“This shit tonight,” he stated, “has to be done with extreme caution. If we’re going to do something this big, it’s got to be done right. Many, many ways it could go wrong.”
Johnny nodded. He was no fool. Sven was expressing his total lack of enthusiasm for and belief in the project, albeit in an indirect way in case Pauline overheard them.
“No shit,” Torrez agreed. “I mean, go big or go home, right? Always an element of risk. Little more than I’d like, though. The payoff might be worth it.”
“Maybe,” said Sven. He patted the back of his coat above his waistband, feeling for his Ruger. “You got your gun, right?”
Johnny’s hand went to his side, where he was carrying his Beretta semi-openly in a holster under his coat. Sven would have known he had the damn thing, but that wasn’t the point.
“Of course. And a spare mag.”
Sven inhaled smoke. “Good. Something like this, if the law shows up, it doesn’t end with you demanding to talk to your lawyer. It’s all or nothing. You have to be prepared for that.” He tapped the side of his head.
In a way, Johnny appreciated that his friend was giving him advice and making sure they were on the same page, but it was redundant. He bristled.
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Sven. I’ve been through shit in the barrio, and I have no idea why or how I’m still alive. With Pauline, we’re putting a lot on the line, but we have a real chance to go somewhere in life. To—”
He stopped talking, and his and Sven’s heads snapped toward the street.
“Wait,” the big Swede whispered. “What was that noise?”
Kera had begun casting spells as soon as she’d set foot on the asphalt. She was halfway across the street. A random car came by, and she stood aside, waiting for it to pass. The driver wasn’t interested in her, probably because she still resembled a foreign tourist instead of a sinister figure in a black motorcycle helmet.
When she was nearly to the lot where the office lay, she heard someone whisper, “What was that noise?”
It was coming from around the corner of the building. The front of the place blocked them from sight, but it meant Kera had stupidly neglected to notice that there was a side entrance, complete with guards.
Enough with trying to seem inconspicuous. I’m not going to waste time criticizing myself for sloppiness, either, she decided, and her hands formed into fists. She dismissed the glamour spell, opting to appear in the form of Motorcycle Man as most people imagined him.
Better yet, a whole gang of Motorcycle Men.
Concentrating hard, Kera cast a ghost-sounds spell in conjunction with three consecutive glamour spells, merging and projecting them into a trio of illusions that looked like her in her leathers and helmet and which were capable of audible footsteps, shouting, and rustling.
No sooner had she completed the task than the soft and rapid footfalls of the sentries moved around the side of the building from different angles. Kera dropped flat next to the curb and commanded her doubles to fan out toward the building.
As Kera watched, a big, pale, heavyset man in a nice black suit appeared from around the corner nearest to her. He aimed and fired what looked like a snub-nosed revolver, and loud cracks split the air twice as the gun’s muzzle flashed and small puffs of smoke rose.
The illusion nearest the man wove back and forth as it advanced. The guard was aiming precisely; he was probably a good shot and likely had a low-capacity gun. His brow furrowed in consternation as the bullets kicked up dirt behind the shadowy figure, which did not slow.
Kera made the double laugh maniacally as it moved forward. The man retreated into the building, and a second later, another shot rang out, but she couldn’t determine where it had come from.
At the same instant, someone else fired at the other two doppelgangers from around a different corner. The second sentry must have had a higher capacity gun, probably a semiauto pistol, and had snuck the other way around the building. He sprayed half a dozen shots toward the doubles to no avail.
Kera kept an eye out for flashes, focused on the way the noise echoed, and used her augmented consciousness to try to figure out where each of the gunmen was positioned. The big guy had taken cover within the window nearest the side entrance, she was pretty sure, whereas the other one seemed to be firing from behind a trash container near the rear corner of the building.
She made the illusions dart around menacingly as though they had a plan to kill both men. The problem was they could not do anything, only act as distractions. In the meantime, Kera began hearing another sound between the gunshots. A woman was shouting at the top of her lungs in a foreign language somewhere deep within the structure.
The big guy fired his sixth shot. “Cover!” he shouted, and the man on the other side opened fire again, putting another four or five rounds across the lot while his partner reloaded. One of the bullets struck the ground about three feet from where Kera lay.
Shit! I can’t keep up this charade forever. What I need is to lure them off or get them both in the same place so I can nail the bastards, then bust up the rest of the party.
Knowing she was taking a severe risk, Kera sprang to her feet and cast a further spell to enhance her speed and reflexes, as well as one to form a rough translucent magical shield in front of her. She pantomimed aiming a handgun at the building and had her illusions mimic the gunshots they had heard from the sentries.
The man near the back corner cursed in Spanish, and Kera heard him eject a magazine to load a new one. Then he sprang out, waving a large pistol and firing wildly at the dark figures.
Kera had the three doubles freeze, then flee toward her position. She directed them toward an adjacent lot where a cluster of small outbuildings and various trees provided more cover.
The man with the snubbie, having reloaded, barked, “Get ‘em!”
Kera looked over her shoulder as the dark shapes of the two guards approached, raising their pistols to fire. She repositioned her magical shield so it provided her with full cover.
Both men squeezed the triggers. Sparks erupted behind the witch as the bullets struck; others passed through the illusions to blow chunks off trees or walls.
Kera spun to face them just as the beam of a nearby streetlamp illuminated their faces. She had never seen the big guy with the revolver before, but she definitely had seen the other. It was Mustang Man, his familiar visage twisted by rage and frustration.
Time to end it, Kera thought. The ringleader might get away if I don’t besiege that building in the next ten seconds.
She contemplated killing them. They had tried to kill her, and what they were planning to do to the Mermaid was unspeakable, but something about the desperation on the smaller, darker man’s face and the oddly unthreatening, almost reasonable demeanor of the bigger, paler guy...
Not to mention, she still got pangs of guilt for throwing Deke Anastidis to his death, even though that had been in self-defense and mostly accidental.
No. I won’t stoop to their level unless I absolutely have to.
As the men aimed their guns at her face, she flung out her hands and hit them with the strongest incapacitation spell she could muster without seriously weakening herself—a mixture of short-term memory impairment, relaxation, and confusion.
The men staggered back. Their arms dropped to their sides, and they let go of their pistols. The heavyset man stood with his jaw hanging open for a moment, then sat down hard on the ground and stared vacantly into space. Mustang Man wheeled drunkenly in a circle before falling flat on his back, unconscious.
Kera breathed hard in the ensuing silence. The gunshots had been loud enough that someone might already be calling the cops, or a police cruiser might have been near enough to hear them. She had to be fast.
“Okay, boys, let me just take those, and I’ll leave you to your rest.” Kera picked up their guns and stuffed the little Ruger LCR, which had only three shots remaining, into her pocket. The larger
Beretta 92, whose magazine was still about two-thirds full, she put into the rear waistband of her pants after flicking the safety on.
She had fired both guns before, back when her dad had allowed her to take up target shooting as a hobby. Thinking back on those days as the adrenaline faded, she realized her ears were ringing painfully. Tinnitus again.
Trying to ignore it, Kera dismissed the illusions and sprinted toward the building.
I ought to devise a magical earmuffs spell since any gang members left in there are probably going to be armed too, and firing a gun indoors is even worse. Of course, getting shot is the worst of all, so shields get priority.
As she reached the edge of the structure, the first feelings of fatigue struck her. She had used more magic than intended, and she sensed the fight was far from over.
Kera went for the side door and flung it open. As soon as she did, someone opened up with an automatic weapon.
“Goddamn!” she cried out, flinging herself away. Her shield stopped some of the bullets, but others tore up the doorframe and the ground around her, and she could feel the thaumaturgic barrier weakening.
She feigned a groan of pain so whoever had fired would think they’d hit her. Then she cloaked the sounds of her movements as she crept around the front to the main entrance.
Unsurprisingly since it was after business hours, the door was locked. Kera cast a small but concentrated spell that told the metal parts to open and the electronic parts not to send any signals to the alarm system and made her way inside.
Stairs led up to both sides of the lobby to second-floor suites of offices. Her targets clearly lay to the left, the side from which they had fired earlier—but where?
Kera listened for any noise, then crept up the stairs.
The place was exactly the sort of corporate nightmare she had been afraid of. She saw posters with motivational slogans using various buzzwords like “Success” and “Teamwork” and “Impactfulness” and “Customer Loyalty.” Inside conference rooms, whiteboards held flow charts full of brightly-colored graphics.
“Blech,” Kera muttered, and she hurried onward.
She was coming up on a door that had light behind it, and she hastened forward to stand behind it so she would be hidden by it when it opened. Her guess was that whoever had tried to shoot her was still waiting by the edge of the building, but she couldn’t rule out that someone was waiting for her.
When Doug and Mia worked cases, it was usually Doug who drove, but tonight, Mia was behind the wheel. Perhaps it was because they weren’t technically working.
In fact, both of them were thinking about passing out.
Mia blinked aggressively to keep her eyes on the road. “Doug. Are you feeling more tired the closer we get to the Mermaid?”
Her partner yawned. “Yes.”
Knowing she was not alone didn’t provide much comfort. There were times when misery did not love company.
Doug added, “I started feeling it right around dark, I think. It’s like the thought of going there and researching this shit is, I don’t know, provoking the universe to convince us otherwise. Does that qualify as a conspiracy theory?”
Mia narrowly evaded driving through a stop sign and tried to hide her alarm at her diminishing skills. “There are better conspiracies to report on than us being tired, but yeah. This whole trip has been like wading through a lake of molasses. You want coffee?”
“Sure,” Doug agreed.
“Good, because I need it to get there without us getting killed or arrested.” Mia looked for the nearest amenable drive-through and found one less than a minute later.
They purchased java, a medium for Doug and a large one for Mia, and parked the car to drink them. Fortunately, Mia had also asked for a small cup of ice. She shook half of it into her beverage before passing the rest to her partner.
Doug was impressed. “Damn, you’re smart. We would have had to wait, like, entire minutes for this crap to cool down otherwise. They keep it at a temperature that can smelt iron.”
Once both journalists had downed a good amount of caffeine, they continued toward the bar.
“It’s weird,” Mia commented as the streetlights sped past and cars randomly honked around them, “I don’t remember ever being this burnt out. Like, we’ve always been energetic types, haven’t we? Is this what other people deal with, and we never experienced it until now?”
Doug swished the coffee around in his cup. “It’s within the realm of possibility, but why would we get struck simultaneously and out of the blue? Like I said, has to be a conspiracy by the universe against our right to report on this story.”
Though the caffeine helped, Mia still felt dazed and zoned-out when they arrived at the Mermaid. Business appeared to be slow; there were only two cars out front. She and Doug trudged in, muttering to each other that they would only stay for an hour since sleep was becoming vital.
They seated themselves, vaguely aware of how quiet it was, but it wasn’t until they plopped down in chairs that they examined the place.
“Holy crap,” Mia exclaimed. “It’s deserted. Are they closed?”
Doug rubbed his chin. “Nah. The lights are on and the door was open, but it is weird, isn’t it? Still, at least they set out complimentary mozzarella sticks. And marinara, of course.” He gestured at the food before them.
Mia could not recall if the Mermaid pre-served appetizers to their customers. Most places didn’t, so it was possible they had accidentally sat at someone’s table. Still, Doug was digging in, and food did sound good...
There were multiple crashes as men in black armor burst through the front entrance, the back door, and out of the kitchen. The journalists froze as voices shouted and gun-mounted flashlights shone in their faces.
“Freeze!” a man bellowed, apparently unaware that they hadn’t moved a millimeter.
Mia stared. Most of the paramilitary guys had FBI stenciled on their vests, though some appeared to be LAPD SWAT. A disgruntled-looking woman strode toward them and flashed a badge.
“Agent MacDonald, FBI,” she said. “Who are you, and what are you doing here? This place has been evacuated due to a hostage threat. Are you aware of that?”
As Mia’s mouth soundlessly moved up and down, Doug exhaled in blatant relief.
“Oh, thank God,” he said. “See, Mia? It’s not us. Agent, it’s okay if we finish these mozz sticks, right?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kera stood in front of the door that opened into the offices. She had done a “vibe scan” of what lay beyond, but she could detect nothing except fear and anger, which was not a great surprise and of little help.
There was nothing to do but go through. She channeled another stream of power into herself, augmenting her speed, strength, and mental acuity at the cost of growing tiredness in the back of her mind that would overtake her in a short while.
She eased the door open and stepped into a short corridor. At the bend on the ceiling was a camera. She had no idea if they were watching her, but she couldn’t take the chance of them getting tipped off to her being in the building.
Kera streaked forward, stood on tiptoe, and used a gun to turn the camera. That done, she moved around the next corner into an open area between a series of doors that led to other offices.
Even with her limited knowledge of demolitions, she could tell that people had been assembling bombs, but that wasn’t what caught her eye.
Two women were standing behind a heavy, overturned metal table. One had blonde hair and was holding what looked like an AKS74-U Russian automatic carbine, and the other, with black hair, was aiming a tiny pocket pistol. They opened fire.
Deafening noise and flashes filled the room. Kera dove and rolled toward the wall and the minimal cover provided by a pile of crates filled with wire and components she hoped weren’t explosive. The armor-piercing rounds from the blonde’s assault rifle could probably penetrate the crates, so Kera knew she’d have to dodge and replenish her shield.
She seized her chance to open the door of one of the offices and tumble inside as both women reloaded. Her ears were ringing so loudly that she could hardly hear, but she couldn’t focus on that.
Kera pulled energy from the universe and used it to reinforce the barrier she had conjured. A few gunshots sounded; they were trying to keep her pinned down as they moved to fire at her like a fish in a barrel.
Kera waited, the don’t-notice-me spell now gone. She could tell that the two women were closer to being able to fire into the office.
Silence fell after both the rifle and the pistol clicked, empty.
Kera sprang back out, pulled out the snubbie, and blasted at the women. She didn’t want to hit them, merely scare them into standing down. She fired a shot over the brunette’s head and the other two off to the blonde’s side.
The blonde barked out a curse in what might have been Russian, then turned and fled toward the farthest office.
Is that who I think it is? Kera wondered. No, she looks different from the girl at the bar with Mustang Man, but the unpleasant, disturbing, soulless vibe seems familiar.
She had no time to explore the thought, however, because the other woman shouted, “Pauline, stay back!” and charged Kera with a keyboard.
Kera shifted into fighting mode. Her opponent was a small lady of East Asian descent somewhere between twenty-five and a youthful thirty, dressed snappy-casual like an off-duty office worker. The speed at which she moved and the way she held the piece of tech in her hands suggested that she was not a pushover, however.
Kera was feeling the effects of having channeled so much magic, especially after healing Mrs. Kim earlier.
The keyboard lashed at her face as the woman roared and kicked. Kera took the blow from the plastic on her forearm, grunting in pain while sidestepping the kick and punching the woman in the stomach. She let out an “oof” and dropped the keyboard, then moved into a clinch.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Three Page 21
