by TR Cameron
Two shadowy spheres rocketed from her fists. The wizard appeared to have no reflexive defense against his own power. Whether it was fear or shock that paralyzed him, the end result was the same. He careened in a flailing tangle of arms and legs and crumpled against the wall beside the vault door. She grinned. He would have some serious bruises, if not broken bones, after the brief unromantic encounter he’d experienced with the marble surface.
Diana looked at her hands like they belonged to someone else.
What the hell was that?
She didn’t have time to wonder further. Anger boiled again when she saw the bullets pierce Rath’s legs and he reeled in agony. A closer threat demanded her attention as the witch near the vault swiveled her wand at the downed troll. The agent extended her arms again, but the shadows didn’t come.
Okay, then. Have this, instead. No one hurts my friends, bitch.
She cocked her right arm and threw it forward, and a familiar bolt of force erupted, directed at her foe. The woman somehow sensed its approach and managed to lean back enough that it collided with the door beside her with a loud clang. Diana strode toward the witch. Her fury manifested in the form of a glow around her left fist and the ball of force that hovered above her open right palm.
Cara leapt over the barrier as the man fired. She landed on top of him and kicked his rifle away. She had to give him credit for quick reflexes, though. He rolled and regained his feet in a tense crouch with weapons drawn. His left hand held a combat baton that he flicked to full length as she readied herself. The right gripped a long knife that resembled a medieval dagger.
She slid forward and led with a front jab at the man’s face and almost lost her fingers as he brought the blade around in a quick slashing motion. The marshal dropped into a spin to sweep his feet from beneath him, but he jumped aside to avoid it and lashed a kick in response. She blocked and shoved it away, then struck with a short left hook to his ribs before he could recover. It was the only blow she’d managed to land so far, unfortunately. She shook her hand, which had not enjoyed the impact with his Kevlar vest.
Not the smartest choice, Cara.
Mindful of his skill, she stepped back and assessed the threat before her. His stance was perfectly balanced, ready to attack or defend. He seemed content to wait for her to move, which was consistent with Diana’s belief that the enemy merely wanted to delay them. They’d certainly succeeded thus far, and whoever was in charge now had unhindered access to the vault while they struggled with these hindrances.
Cara had a multitude of options to deal with knives, combat batons, and almost any kind of melee weapon, but they all required her to have something to use as a blocker. She gritted her teeth and accepted the reality that she would either have to take a blow or a cut directly. It was a sobering thought, but she forced the fear down and braced herself for the attack.
Her opponent grinned and twitched the dagger in a cocky invitation.
She yelled defiance and flung herself at him. Her attention was focused on two things—control the knife and protect her brain from the baton. Anything else, she would endure in order to get inside his guard. He surprised her when he skipped forward, and she threw her right arm up to block the blade stroke and managed to halt it far enough away that it couldn’t circle to catch her in the back of the head. His skip hampered the strike and it lacked sufficient force as it encountered her low left block.
The strength behind might not have been strong, but it was enough. The pain that radiated up her arm from the point of impact made it clear that the limb had taken significant damage and could no longer be trusted. She faked a punch to his chest, and he flinched to avoid it. His avoidance lowered his head enough that the elbow strike she threw immediately after caught him on the temple. He staggered, and she repeated the blow rapidly in the same spot and he collapsed in a clatter of extra gear. Cara snatched the dagger up and spun to aid her teammates.
Rath turned his tumble into a tackle and snapped out a long arm to knock the man’s legs out from beneath him. He raised a fist and pounded it down on his opponent’s head. The fighter rolled away toward the center of the room. The troll tried to rise, but the pain in his legs prohibited it.
The enemy regained his feet and Rath growled at him, then began to pull himself across the floor with his burly arms in an awkward crawl. His target retrieved the pistol that had been knocked free by the tackle. The troll pushed up to his knees, ready to make the desperate attempt to hurl himself sideways, but dropped instantly as Cara shouted, “Rath, down!”
He sensed something whistle past him. His adversary went wide-eyed and instinctively blocked the thrown blade with the only thing he had. The pistol and the knife clattered to the floor, and a long cut on the back of his hand quickly welled with blood. He shouted a curse and sprinted into the vault. En route, he caught the witch alongside by the sleeve and dragged with him. Rath resumed his crawl as both Diana and Cara raced forward. The heavy safe door swung closed much faster than it should have and left them on the outside with no means of entry.
Diana threw her hands up in frustration when she recalled what had happened and what that likely meant. “The bloody monkeys were summoned. The bastards can use portals in here.”
Cara swore, and Rath groaned. Diana knelt behind beside him and examined the wounds on his legs. “One of the bullets is still in there, and I'm not sure that's a good idea. Hang on. This will hurt.” She yanked the medpack from her belt and rolled it open with a flick of her wrist.
The painkillers and stimulants were unusable since she didn’t know how the troll would react.
We have to get a med tech, too, a really good one.
She fumbled for the surgical tweezers and the antiseptic spray and sterilized first the surgical implement, then Rath’s leg. Finally, she bent to take a closer look at the injury. She tapped the stud on the side of her glasses a couple of times to increase the magnification, and her view improved. “Cara, I need light.”
In the moments before she arrived with the needed illumination, Diana saw the edges of the wound already looking a little better. She shook her head and looked at Rath’s face. “You are a formidable fighter, young one.”
He grinned. “I try.”
Diana laughed and supplied the rest of the long-standing joke. “Do or do not. There is no try.”
He barked once in pain as she seized the bullet with the tweezers and yanked it out of his thigh. Once she was confident the wounds were clear, she wound them with gauze and sealed them with duct tape.
She noticed Cara’s labored breathing and looked at her bent form. “Are you okay?”
The woman nodded. “My left arm’s hurt—maybe fractured. I have a couple of other bumps and bruises. You?”
“My whole body is a giant bruise, but nothing more than that—assuming the damn shadow magic doesn’t have any lasting effects, that is.”
“Those bastards sucked.”
Diana couldn’t help but chuckle as she recalled Bryant’s response when she’d been the one to say those words. “They all suck. So we have to do better than we did today.”
The heavy tramp of booted feet heralded Tony’s arrival with the SWAT team. The looks on their faces crushed her last hope. One way or the other, the bastards had gotten away. She gritted her teeth.
That’s only round one, assholes. Ask the Kilomea how round two goes.
Chapter Sixteen
The scene outside the museum was remarkably calm and ordered, given what had recently transpired. The wounded among the SWAT team had been stabilized and transported. A pair of ambulances with their back doors ajar served as havens for Cara and Diana while EMTs administered to them. They put the marshal’s arm in an air cast and told her she needed to go to the hospital for an X-ray.
Diana received bandages and surgical glue with a couple of quick butterfly adhesives to hold the wound in the side of her neck closed until it healed. There wasn’t anything that could be done about the contusions. Finally,
they were both released from the paramedics’ ministrations, and the two met their teammate in the center of the crowd of police and emergency vehicles.
Tony was the only undamaged one. He seemed to be self-conscious about it, and his voice was quiet as he asked, “Is Rath okay?”
Diana nodded. “His wounds were in better shape by the time he stowed away in his capsule, and I re-wrapped them after he shrank.” She patted the belt pouch where his defensive container hung during missions. “He said to tell you that you need to be faster, Tony.”
The other agents broke into tired laughter, and she shook her head. “He’s something. Let’s get out of here.”
She led them to her vehicle, and they clambered inside. A SWAT officer would return their spare to the lot at street level outside the ARES building. She drove the short distance to one of her favorite restaurants she’d discovered in the area, a breakfast place that stayed open into the early morning hours.
They passed the old register with its cash-only signs and seated themselves in a booth far from the door of the mostly vacant space. The seating was covered in cracked vinyl, with antique jukeboxes mounted on the wall above each laminate table. Tony flicked idly through the pages of song selections as they settled. The server was there before they were fully organized. Compassion colored her features at their clearly exhausted conditions. “Coffee, I’m guessing?”
All three nodded, and Cara added, “Plus one Coke for me.”
The woman smiled and took their omelet orders. Ham and cheese for Tony, western for Cara, and black-eyed peas, greens, and ham for Diana. She also requested a side order of cheesy potatoes. Rath couldn’t actually make an appearance in such a public place, but she’d make sure he had a treat waiting when he was ready to eat.
After her initial visit to the restaurant with Bryant, this had become her favorite breakfast spot, and she was working her way through the menu options.
Cara turned her head to where Tony sat on her left. “So, where the hell were you?”
It might have sounded aggressive if she’d said it on the first day they’d met. Shared experience had since revealed that they all possessed deeply sarcastic senses of humor. He laughed. “Sunbathing on the roof. It was relaxing.”
They chuckled briefly before his smile morphed into a frown. “When the wall came down and cut me off, I looked at the map and found another route. It took forever to get across the museum to the staircase as a fairly large group of guards had locked down the main one outside the gift shop. I still had to take out a couple of those assholes along the way.”
“Magicals?” Cara asked.
Tony shook his head. “Idiots with rifles. I got the drop on them because they were talking when they should have been watching.”
Diana pushed the hair out of her face. “There were some significant differences among that group of criminals. Some were scarily competent, and others seemed like it was their first time actually firing a gun.”
He sighed. “Street thugs and gangbangers, for sure. Cheap cannon fodder, but effective.”
“Well, they bought them all the delay they needed, even though we knew they were doing it. It shows that someone smart was in charge.”
Cara nodded. “I’d say the last three were the core of the group.”
Tony interrupted. “Hey, who’s telling the story here?” They laughed, and he folded his arms in a dramatically offended fashion. “Anyway, the second guy almost got me, but he forgot about recoil. The first shot hit the vest, and the rest missed.” He shook his head. “After that, I moved as quickly as I could until I wound up above you. I didn’t realize you’d gone down two levels. I thought you were only down one.”
“Comms died when we reached the bottom, so we couldn’t tell you,” Diana explained. “We need to ask the techs for a solution to that.”
Cara nodded. “Relays, maybe.”
He slapped his palms gently on the table. “Honestly, you two, can I finish?”
She resisted the impulse to plague him again with another interruption and offered a nod instead.
“After I shot through the glass, I ran down the staircase on the other side. I called SWAT for help on my way down. But, as you know, I got there too late to make a difference.”
The marshal raised an eyebrow at him. “A committed teammate would have jumped."
“A committed teammate would have had two broken legs and not been of use, anyway,” he countered.
The waitress found them grinning as she slid their food and drinks onto the table. Cara reached for her Coke and almost knocked her coffee over with the air cast around her left arm. She winced, likely at both the pain and the near accident. Diana asked, “How bad is it?”
“The painkiller from the kit seems to be wearing off, so it sucks a little more than I’d like.” She shrugged, then flinched. “I’ll head to the hospital after we eat. Food is more important.”
Tony interjected, “I’ll drive you, just in case.”
She nodded her thanks. “You know, boss, we really need a medic and something in the way of medical facilities if we have to keep this up.”
Diana nodded. “They said we’d be in the fire, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect it to come so soon. Or so hard. It makes me think that not only were they right to open an office here in Pittsburgh, but they underestimated how much it was needed.”
She shook her head and tapped her fork against the plate. After a furtive glance for reassurance that they were unobserved, she popped the lid of Rath’s canister. His nose twitched immediately like a built-in meal sensor and his grin broadened. She positioned his cheesy spuds beside the bag, and he shifted so he could snack within his mobile home without drawing attention to himself.
“Unfortunately,” she continued around a smile at the troll’s murmurs of enjoyment, “there are too many trade-offs. We need to kick the budget up, and you know what that means.”
Cara sighed. “Bounties, bounties, and more bounties.”
“At least we can make sure they’re properly categorized and be compensated appropriately,” Tony pointed out.
Diana nodded. “That’s all you. Shout if you need anything on that end but otherwise, run with it.”
“I have it under control, boss.”
She pushed away her frustration with another bite of her delicious omelet. After a sip of equally tantalizing coffee, she set her fork down and retrieved her phone. “I’m tired enough that I'll take notes. Item one, med facilities. Item two, bounties. What else?”
Together, Tony and Cara said, “Anti-magic bullets.”
Diana laughed. “Do you actually know how expensive those things are?”
The marshal shrugged. “More expensive than our medical bills or having to replace us?”
“I agree totally. I’m only messing with you. It’s high priority. There are a few kinks to our supply.” Like a menace out there, hunting for us. “Hopefully, Emerson can do something about that.”
Tony looked confused, and she waved a hand. “Head tech in DC. I forgot I’d only told Cara about him. He’s working on a different way to make anti-magic rounds that should cost less. There’s no real information on the timetable, though. In any case, I’ll harass Bryant about it.”
He nodded and returned to his breakfast. Diana grinned when he piled the omelet on top of a piece of toast and shoved a huge bite into his mouth.
Every op I’ve ever been on, the first meal after tastes twice as good.
“Okay, what else?” she asked.
Cara finished chewing. “Portable anti-magic emitters?”
“I don’t think those exist.”
“Okay, then. A tech who can create portable anti-magic emitters.”
Diana laughed. “Actually, I’m already on that. Well, the first part, anyway.”
Tony dropped his utensils onto his empty plate with a clatter. “We need a reliable backup unit. Not necessarily people who will be on the front lines with us, but ones we can trust to watch our back—like SWAT d
id, but with more skills and better weapons.”
The other woman nodded. “Like a mini-AET squad.”
Diana added it but shook her head. “I’m not sure how we can make that happen. I’ll have to pass that one along.”
“More agents,” Cara suggested.
Tony countered with, “More investigators.”
The marshal turned to him as if his response were a challenge. “Access to the city’s surveillance grid.”
His tone upped the competition. “Shotguns that’ll work against magicals and non-magicals.”
She raised her voice. “More grenades, and more kinds of grenades.” She held a hand up to silence his counter and turned to her boss. “Okay, seriously, we need more agents, and we need to spin up faster. All signs point to trouble.”
Diana nodded and underscored that where she’d already written it in her notes. “Finding quality people is hard, and we have to factor training time in. I don’t know if it can happen more quickly. We’ve already sent feelers out, but we’ll keep trying.”
Tony grinned. “I have one more. How about some brass knuckles for those who insist on going hand-to-hand?”
Cara gave him a half-lidded look that told Diana the finishing blow was about to strike.
“Faster teammates, so they don’t get stuck behind falling rocks. As Rath would say, ‘Must train, Tony’.”
Chapter Seventeen
The following week passed in a haze of normalcy. No further revelations appeared in the media to concern them, and no whispers rose among their contacts of impending events.
Cara nursed her fractured arm—which remained in a splint to keep it supported—and ran things at the office. Tony and Diana used their necklaces and alternate weapons as disguises to increase the profile of Two Worlds Security Consulting by apprehending bounties. Thankfully, the necklaces definitely worked for non-magicals too, something Bryant had told her. She hadn’t fully believed until they tested it on their newest team member since her first test on Cara was moot given her magical abilities.
