Lupi 08 - Death Magic

“Consider the possibility,” she said through gritted teeth, “that a group of people who operate outside the law is going to abuse that. They won’t mean to. They’ll tell themselves they’re only doing what they have to do, but that’s just another version of the ends justifying the means. Sooner or later—especially when the stakes are so high—they’ll be hurting people to protect themselves, because if they get exposed, why, that’s going to strengthen the enemy, isn’t it?”
    Now she looked up, right into Ruben’s eyes. “Power without accountability corrupts. Every damn time.”
    He looked tired. “Do you think I haven’t considered this? Law enforcement in this country is designed to operate openly. We hold power over people’s lives. That power must be tempered by accountability. By establishing a shadow organization, I eliminate that accountability, making abuse more likely. It’s my hope that there won’t be time for corruption to set in.”
    “If you think you can stop her in a month or two—”
    “A month or two. Interesting that you chose that interval. Without the Shadow Unit, the United States has approximately two months left before it collapses.”
    He stopped there. Rule didn’t speak. Neither did Fagin. Lily sat motionless, her mind skittering away from his words while her stomach clutched up tight, as if it could tie a knot in the silence, hold on to it, so she didn’t have to hear . . .
    It didn’t work. She had to ask. “All right. All right. Tell me.” “The third thing that happened to change my mind was a series of visions.”
    Ruben’s Gift meant he had the best hunches ever. He knew, without knowing why, that he needed to take a certain action, or avoid an action. He’d proved his accuracy time after time. But he didn’t normally see the future. She knew of one occasion when he had, though. When a three- or four-thousand-year-old being who could not die was about to manifest herself and her power fully on Earth, dragging California and God only knew how much of the nation into chaos and nightmare.
    Because of those visions, he’d been willing to hold back, to trust Lily, even when she couldn’t tell him anything. Because he trusted her and his own hunches, in the end he’d exerted his authority in the only way that would help.
    Now he wanted her to trust him—and his visions.
    “Without the Shadow Unit,” Ruben said quietly, “in approximately two months, perhaps one-third of the Gifted in the country will be dead. The Unit will be gone, its people dead or imprisoned or in hiding. The president and possibly the vice president will be dead. The nation will be in a panic, with mobs killing anyone suspected of magic. Some Gifted will strike back, killing large numbers of civilians and police alike. In one scenario, the surviving lupi retreat to Canada. In another, they pull back to their clanhomes, but after the military coup—”
    “The what !?”
    “I’ve seen five detailed scenarios. One of them results in an enormous physical cataclysm on the West Coast, the nature of which is unclear. Four of them end in a military coup a few months from now. It supplants civilian government in the West, Midwest, and Central U.S., and succeeds in restoring order at the cost of martial law and the end of elective government. The South descends into anarchy. Canada and Britain send troops to support the remaining fragment of U.S. government in the Northeast, but the world economy is in shambles due to the collapse of the United States. The dominant power that emerges in the new world order is the military dictatorship that arises from the coup, which is run by religious zealots who—some wittingly, some not—are her agents.”
    Lily’s hands were cold. She wanted to disbelieve him. He was so certain, so damnably certain . . . “You said that’s without your Shadow Unit. With it? What happens then?”
    “We have a decent chance of averting the incidents that precipitate the crisis.”
    “What . . .” Lily’s mouth was too dry. She had to pause and summon enough spit to speak. “What incidents?”
    He shook his head.
    He didn’t know? No—if that were true, he would have said so. He meant that he wasn’t going to tell her.
    Fagin spoke, his voice dreamy. “We know what Gift Friar received from the enemy.”
    Dazed, Lily looked at the older man. Belatedly her mind caught up with what he’d said. Robert Friar had been imbued with some sort of Gift by