“Thanks,” said James, puffing as he hauled his luggage into the suite and tossed it on his bed. It was a joined complex of two rooms, and LeBlanc gravitated toward the far one. Her multicolored skirts swayed as she moved.
He watched her as she moved, seemingly untroubled. Must be nice, he mused, to have everything you need hidden inside a single garment. If she could pull out everything she needed for a nice homemade chicken soup that one time, it can’t be too difficult to produce toiletries and extra pillowcases, can it?
He coughed before he spoke aloud. “I have to ask, Mother. Does the dress clean itself or something? Or do you have multiple copies of the same dress? I’ve never seen you wear anything else the whole time we’ve been on the road.”
She looked over her shoulder, giving him a deliberately vague, enigmatic smile, and continued toward her room without speaking.
Typical, he lamented, turning away to unpack his things. Still, she was far older than he was and thus had had plenty of decades to study esoteric spells. It stood to reason that she would know a few tricks he didn’t.
Once the pair were finished with their settling-in routine, Mother LeBlanc came into James’ room.
“Shall we?” She gestured at the second-story window that overlooked the parking lot.
James just wanted to flop down on the bed and watch TV, but she was right. “Fine. We shall, momentarily. This is a nice place, and I’d honestly rather relax, but as usual, you’re mostly right.”
They left the suite and took the back stairs down to the lot, whose bright lights belied that it was well past nightfall. Then they opened the trunk of the Rolls Royce and pulled out a big red cooler, heavy enough that it took both of them to carry it back up the steps. They could have gone in the front and used the elevator, but they didn’t want to attract undue attention.
James led the way into the room, backing in as LeBlanc managed the other end of the container. They set it down on the floor near the door that joined the two sub-rooms.
LeBlanc opened the lid; within was the makeshift scrying bowl they’d set up. Originally, they had found it sufficient to link it to the camera that was set to view the first such bowl they’d made—which was languishing in James’ study in the mansion in upstate New York.
But the situation had grown more complicated, so they’d leveraged the FBI’s resources to make a new device that was small enough to transport with them.
Mostly, they needed to figure out where in LA their mysterious new recruit was.
James cracked open a can of soda and took a sip while LeBlanc activated the scrying spell. “All right,” he said, “let’s see what we can see, or something. Ugh. My wit is exhausted for the day.”
“It usually is,” LeBlanc remarked. “But yes.”
He shot her a glare and went back to studying the bowl.
The device consisted of a deep, broad metal bowl filled with enchanted water. At the bottom lay a moisture-proof map of the area around Los Angeles. The spell they had set up before leaving upstate New York had shown them that magic was being used in Los Angeles almost every night. They needed to know where and the size of the flares. Now that they could spend some time watching the scrying bowl, they could build up a more accurate picture of what was happening.
It took some time for anything to show up, which was to be expected. Despite the book, magic still was not a common occurrence.
But then emerald flashes, a quick sequence of them, erupted in an area near the coast of Southern California in metropolitan Los Angeles, either the city proper or maybe in one of the adjacent suburbs.
“Again,” said LeBlanc, “never just one flare. Our LA thaumaturgist is by far the busiest of our various potential students, and quite possibly the most practiced, at this point.” She chewed her lip.
James shrugged. “Should’ve flown out there, then worked our way back east, but spilled milk under the bridge.”
She smiled slightly, but her air of concern did not ease.
“Perhaps it was good to give them time,” James suggested, trying to lighten her mood. “Healers are uncommon, and perhaps this one needed…something. Time. Space.”
To his surprise, LeBlanc was frowning again, her eyes still fixed on the flashes of light. She had been so pleased by the thought of a healer, but now she didn’t seem happy.
A moment later, James knew why.
“Look at that,” she said quietly. “The flickers, the way they’ve moved over time, the tiny pulses of energy. It’s like no healing I’ve ever seen.”
James frowned as well. “What are you saying?”
“It looks like no healing I’ve ever seen,” she said again, “but…it looks a great deal like martial magic I’ve seen before.”
“Martial magic.” James sank back into his chair. “That one flare we saw, though. If that had been damage-focused, it would have been on every news channel in the world.”
“Most likely.” LeBlanc was not one for ironclad statements.
“So, what the hell are they doing?” James murmured. He took a sip of cola and looked at her. “Do you think that this individual is ‘Motorcycle Man?’ Rumors have a way of being total bullshit, but the stories about that guy are so persistent that he’s pretty much the obvious candidate.”
LeBlanc leaned back but kept her eyes fixed on the water and the map. “It’s likely, yes. Are we certain it is a man? It could as easily be a woman since the rumors suggest our vigilante wears clothing and a helmet that obscure their features and identity. Not that it matters at the end of the day.”
“Whatever,” James said with a shrug. “Both sexes are equally capable of being a pain in our asses.”
The woman’s face was grave with concentration, and her slim, dark hand rubbed her chin. “Consider, James. Since we can be reasonably certain that this is our magic-wielder, their abundance of activity suggests they are not constrained by normal strength thresholds. We may be dealing with the quality of thaumaturge who comes along once in a generation at most.”
“Great.” James set his can down and massaged his temples. “Let’s hope they’re nice. Oh, and the news. We should watch it. I’ve heard you can get information from the news.”
Mother LeBlanc flicked her hand toward the wall-mounted big screen TV. “Sometimes,” she said as the screen came to life.
A newscaster was wrapping up a story. “And that, Sandy, is why you teach your kids the importance of using a plunger correctly. Back to you, Enrique.”
Next up was the weather report, and the two thaumaturgists sat patiently through it, waiting for something useful.
James finally announced, “I’m going to look through digital print stories concerning our biker and see what I can turn up. Let me know if the TV people get around to covering the subject.”
“Of course,” LeBlanc assured him. “This part of the country gets beautiful weather much of the year, doesn’t it?”
James fired up his laptop and soon found himself plunging down the rabbit hole. As LeBlanc watched the news and kept an eye on the scrying pool, James opened up tabs by the dozen.
It wasn’t long until he found a pattern.
“Holy crap.” His flagging attention was perking back up. “Everyone’s linking to the same articles. The first people on the scene, every time are these two.” He scrolled down. “Lopez and Angel. They’ve been following this guy since the beginning. They have a whole catalog of his exploits, along with eyewitness interviews, timelines of what happened, and postulations by various experts they contacted—stuff like that. They must be chasing a damn Pulitzer.”
LeBlanc, who’d reclined on the couch to watch the television news while nibbling on a pastry she’d pulled out of her dress, glanced at James. “Good for them. And for us. Anything useful?”
“Oh,” he returned, “all kinds of useful info, but none of it is current. If Motorcycle Man has been up to anything in the last day or so, we haven’t heard about it yet. And that’s what we really need. Still, reviewin
g all this stuff ought to help.”
As he sifted through the documents and started writing down a list of the most important points, LeBlanc stared at the screen with a curious mixture of complacency and annoyance.
“Come, now, ladies and gentlemen,” she said to the program, “you can give us something, can’t you?”
Chapter Six
It didn’t take long for Kera to find trouble—or, more accurately, to hear about it on the scanners. Her hand went instinctively to the side of her helmet as the police radio crackled and a voice began to speak. A woman said something about a string-of-numbers in progress on a street in Westlake South.
In the middle of the communication, another voice began to overlap it. A man’s voice reported a different code for crimes being committed in the southern part of the Fashion District.
As the first two voices came to an end, a third spoke up. This one, for whatever reason, spoke in plain language, reporting mass vandalism and possible arson in South Park not far from the Convention Center.
“Holy shit,” Kera breathed. She slowed Zee, then checked the lanes and pulled over. The situation was clearly urgent, but her gut told her she needed to stop for a few seconds and think before she acted.
She took a deep breath and went to work deconstructing the problem logically, rationally, and systematically, as she had learned to do in her years of computer science classes.
Three sets of crimes, all of them, if the tones of voice were to be believed, major, and all occurring at once. She was accustomed to hearing overlapping voices, but not like this. Was it possible she simply hadn’t been listening long enough to hear something similar? Statistically, these things could crop up.
But each of the three individually was large enough to have required planning. The odds of all three happening at the same exact time and not being connected…
She nodded. It was a good bet that they were.
“Well,” she remarked, “we were expecting people to try to find us, weren’t we, Zee? They did it before, twice, and now they’re giving it another try. It’s a trap, but we’ve survived traps before. If we don’t take the bait, innocent people might suffer.”
She did a quick mental review of the three locations to calculate which of the incidents was most likely to cause collateral damage. It would help if she knew what the hell the police code-numbers were referring to, and she cursed herself for not having studied and memorized that information.
Somehow, though, she expected it was all low-level shit—the kinds of mischief that would attract attention but wouldn’t fast-track the goddamn SWAT team to their location. If they wanted to draw her into a conflict, they needed time to deal with her before the police arrived.
“South Park it is,” she concluded. “I dunno if there’s anything going on at the Convention Center, but if there is, a bunch of people might be out on the streets. In the other areas, it’s late enough that most of the locals will stay in if anything weird is happening. I hope.”
She checked the map app on her phone to double-check her route and find the fastest one. The assholes responsible probably wouldn’t escalate too much or try to flee if indeed they were baiting her, but she didn’t want to delay.
Zee buzzed, then roared as Kera guided him down the streets. They wove in and out of traffic, took sharp turns at borderline-dangerous speeds and angles, and cut through alleys and side streets as needed.
She heard the commotion before she saw it: crashes and bangs, not gunshots, more like things being thrown around and smashed, interspersed with what sounded like fireworks and people howling and whooping aggressively.
Meanwhile, the police scanner reported that the commotion was working its way east, away from the Convention Center. Two squad cars responded that they were on it and would be there shortly.
They’re luring me away from the public, Kera postulated. Clever sons of bitches.
She inhaled and performed a series of subtle gestures with her hand atop the bike’s clutch as she rode while speaking the incantations under her breath. The first was the luck charm, which increased the odds of successfully pulling off actions that might be risky otherwise. For the other, calling upon the divine powers of the universe, she channeled more energy into a slight renewal of her obscuration and glamour spells. Her enemies might not even realize that they’d caught the right person until their asses were already being kicked if she was lucky.
She would use enchantments to bolster her speed, strength, and perception as part of the physical fighting.
She took a deep breath and tried to prepare herself mentally for what was coming.
Then she rounded a corner, and there they were.
About a dozen men between the approximate ages of nineteen and thirty-two, she guessed. They had been smashing windows, hurling garbage into the streets, lighting Roman candles and tossing them across the sidewalks, and shoving and heckling passersby. A young couple was fleeing to the nearest cross street, having made it past the gang.
Something was wrong. Kera noticed it instantly, but it took an extra second for her brain to process it. They were acting like a drunk, rowdy, stupid mob, but their eyes were bright and alert, and their movements were strangely tight and coordinated.
Yup, she told herself, it’s a trap. Still, they don’t look all that tough, do they?
“Hey,” someone shouted, “I think that’s him! Get the fucker!” His voice was many decibels louder than it needed to be, as though he were concerned that his friends wouldn’t hear him.
Kera didn’t have time to wonder why he’d yell at such a volume because while she was skidding Zee to a halt, the dozen men were fanning out in practiced and coordinated formation to encircle her like a military squad executing a precise operation.
Showtime. She bared her teeth in a crazy grin, then jumped off the bike and flung herself at the nearest attacker.
He had a lead pipe and he looked mean, but it didn’t look like he had much to back up his meanness. She swung below and around his backhand strike and then brought her foot up in a head-high Tae Kwon Do kick she’d learned from Mrs. Kim, retracting it after her boot crunched against the side of his face.
“Augh!” he exclaimed and stumbled, trying to keep his feet. She hadn’t hit him hard, not by her standards, but hard enough that he’d be out of the fight for the next several minutes.
Kera ducked around the toppling body and met the next two head-on as two more moved in behind her. Adrenaline was rushing through her system, but she still noticed a faint pain in her inner thigh and groin area.
“Fuck,” she muttered, “high kicks are way harder to do when you’re wearing tight-ass leather. No wonder the old masters wore loose outfits.”
The pair of guys launching a frontal attack seemed to hesitate. It was tough to say if it was because they were afraid or because they were trying to delay long enough for the other two to attack her flank at the same time they struck.
Kera didn’t give them the chance to execute their little tactic. She charged the bigger, thicker man, who didn’t have a weapon, head-on. She slammed her helmet into his solar plexus and knocked him on his ass as she raised a forearm to fend off his friend’s punch.
Once the second guy’s fist connected with her arm, Kera seized it, looped her other arm beneath it, and swung him around while knocking his legs out from under him. She could have broken his arm but refrained; somehow, she didn’t suspect that the pricks were trying to kill her or anyone else.
At least, not yet.
And she didn’t want to piss them off so much that they wouldn’t be willing to give her information.
She spun to face the two who’d come up behind her as three more advanced, barking and waving crude bludgeoning weapons. Everything degenerated into a chaotic flurry of violence.
The gang, whoever they were, had better discipline and coordination than the others she’d fought, yet she found herself triumphing with relative ease. They were holding back; perhaps they intended to
capture her rather than maim or murder. She noticed that one had a large burlap sack, and two others had zip-ties.
They staggered aside as she recalled her karate, hapkido, and judo moves with perfect clarity and executed them with stunning speed. She hit three more with confusion and demoralization spells and they swooned and stumbled, easy prey for her fists, feet, and knees.
One man shouted the alarm. “They’re not working! Plan B, guys!” His voice too was abnormally loud.
What? What aren’t working? Kera wondered, but she was too busy to give it much contemplation.
A gangster tried to flee the main brawl toward a pile of junk on the corner. Kera thought he might have a weapon stashed there, perhaps a gun. She tossed a Firefly spell at his rear, and his pants and lower shirt burst into flames. The magic wasn’t strong enough to pose a serious danger to him as long as he remembered to stop, drop, and roll—which he did, cursing in a high-pitched voice as he tumbled across the asphalt.
Kera punched a tall, lean man in the face, grabbed a shorter, squatter one, and threw him into a wall, and suddenly found herself standing victorious over the entire gang.
She had dropped them all in a minute, two at most. None were severely injured, but they’d all be having a really shitty weekend.
“You boys,” she announced, “are lucky not to be more messed up than you are, not to mention alive. I know that someone else hired your asses, or threatened you, or put you up to this one way or another. I want some fucking answers.”
She spoke in a deeper, rougher register than usual to disguise her voice. It would further their confusion as to whether she was a man or a woman. Probably.
She strode toward one of the men on the ground, who gave a whimper and tried to scuttle backward like a crab. It wasn’t very successful. Kera made sure to look around for any new changes to the battlefield—guns, for instance—but saw that the others were backing away as fast as they could.
So much for camaraderie among thieves. They were going to leave their friend to be interrogated.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Three Page 5
