been trying to call you.”

They all knew that Maria, her stepmother and Leonid’s mother, was her only ally in her family. Maria knew that Alexander’s older sons would either kill Leonid or at best exile him. She had pledged her support to Galina in exchange for a pledge of her son’s safety.

Galina snatched the phone from him and punched buttons. She walked away from them, holding the phone to her ear.

When she came back, she said, “Maria says my father died a couple of hours ago. Dmitri, my father’s head of security, is holding her prisoner. He’s trying to contact Viktor, but hasn’t been able to reach him.”