by R. L. King
“I’m going up,” Verity said, pointing. “I see some windows up high, and they won’t be expecting anybody to be peeking in on them from twenty feet up.”
“Nice. Meet back here in ten minutes?”
“Got it,” Jason said.
“Be careful,” Amber said. “These guys took me down hard, and that’s not easy to do.”
As he crept around the side of the warehouse, Jason found his thoughts focused more on Amber than on the thieves inside. He moved silently, using the moonlight to navigate, wondering how many guys they’d end up having to deal with. He wasn’t worried—between him, Amber, and Verity, he doubted they’d be much of a match, even if they did have a mage. With a cold little smile, he pictured what Amber must look like in action—strong, fast, and fearless, her brown ponytail whipping around behind her. He wondered if she knew any martial arts, and if she did, whether she’d be interested in sparring with him. And maybe a few other activities after they finished…
Cut it out, he told himself, but he didn’t feel guilty. Amber was an attractive woman. Even if nothing came of it, you couldn’t blame a guy for fantasizing.
Up ahead, he heard voices. Tensing, he stopped moving and slipped sideways behind a dumpster, then rose high enough to peer over the top.
Ten feet ahead, a door had just opened. Two figures exited but stopped inside the doorway, and one bent to prop it open. A few seconds later, tiny lights flared as they lit cigarettes.
Jason remained where he was, feeling in his pocket to thumb off the ringer on his phone in case somebody picked that moment to try calling him. From his hiding place, he could barely hear the two talking if he strained his ears.
“When are those guys gettin’ here?” one asked. “I’m sick of waitin’ around with this weirdo.”
“They’re payin’ us enough,” the other growled. “Just shut up and wait. Cops ain’t comin’ out here. We’ll be outta here in less than an hour.”
Jason rose a little more, trying to get a better look. There was no light above the door, and the cigarettes’ glowing tips didn’t provide much illumination, but he made out the bulky silhouettes of light body armor on both of them, and the one with his back turned had what looked like an SMG slung over his shoulder. What did they have in that truck that was worth that kind of protection? What were they expecting to go after them? Maybe Amber was more dangerous than he thought.
For one brief moment he considered trying to take them down himself. He had the element of surprise, and if he moved fast he might be able to get the drop on them. That would definitely impress Amber…
Then he shook his head in disgust. Come on, idiot—there are two of them, and at least one has a gun. Stupidity wouldn’t impress her—and if he got himself killed, it wouldn’t matter. No, they’d need to be smart about this one, and work together.
As he prepared to duck down and sneak back to the rendezvous point to share what he found with the others, one of the men spoke again, freezing him in place.
“Hank’s gonna have to give us a bonus if that chick shows up again.”
“Don’t he know her or somethin’?”
“I dunno, maybe. But he didn’t say nothin’ about no psycho chick attackin’ us.”
“Don’t worry. We took her down good. She’s off lickin’ her wounds somewhere now, if she knows what’s good for her.”
“C’mon. Let’s go in before Freak Boy gets jumpy.”
The two figures stubbed out their cigarettes and disappeared back inside, closing the door behind them with a clang.
Verity and Amber were already waiting when Jason returned, huddled next to the corrugated side of the building away from the light.
“Where have you been?” Verity demanded. “We were about to come looking for you.”
He joined them in the shadows. “What did you find?”
She pointed up. “I looked in through a broken window up there. They’ve got a small truck parked inside—like one of those rental jobs, but plain. I barely saw a couple guys heading outside, but I didn’t see the mage anywhere. Either he’s hiding or he’s not there. I was worried those guys had spotted you.”
“I saw the truck too, through the side window,” Amber said. “I didn’t see the mage either, but I can smell him. He’s in there somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Jason said with a sigh. “He’s in there. Those two guys you saw went outside for a smoke, and I heard ’em talking. They called him ‘Freak Boy.’ Can’t figure that could be anybody else.” When Amber started to say something, he held up his hand and met her gaze. “There’s something else, Amber, and you’re not gonna like it.”
“I don’t like any of this. What is it?”
He spoke carefully, keeping his voice even. “They mentioned something about somebody named Hank having to give them a bonus if ‘that chick’ showed up again. They thought maybe he knew you.”
Amber stared at him in silence for several seconds. “You’re…sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, Amber.”
“Who’s Hank?” Verity asked.
“A guy I know back home. A guy I thought I knew, anyway,” she added bitterly. She studied Jason a moment. “It makes sense, though. He never liked Darryl—the guy who owns the shop. They had a falling out a year or so ago, and Hank never forgave him.” She let out a sigh in the dim light. “Damn it, I never thought he’d—”
Verity touched her arm. “Hey,” she said softly. “I’m sorry too—it sounds like this guy’s a friend of yours. But we need to do this if we’re going to. If the other guys show up it’ll be harder.”
“Yeah…” She stood and straightened her jacket. “Three of them, three of us. Sounds pretty straightforward.”
“They have guns,” Jason said. “SMGs, from the look of it. And body armor. We can’t just punch our way in. They’ll take us down before we get near them.”
“We’ll have to be sneaky, then,” Verity said.
“Can you get us in there without anybody seeing?”
“It’ll be tricky—disregarding won’t work, and maintaining an illusion spell on three people at once would be hard. I might drop it at the wrong time.”
“You can unlock doors, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s easy.”
“This place has two doors. What if you unlocked them, and we came in from two sides. You could keep yourself invisible long enough to hide somewhere inside, right?”
“Yeah, but…” She looked at him in concern. “You said they had guns. And not just handguns, either. You don’t have any armor, and you don’t regenerate.” Her expression turned to a sly grin. “Hang on—I have an idea.”
The others leaned in as she whispered her plan, and by the time she was done, both of them were smiling too.
“I think I could get to like your sister, Jason,” Amber said with approval. “Come on—let’s do this before anybody else shows up.”
26
Jason crouched next to the warehouse’s side door, alternating between checking his watch and looking back and forth to make sure nobody was sneaking up on him. He didn’t often think about just how long five minutes was when you were waiting for your friends to get into position, but every second seemed to take an eternity. Were Verity and Amber okay? Had the guys inside, or somebody else they hadn’t even seen, caught them? He hadn’t heard any yells or gunshots, but his mind spun terrifying scenarios of someone taking Verity out with a long-range sniper shot from one of the nearby roofs, or dropping Amber with a spell, or poison, or—
There! That was time. Forcing himself to move with care, he pulled open the door Verity had unlocked earlier, just in time to hear something heavy slamming to the floor inside, and a loud voice booming, “This is the police! Put your hands up and drop your weapons!”
That was the diversion Verity had promised. He’d forgotten illusions could be auditory too, but her deep-voiced cop sounded plenty real to him. As startled yelps sounded from near the truck inside, Jason slipped in and hurried to t
he side, gaining cover behind a stack of boxes before peering out to see what was going on.
The two guys in body armor, the ones he’d seen having a smoke outside, had leaped up from two sides of a large box they’d been using as a card table, their SMGs in hand. They took off in two different directions, both generally away from where the slam had come from.
Jason crept sideways, looking around the other side of his cover for a better view. He’d have to cross a large expanse of empty floor to get to the two gunmen, but they both had their backs to him. If he moved fast, he could—
He sensed the presence behind him an instant before it struck, which might have saved his life. Even so, he barely managed to throw himself sideways before the strangest feeling he’d ever experienced send his body into jerking spasms. As he dropped, still twitching, his mind locked on the closest thing he could compare it to—the time he’d been hit with a Taser back at the academy. His body crashed to the ground, his arms and legs flailing around, and spotted the skinny, grinning figure of a man moving past him, around the corner of the boxes.
“There’s no cops!” the man yelled. “They’ve got a mage! Get ’em!”
Beyond them, Jason heard a gunshot, deafening as it echoed off the warehouse’s metal walls and roof. Amber? Verity? Had one of the men hit one of them? Damn it, get up!
“Jason!” Verity came pounding around the other side of the boxes and skidded to a stop, dropping to her knees at his side. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
He struggled to speak, his voice shaking as he got his limbs under control and pushed himself unsteadily up. “I—think that guy—the mage—did something to me.”
“Yeah. I think he’s a wild talent. It looked like he—I don’t know—phased? Teleported?” She gripped his arm and helped him up as another gunshot sounded from the other side, followed by several crashes as more boxes hit the floor. “His arm went right through you. He—”
Jason spotted the shadowy figure as it poked its head and its gun out from behind yet another stack of boxes. “Look out!” He dived forward, taking Verity and himself down just as a fusillade of shots zinged past them and buried themselves the wall.
Verity acted fast, twisting around and firing off a blast of magical energy with a loud roar. The man ducked back behind cover, but not fast enough: the blast hit his arm and he shrieked in pain.
“Come on!” Verity whispered, leaping back to her feet. “We need to get some height on this.”
Another gunshot went off on the other side. “Where’s Amber? We gotta find her.”
“We need to get to that mage. Going up?” She pointed toward the top of the large stack of boxes.
“Yeah. Do it.”
She didn’t hesitate. He felt the wrench of her power on him, and then both of them shot upward to drop neatly on top of the crates. They were about fifteen feet up, crouched on a solid platform.
Jason was already looking around even before they landed. He spotted Amber on the other side, perched on a metal shelving unit bolted to the wall not far from the truck. The other gunman was down below, trying to get a bead on her.
She didn’t give him a chance. Leaping with grace and precision, looking more like a jungle cat than a bear, she dropped down on top of him. He got off a couple of shots, but obviously hadn’t expected the “crazy chick” to go for the direct attack. The rounds spanged off the shadowy ceiling high above as the guy went down with her on top of him. His gun flew from his grasp and clattered on the floor.
“I gotta find the mage!” Verity panted. “We can’t let him get away.” Without waiting for Jason to reply, she took off toward the other end of the stack. Jason caught a glimpse of her fuzzed-out, magical-sight expression before she once again levitated away.
Much as he wanted to follow her, he knew he couldn’t. She was a damn good mage, and she could handle herself. Amber and the second gunman continued to wrestle on the floor on the other side of the warehouse, both of them trying to get to the gun, but he didn’t know where the first one—the one Verity had winged with her spell—had ended up.
He hurried to the edge of the stack and crouched low, peering over at the fight in progress. Amber seemed be holding her own, and neither of them were getting any closer to the SMG, which somebody had kicked several feet away. If he could leap down and grab it before they did, he could—
He caught a movement directly below him. The first gunman slipped around the crates, training his SMG on the writhing pair as he tried to get a bead on Amber.
Jason didn’t think, but only acted. Using the sounds of the fight as cover, he gathered himself and jumped down, landing on top of the first gunman just as the second one scrambled away from Amber toward the fallen SMG.
The guy never saw Jason coming. The two of them went down with Jason on top, but the guy kept hold of his gun this time. Jason caught a quick look at Amber, moving faster than any normal human, diving toward her own opponent the instant before he reached the gun, but then he had to focus on his own fight.
The gunman was strong, fast, and agile—probably not a supernatural, but definitely combat-trained. Jason didn’t care. All his frustration at perceiving himself the weak link in the team bubbled up, along with his fear that if he didn’t take this guy out, he’d go after Amber and Verity, drove him to fight with a madman’s strength—but it was a strength fueled not by madness but by a controlled sense of rage. He slammed his fist into the guy’s unprotected face—one of the few parts of him that wasn’t armored—and satisfaction surged when the man’s nose broke with an audible crunch.
The guy brought the gun around, trying to get a shot, but Jason stayed inside his reach, grabbing the man’s gun arm with both of his and slamming it against the concrete floor. The guy struggled under him, aiming blows at his unprotected side and head with his other arm, but couldn’t manage to fling Jason free enough to get a good shot with either his fist or his weapon.
“Jason!” Amber called, followed by another crash and yet more gunshots.
He didn’t know if she was in trouble, but her words gave him a jolt of fresh energy. Keeping hold of his opponent’s gun arm with one of his, he got a handful of the guy’s hair with the other and slammed his head down, probably harder than he should have. Bone impacted concrete with a thunk; the guy’s eyes rolled up into his head and his body went limp.
Jason didn’t stay to see the results. “Amber!” he yelled, leaping upward, afraid of what he was going to see.
He needn’t have worried. He spun toward them in time to see Amber unleash a fast, punishing kick into her opponent’s jaw. The guy’s head jerked around and he dropped the SMG, which he must have regained at some point, as his body did a graceful three-quarter pirouette. He smacked into a pile of boxes and then slumped down to a half-sitting, half-lying position, his chin resting on his chest.
Jason hurried over to her, panting but satisfied. “You okay?” She didn’t seem to be bleeding except for a couple small cuts on her face; like him, she was breathing hard but her eyes blazed with energy and adrenaline.
“Yeah. You?” Already she was crouching next to her fallen opponent, kicking the SMG away and pulling a handful of long zip-ties from her pocket. She slipped one around the man’s wrists and tightened it, then put another around his ankles and tossed two more to Jason. “Get the other one before he wakes up.”
He caught them but threw a glance back over his shoulder. “Where’s Verity?”
“I don’t know. She took off, but I lost sight of her.”
“Fuck—she went after the mage!” He threw the zip-ties back to her. “I gotta find her!”
“Wait!”
He didn’t want to stop, but he did. “What?”
“Get this other guy trussed up and I’ll go with you. I can follow their scent.”
Once again, Jason chafed against even a few seconds’ wait, but he couldn’t hear his sister and had no idea which way she’d gone. “Hurry up, then. And check him—I slammed his head pretty hard.�
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Amber quickly examined the other guy. “He’s breathing. We’ll call the cops and they’ll get him an ambulance.” She zipped him up, made sure the pair of SMGs were well out of reach for either of them, and then hurried after him, pausing to sniff the air. “This way,” she said, pointing toward one of the side doors.
Jason only then noticed the door was open. Had the mage fled outside? Verity had said he was a wild talent—if the phasing ability was his only power, he’d never stand up against all three of them, and he probably knew it. Better to cut and run while he still could. He hurried through the door and paused to listen. “V! Where are you?”
From somewhere in front of him, an inhuman shriek of terror sounded, and abruptly cut off.
Amber tore past, taking off across the street toward a building under construction. “Come on!”
Jason put on a jet of speed to catch up with her. The shriek had sounded like a man, not a woman. Had Verity caught the mage? Had she killed him? “Where’d they—”
“There!” Amber gripped his arm and pointed.
He stopped, a chill running through him. He recognized his sister’s familiar figure up ahead, but she wasn’t moving. Instead she stood still, appearing to be looking at something in front of her that Jason couldn’t see.
“Something’s wrong,” Amber said. “I smell blood, and fear.”
Jason ran up next to Verity and grabbed her shoulders. She was shaking. “V! What’s going on? Where’s the mage?”
In answer, she pointed in front of her. Her breath came hard and fast, but she said nothing.
Jason looked where she was pointing, but couldn’t see anything but the concrete wall of an incomplete building. There was no sign of the mage. “Did you find him? Did you—”
Amber arrived, stopping on the other side of Verity. “Oh, fuck…” she breathed.
“What?” Jason demanded. “What happened?”
She too pointed, but not at the middle of the wall as Verity had, but rather at the bottom. Jason wrenched a flashlight from his pocket and shined it at the area.
