Helen

But I didn’t find my sister at least not right away.  I found instead the alley where she had Transcended, tucked between an intersection of three different buildings in an American and Canadian city called Grimsby.  Yes, it was on the border of both countries, bleeding between the two in some kind of “special administrative district.”  As far as I could tell, it was as if someone shoved Seattle north and scooted Vancouver a bit south and then rearranged the topography according to their whim and expanded both cities quite a bit. 

This earth Earth publicly denied magic so my sister’s Transcendence had attracted little attention.  On the way over I’d questioned a cab driver about strange events.  The Indian driver spoke an odd dialect of Telugu and he happily related “to the most beautiful lady who speaks so perfectly my native tongue” every oddity that had occurred in the past three days.  My loquacious driver assured me that nothing had happened in the area where I’d stopped.  “And I would know because you can never be too careful in this city and that’s why I read the papers so you can avoid trouble spots like last night in Little Shanghai where a killer savaged a young girl and I will not be going into Little Shanghai for some time so it’s a good thing you want to stop here and not Little Shanghai because there I will not take such a beautiful lady and of course I will wait for the beautiful lady who, O magnificent lady, also tips very generously but certainly should not be carrying so much money around and yes I will wait but—”

I forgot the first rule of speaking someone’s native language in a place where those languages aren’t spoken: people so love talking in their mother tongue they just won’t shut the fuck up.

The police had cordoned off the alley as a crime scene.  But the tape had been ripped down by weather, hoodlums, or vagrants.  I passed into the alley unnoticed but I stopped long before I reached the actual point where the Transcendence occurred.  My body trembled like a newborn duckling watching the twitching feet of a mother-duck just swallowed by an alligator. 

I’d never experienced the residue of a Transcendence and this certainly exceeded even that.  A Majestic had destroyed himself in this alley and that left a good deal of power too.  Plus, a Greater Legacy had been traded and even the passing of a minor Legacy leaves enough power for a Provincial power-fest.  Transcendence plus transfer of Legacy plus death of Majestic equals colossal power font. 

The power misted my thoughts and I felt almost high and downright ill.  My senses and my body adapt to drugs and I can be mind-numbingly drunk or high and still have total control of my reflexes.  Which is pretty cool.  Of course, my common senses rolls down the hill with Jack (no relation to my boyfriend) and in this case I needed all my common sense so I could carry my carcass up the hill to Jill.  The illness faded but I felt high and started giggling so I paused as my senses adjusted.  The energy here mixed with mine but unfortunately I couldn’t just tug it into me or anything.  Even if I’d been capable of such a feat, which I wasn’t, no one could absorb this much power.  But I did ascertain that this was no budding Provincial power font; this was pure power, what we called Coreal power, the core-energy of the universe.  OK, just call it magic if you like; we generally do too and when we refer to Coreal we mean a class of person that has enchanted themseleves into an immortal superbeing.  The point was, this stuff was immensely dangerous in the wrong hands and the wrong hands were anybody whose father wasn’t Adam of Eden.

So, I wondered, as my senses cleared away the fog, how was I going to get rid of it?

I have, as I’ve said, negative magical talent.  I am the Huntress, however, and I could coalesce the power into a single point and from that point would spring a monster.  The monster I could then kill, subsuming much of this wonderful energy for my own enjoyable pursuits.

Yeah, right. 

Putting such primal power into a single monster would pretty much guarantee a cross-planer uber-monster that would need serious multiple killing before I could properly destroy it.  Also, the damn thing would hunt me.  And if it didn’t, it would absolutely hunt my new sister.  In fact…  Yes.  Yes, it would definitely chase her.  It would probably ignore me. 

Perfect.

First, I sought out my sister’s trail.  This proved rather simple even though there all this power impeded with my senses.  My new sister had shifted into State almost immediately after absorbing Darren’s Legacy.  Her first try was (naturally) so clumsy that even a child could have followed it never mind the best hunter in the universe.  Sadly, her first State had been in her own plane which suggested quite a limited imagination.  Great, a new sister with boring fantasies.  What fun!

I had already formed a theory.  Darren, I figured, had probably discovered this girl as a child, killed her mother, and groomed her from a young age as his apprentice.  He could teach her little about States being a mere Coreal but he told her what he could and she’d managed a local State.  Most likely, Darren had had plans for this plane or why else would he be here? 

Los Angeles.  That’s where the trail lead.  And that’s where I’d find her.

But first I’d talk to the restaurant owner and see if I could scare up any information on my little sister.  Then I’d draw the power together and it would generate a monster without my supervision.  By the time the beast was born, I’d be in Los Angeles.

A wicked Legacy had just corrupted my new sister and would probably drive her insane.  I would let the monster swoop in, beat her up a bit, and then I’d kill them both. 

Perfect.

Because I had to kill my new sister that much was clear.  She wielded an evil, corrupting Legacy and the only way I could extract it was to steal it through her death and then pass it on to a more likely candidate (who I would then repeatedly kill until the talent was completely destroyed).  I must do this soon.  Why else would my family send me?  Forget about how close I was, Father could overcome any distance when he’d had a mind.  No, they needed my new sister dead so they sent for me. 

This was a job for a killer.