“It’s okay,” I said. “My boss wants me to take a call for him in the car, so I shouldn’t have to come back.”
The guard nodded. “Have a pleasant day, miss.”
“You, too,” I said.
I walked back through the metal arch of the body scanner, opened the door, and stepped outside.
And as I did, I moved to the right and cast the Cloak spell.
This was the tricky part. Once I was Cloaked, any magic user couldn’t sense me unless they dispelled the Cloak first. But if any of the Elves were close enough, they might have sensed the surge of power from the spell.
I slipped back through the heavy glass and steel door before it closed, walked past the guards and through the scanner, and looked around. There was no sign of alarm. None of the Elves had moved from their posts.
I took a deep breath and walked back to the banker’s desk.
Morelli was filling out forms while Murdo made polite chit-chat with the banker. Swathe looked irritable, which made me want to smack him. Looking irritable was a great way to draw attention. Still, I supposed cranky middle-aged men in suits frequently visited the Royal Bank, so maybe he wasn’t out of place.
I stood motionless a few feet away, holding the Cloak spell and focusing on my breathing. I could stay Cloaked almost indefinitely so long as I did not move, but once I was moving, I could only manage about nine minutes or so until I had to rest. I wasn’t sure how long I could stay Cloaked if I paused and then moved about.
It took Morelli about five minutes to finish the paperwork, and the banker tucked it all inside a translucent plastic envelope. He lifted his phone and made a call, and a moment later a woman in her middle twenties approached, wearing a dark skirt and jacket that looked a lot like mine. There’s not a lot of variability in business formalwear.
“Sarah?” said the banker.
“Yes, sir,” said Sarah.
“Take these to the vault levels, please,” said the banker, handing over the plastic envelope and the legal documents that Morelli had brought. “Vault 12, Deposit Box 9834.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sarah. She glided away across the marble, high heels clacking against the floor. I followed. I suppose my shoes would have been just as loud, but the Cloak spell helped with that.
Sarah walked to the tellers’ counter and pushed through the gate, and I slipped through before the gate closed. She went to a massive steel door in the far wall, took an ID card from the lanyard around her neck, and swiped it through the lock. There were a series of beeps, the sounds of multiple steel bolts pulling back, and then the door made a hissing sound.
I stepped right behind Sarah as she opened the door, and managed to get through it without losing any fingers when it slammed shut, but it was close. Sarah descended the stairs, humming to herself, and at the next level, she stopped before another steel door with a swipe lock. A plaque with the words VAULT LEVEL ONE had been affixed to the door.
Then she took a deep breath and braced herself.
I stepped right behind her, careful not to breathe onto the back of her neck. She was a little taller than me, annoyingly. Sarah swiped her card through the lock, and the door clicked open. She stepped through it, and I darted after her and into the first of the bank’s vault levels.
And right away I noticed a whole bunch of potential problems.
The corridors were big. Like, big enough to drive a moving truck through them with room to spare. Walls, ceiling, and floor were built of polished concrete, and harsh fluorescent lights banished every single shadow. Vaults lined the walls. Each one was about the size of a rental storage locker or maybe a large garage, their doors built of massive grills of steel bars as thick as my arm with narrow gaps between them. I knew quite a bit about locks, and the Bank hadn’t skimped on the locks for their vaults. There were cameras everywhere, mounted every three yards on the ceiling and above each of the vault doors. If Sarah decided to grab something on her way out, she wouldn’t get three feet back into the lobby before security tackled her. Each camera also had a motion detector, and I suspected the cameras switched on whenever something triggered the motion detectors. Likely an Elf in the Bank’s security department was watching Sarah right now to make sure she stayed out of mischief.
All that would have made breaking in here a challenge.
The magical defenses made it much worse.
The first thing I saw were the Seals of Unmasking, dozens of them. The floor was squares of poured, polished concrete, each about five yards by five yards, and each square had a Seal of Unmasking on it written in lines of glowing blue-white light. It was like the spell Lorenz had used against me back in Wyoming, except much more competently executed. Each Seal filled up about two-thirds of the concrete squares. I managed to move around them, but it was a challenge to keep up with Sarah.
The second thing I saw was the golems.
I thought they were statues at first. At the end of every corridor stood a steel statue of a man in ornate Gothic-style plate armor, each one about seven feet tall. That seemed like an odd decoration for a bank vault, but as I drew closer, I saw the sigils of harsh white light glowing on the plates of armor, and I sensed a strange force from the statue, like it was watching everything around it with an invisible eye.
I realized what it was. Morvilind had told me about golems, but I had never seen one. It took an extremely powerful wizard to make one, and the Elves had lost most of their golems during the long war with the Archons on Kalvarion and their exodus to Earth. Each golem I saw down here would be over two thousand pounds of solid steel, an automaton bound to the service of its controller. The thing would be nearly impervious to any form of attack, not because of magic, but because it was two thousand pounds of ambulatory steel.
The third thing I saw was the elementals.
Things that looked like panthers made of smokeless flame prowled up and down the corridors, heads swinging back and forth. Whenever one approached Sarah, she held up her lanyard, showing her ID card and a sigil printed on the back side of it. The creatures scrutinized the card and then continued onward, and several times I had to get out of the way to let them pass, taking care not to step on one of the Seals of Unmasking.
I knew what elementals were, but I had never encountered one before. From what I understood, the Shadowlands were infinite, stretching between all worlds, though each world cast its own unique umbra into the Shadowlands. But beyond the Shadowlands were other…I don’t know, dimensions or planes or realities or whatever. The Void of the Dark Ones was one of them. But there were others, realms of elemental fire and ice and stone, and the panther-things must have come from one of the dimensions of elemental fire. It took a powerful wizard to summon one. Calling up a wraithwolf or an anthrophage wasn’t that hard. Getting an elemental summoned here was much harder.
Between the magical guards and the conventional security systems, the Royal Bank of Washington DC was awesomely well-defended.
Cold sweat gathered between my shoulders, sliding down my back in icy drops.
The only thing keeping me safe from all those defenses was my Cloak spell, and if I put a single foot down wrong, one of those Seals of Unmasking would collapse my spell. The motion detectors would go off, the cameras could see me, and the golems and the fire elementals would sense me. And if the cameras saw me, the humans and Elves manning the security center above would see me, and they would likely send an armed response team to capture me.
So best keep my Cloak spell up.
I followed Sarah to a computer terminal between two of the vaults, dodging elementals and Seals of Unmasking as I did. Sarah stopped there, tapped a few commands, and the large monitor lit up with annotated map of Vault Level One. I moved close, letting the camera in my earring get a good look. Sarah looked up the location of Vault 12, Deposit Box 9834.
As she did, I looked for the location of Vault 19, Deposit Box 547. The computer display listed the box’s renter, and it looked like a single organization rented the enti
rety of Vault 19…
An alarmed chill went through me.
The renter of Vault 19 was listed as INQUISITION: ARCHIVAL DEPARTMENT.
The High Queen’s Inquisition rented Vault 19?
We were stealing from the Inquisition?
Just what the hell did Nicholas want to steal from the Inquisition?
Guess I was going to find out.
Fortunately, Sarah’s path took her past Vault 19. I slowed long enough to take a good look at the inside, sweeping my head back and forth so the camera could record the interior. Hopefully, we could get some useful information from the video. Then I hurried to catch up to Sarah. She unlocked Vault 12’s door by swiping her card and punching in a number. The massive door slid open with a resounding clang and the accompanying whir of an electric motor, and I stood motionless as she stepped into the vault, unlocked box 9834 with a key, and deposited the plastic envelope and the legal documents. I kept my breathing slow and shallow as she did, trying to conserve my strength.
I wasn’t sure I would be able to stay Cloaked for much longer. Holding still let me recover my strength a bit, but I was still maintaining the Cloak spell. Too much longer and I would need to rest.
Sarah closed the deposit box, locked it, stepped back into the corridor, and triggered the lock on the vault door. It slid back into place, and she waited as the massive metal mesh locked into position.
Then she turned and headed briskly for the stairs.
I headed after her, avoiding both the Seals and the prowling elementals, my heartbeat starting to thunder in my ears. I gritted my teeth and pressed on. If I had to drop my Cloak spell down here, I was dead. I could deal with the fire elementals with my ice spike spells, but I had no idea how to fight the golems, and there were so many of them. For that matter, any fight would show up on the cameras, and that would bring down Elven wizards and human gunmen. There was no way I could fight all of them.
I only had to die one more time, but I didn’t want to die down here.
But I held it together. I slipped through the door after Sarah and followed her upstairs to the main floor. I darted through the door without getting my fingers or my skirt caught between the door and the frame, and I followed her into the lobby. Murdo, Swathe, and Morelli were gone, and they should be waiting for me on the sidewalk outside.
My heart was racing in my chest, so violently that I almost felt it flexing against my ribs. Sweat poured down my face, and my arms were starting to shake. This was the longest I had ever stayed Cloaked without stopping for a rest. Even when I had gone to Chicago, I had needed to duck into doorways and stay out of sight of the undead to recover my strength for a few moments.
Just a little further. Just a little further and I could rest.
I walked through the security checkpoint, slipped out the doors, and went down the front stairs. Murdo, Morelli, and Swathe waited next to the stairs, Morelli and Swathe both smoking cigarettes, Murdo as still as a statue. He was staring up at the doors, waiting for me.
I stepped next to the stairs, out of the cameras’ field of vision, and dropped my Cloak with relief.
Swathe flinched as I appeared. Murdo smiled, and Morelli merely took another draw on his cigarette.
“Well?” said Swathe.
“Wait,” I said, leaning against the cool stone of the stairs. “Give me a minute.” My breath was coming hard and fast, and I wiped the sweat from my forehead.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Swathe.
“You try making yourself invisible,” I snapped. “It’s a lot harder than it looks.”
Swathe opened his mouth to argue back, but Morelli spoke first.
“Bicker on your own time,” he said. He dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his heel. “Were you successful?”
“Yes,” I said, glancing around at the people on the sidewalk. “I got the video. And I saw all kinds of interesting things. This is going to be a hard nut to crack. I’ll tell you all about it back at the Universal Importation office. I hope your boss is good at coming up with plans because we’re going to need a really good plan.”
“That’s his responsibility,” said Morelli, glancing at the towering Elven edifice of the Royal Bank. “Let’s go.”
We walked back to the parking garage. I was cold, very cold, partly because it was still March, and partly because I had been gripping my magical power so hard. I tugged my jacket as tight as I could around myself and followed the others to the garage. Morelli and Swathe drove off, and Murdo and I got into our vehicle. We would take separate routes back to the base at the warehouse yard, just in case someone had followed us from the bank. I didn’t think anyone would, but better to be safe.
“How did it go?” said Murdo, starting the engine.
I sighed, leaned back in my seat, and rubbed my face. “Not great. Wait. No. I got in fine, and I got out again. But the defenses are amazing. They’ve got golems, elementals, magical Seals, and cameras and motion detectors everywhere. Getting into Vault 19 and getting out again without getting detected is going to be a hell of a problem.”
Murdo grunted as we left the parking garage. “Well, everyone says Connor is so clever.”
“He’d better be,” I said. “This isn’t going to be easy.” I watched as Murdo drove south. The plan was to get on Interstate 495 and circle around Washington from the east while Morelli and Swathe circled the city around the west. “And knowing him, he’ll think up a plan that will either kill a lot of innocent people or get both of us killed while he waltzes off with whatever the hell he wants.”
“What do you think he wants from the Bank?” said Murdo. In the distance, I saw the freeway. We’d have to drive under the overpass to get to the onramp. “It can’t be about money.”
“No,” I said. I hesitated and then decided to tell him. “Have you ever heard of something called Operation Sky Hammer and a man called Jeremy Shane?”
Murdo’s usual frown deepened. “No. Not Operation Sky Hammer. But Shane…I know the name, I think. It’s from ancient history, right? He was a general before the Conquest. Right before the Conquest. I think he was one of the American generals in charge of the war against the various terrorist groups that eventually turned into the modern Caliphate.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But he…”
Murdo blinked. “What the hell is that?”
I looked up, trying to see what had caught his attention.
An intense wave of déjà vu rolled through me.
We were approaching the overpass, and a man stood braced against the railing, looking down at us. He was holding something round and cylindrical on his right shoulder, and that seemed familiar, oddly familiar, like something I had seen a long time ago.
Then the memory burned through my mind. It had been a hundred and fifty-nine years ago from my perspective, but about a year and a half ago from everyone else’s. Riordan had been driving me back to my apartment after we had met with Robert Ross and Hakon Valborg to plan our raid on Venomhold. Riordan had been trying to cheer me up, and I had spotted a man on the median of the road. Except he hadn’t been a man, he had been a banehound in human form called Mr. Cane, and Rosalyn Madero had sent him to kill me.
He had tried to do so with a rocket launcher, and he had almost killed both me and Riordan.
Then my mind noticed three things through the déjà vu.
First, the man on the overpass wasn’t actually a man. It was a gaunt, gray-skinned anthrophage.
Second, the black tube was a rocket launcher.
Third, five SUVs were driving the wrong way down the street.
Which meant they were heading right towards us.
“Murdo!” I shouted. “Rocket launcher!”
Comprehension flashed over his face, and he cursed and wrenched the wheel to the side as the SUVs hurtled towards us.
The anthrophage on the overpass fired its rocket launcher in a plume of smoke.
Chapter 9: Urban Warfare
We should have died.<
br />
The anthrophage on the overpass had us dead to rights. Its shot had been perfect. The rocket should have smashed through the windshield and exploded inside the car, killing us both in the resultant fireball.
The anthrophage’s shot was perfect…but so was Murdo’s reaction.
He wrenched the wheel hard to the right, so hard that car almost flipped over. It would have flipped over, except that the rocket slammed into the street and exploded. We were close enough that we caught the edge of the shock wave, and that threw the car back onto all four wheels.
It also blew out the windows and the windshield, diamonds of safety glass spraying in all directions. I had buckled my seat belt, thank God, but my head still bounced hard off the window frame, glass spilling onto my lap. The car jumped the curb, the tires squealing as Murdo slammed on the brakes, and so we shot past some terrified pedestrians and slammed into the side of an office building at about thirty miles an hour.
That hurt.
My aching head snapped forward as the car’s hood crumpled like an accordion. The seat belt dragged into my chest and waist like iron bars, and coming to a full stop was a horrible sensation. I jerked back into the seat, my head throbbing, the flood of adrenaline making my hands twitch.
“Go!” said Murdo.
I blinked, looked him, and my shocked brain snapped back into focus.
Right. The SUVs. I heard tires screeching, and through the broken window on Murdo’s side, I saw the SUVs skidding to a halt. If the previous attack at the Rocky Mountain Mile was any indication, those SUVs would be full of anthrophages armed with heavy weapons.
And there were lots of people on the sidewalks. It was only by the grace of God and the sharpness of Murdo’s reflexes that we hadn’t killed any pedestrians. There were a lot of innocent people nearby, and the anthrophages wouldn’t hesitate to mow them down to get at us.
We had to get the hell out of here, right now.
“Yeah,” I said. I unlocked my seatbelt and tried to open my door. It was warped shut, but my window was gone, so I scrambled out the window as Murdo ran around the car. I checked my purse, making sure the phone with the video recording was secure and shifted the strap so that it went diagonally across my chest. I was going to have to run for my life, and I didn’t want to lose the phone with the video recording.
Cloak Games: Hammer Break Page 13
