by T S Paul
“Three laps, Blackmore! Every time you miss, you owe me a pushup,” Khonsu yelled at me. His outfit had changed from that of an Egyptian king to that of a track and field coach. Even his whistle sounded real. “It’s for your own good.”
“One... two... three… why does this feel so real if it’s all in my head,” I muttered to myself, even as I went down to the ground for another pushup.
“Reality is overrated. I never once said all of this was in your head, now did I?” the God remarked as he heard what I said. “Don’t you trust me?”
“... five,” even as I said it, my eyes popped open. I was still on the floor in a half lotus position, but now I was drenched in sweat. Aching from overexertion, my legs almost gave way as I tried to stand up. I heaved myself backwards and fell onto the cot.
“Did you see that? She’s soaking wet!” the black clad kitsune on watch asked his companion.
The second watcher blinked a few times, his face a complete blank. “Rewind it a half hour or so.”
Manipulating the camera controls, the first man rewound the saved footage. Flipping a toggle, he sent the video to his partner’s screen. “Done.”
Watching the screen silently, the man stared at the woman on the screen. He zoomed in and slowed the footage down. “Right there.”
“What?” The first kitsune slid his chair closer. The Witch on the screen was on the floor, and her eyes were rapidly moving behind her lids. “Is she possessed or something?”
“No. It’s REM sleep. Look at her forehead,” the second man pointed out. “She’s sweating heavily.” Scrolling down, he watched her arms and legs. They were twitching.
“It’s like my dog when he’s dreaming. He twitches like that,” the first man said.
“Similar. Can you make a copy of this? Our Lord’s advisor needs to see it,” the quiet man explained.
“Dude are you sure about that? He told us not to bother him unless it’s an emergency,” the first man said.
“And astral projection isn’t an emergency? If that’s what she’s doing she could blow the whole operation and bring the Council down on us,” the second explained. “Do it. I’ll take it myself if you’re so scared.”
“No, no, no, I’ve got it, Kia. Just watch the screen. Are you sure she can’t get out?” the first guard asked.
Kiaka despised nicknames. Charles had always cut his real name short, and now he could only shake his head. The higher ups usually just called them guard one and guard two. Not very creative, but neither was the job. Sometimes his cousin was so stupid to allow even that name. Family. What can you do? It was very frustrating. “No idea. The Mages say she’s trapped. They put some sort of block on the area surrounding the cell. That much was in the briefing notes on the girl. It’s those damn bracelets on her arms. She’s a threat as long as they’re there.”
“Why didn’t they take them off?” Charles asked him.
“Couldn’t, they don’t have a catch. Complete circles on both of them,” Kiaka explained, making a cupping motion with his hand. “The report says they’re magical artifacts. Let me guess. You didn’t bother to read it.” He hooked his thumb towards the very thick notebook on the table by the door.
Charles made a face. “It’s reading. I asked if there was a vid or something I could watch.”
Kiaka shook his head. “Tell me again why they made you a guard?”
“I volunteered? You know how my mom and dad are. Family business or no business. Unless I went out of California, there’s no chance of working locally. They bitched up a storm when I tried to go to the university. Even vo-tech was too much for them,” Charles explained, never taking his eyes off the main screen. “Dad pulled some strings to get me this gig. Not a lot of upward movement inside the clan right now. Unless you want to work in one of the oiran houses. The women are nice to look at, but I like keeping all my fingers on my hands. Thank you very much.”
“Of course he did. That explains so much to me now,” Kia shook his head while rolling his eyes for effect. “You work hard, do your job, put in all the hours, and still your idiot cousin gets to be your supervisor.”
Looking away from the screen, Charles spun around in his chair. “I’m not your boss, that's a damned lie.”
Kia arched his eyebrows at his cousin. “You make how much? And tell me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you just make up the new shift schedule last week?”
“I did, but Kung asked me to because...Oh! Oops? Sorry bud,” Charles acknowledged.
Kia snorted, holding out his hand. “As I said. Give me the chip. I’ll run it upstairs.”
Charles stood up from his chair. “No. It’s my job. As you just pointed out. I’ll do it.”
Kia’s face started to shift and become angular as some of his foxlike traits started to show. “Give it up.”
With very wide eyes Charles backed up several steps, bumping into the table with the monitors. “Let’s not be hasty now, cousin.”
Kiaka flexed his hands as they sprouted fur. Twisting his head back and forth, he smiled as not one but four tails pushed their way out of his pants through cleverly disguised holes.
Swallowing whatever he was about to say, Charles went down on one knee in a motion of supplication. “I’m sorry. Here, take it.”
Kiaka snatched the chip and left the room, slamming the door in the process.
Charles took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. In Kitsune society, those with the most tails ruled. Kia had four! When they’d played as kids he’d only had two, just like Charles. The most tails he’d ever seen was on a guy his father met with once, seven in all. There were rumors that the Clan Lords had up to ten or more, but they were way above his pay grade. Looking back at the screen, he froze at the blinking red lights. Uh oh.
All the training the God was giving me caused me to rethink my situation a bit more. While wearing my Guardian bracelets, I was magic. The two of them allowed me to directly tap into the ley lines that crisscrossed the very planet I stood upon. There was no way to block me from that power forever unless someone took them, and to do that they’d have to amputate my hands. Trust me when I say I didn’t plan to give them any ideas along that route. Khonsu didn’t come out and say it, but they were the key to the box I was in and I was going to figure it out and use it!
Sitting up on the cot, I stretched my hands forward, reaching for the sky. I needed a good stretch from all the exercise I was getting in my head. That bit of thermodynamics needed to be explored at some point. The perfect workout cure. I could see it now. Mental exercises for your heart and health. Body by Agatha.
Taking a deep breath, I filled my lungs with air and held it. Air was but one of the five elements. Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit made up the universe. The spellwork around me might prevent me from projecting my magic, but I could still feel it. Switching on my mage sight, I scanned the room.
“Ouch!” Squinting, I could now only see large white blobs in my vision. The entire room was like staring into the sun. Concentrating, I shut down my regular vision and opened ONLY the mage sight. Much better.
LED lights instead of flood lights this time. The walls glowed, there was so much magical energy in them. Whoever set this up had planned it for years. Magic like this took time, lots of it. The room was a veritable bunker.
“Magic can only flow one way,” I muttered to myself. Concentrating, I attempted to push my power out slowly, using all five elements. Nothing! It was there, I could reach out and touch it. But using it was another story. At least in the room it was.
“The room,” I had a funny, almost crazy, idea. What if I could trap the element and then release it physically? Was it even possible? I’d ask my bracelets, but they’d all but stopped talking to me after Khonsu appeared. It made me very suspicious. Dealing with the Gods was such a pain in the ass! Having Odin peeping at me was bad enough. Winging it sounded good to me. What was the worst thing that could happen? It wasn’t as if these guys keeping me here were doing it legally.
Earth, as I’d said earlier, I could absorb, but since I didn’t have direct contact with it I couldn’t project the magic into objects. Not yet at least. Fire was similar. The electricity in the walls was right there… I just couldn’t reach it. Spirit was off the table as well. Someone or something was blocking all spiritual energy in the room. That was a feat in itself. Ghosts are everywhere. Looking at the world with mage sight is like watching every old movie you’ve ever seen at the same time. Every historical period all mashed up together. Filtering it was possible and one of the very first things you learn as a Witch. Not everyone can even speak to the dead and trying to is one of the things the Witches Council looks for. Necromancy is illegal. According to most histories I’d seen, each and every Necromancer ever revealed went bad. Including Aunt Camilla. Which is why Summer and her family were now being watched most carefully. But I digress.
The toilet in the corner of the room was one of those composting chemical sorts. No water other than what I put into it and just… Eew! Not happening. There was a slight possibility of my using urine to break free, but that was not a technique that appealed to me. Chuck and Fergus would never let me live it down. So Water was out. That left Air, one of the most interesting of elements.
There are several Air Adepts among the members of the Blackwood Coven. They are most useful for protecting the valley from tornado and other storm damage. But that’s not all Air Magic can be used for.
I read too much. Fiction is my downfall. While I’m sort of aware my magic is more than a little overpowered, it doesn’t help me to get ideas from mundanes writing fiction. One of my favorites wrote a whole series about secret telepaths running the world. They use something called Air Shields which got me thinking about this situation I was in. What exactly is Air made up of?
I’m not a science geek but I am a geek of sorts and I do have my own research lab back in Virginia. That is, if the military hadn’t broken into it yet. I can only assume they aren’t very happy with me after the Dragon attack. In my lab I do occasionally pick apart the things I read about in fiction. Not everything in books like Harry Potter and the Craft is fake. Besides growing Fergus his special magical hay, I blew up some stuff and experimented.
The air we all breathe is only 21% oxygen. The rest is carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, helium, hydrogen, and other stuff. More than eighteen hundred types of bacteria are in there as well. All filtered by your body's lungs. It’s the very act of breathing that interested me the most. The spell preventing me from doing magic was contained in the shell around me, but the air is everywhere. If I could enchant or change the composition of the what I had inside my body, it could do the work for me without my express direction. Basically, I was seeing if the magic was just aimed at me or the room itself. The former was harder than the latter, but seeing how complete this place was, it was a very strong possibility.
Microbes and bacteria are living organisms, and technically we Witches were banned from tampering with live things. Not that anyone paid all that much attention to that bit. I certainly hadn’t. Fergus, the squirrels, and those damned Jackalopes were exhibits A, B, and C.
Taking a very deep breath, I began to enchant the air inside of me by altering the microbes. It was slow. Much slower than I expected it to be, and it required more than a single breath, but as I exhaled the altered organisms began to flow toward my objective, the door. In or out, it was the only way to do this. I’d love to bust through the wall all dramatic like, but there just wasn’t enough hydrogen to use. I could couple it with nitrogen and build a very primitive explosive, but I doubted my captors would give me all that much time since they seemed to be observing me even now. It was good that air was invisible.
Mage sight only allows you to see so much unless you expend more magic, which I needed to conserve. So it was only my imagination that showed my exhaled particles latching hold of the door on all sides. Altered microorganisms did their little jobs and began weakening the rubber seals all along the rim of the door, voiding its airtight status. I’m sure there was a sensor or something that was giving me away, but it was all or nothing now.
“Now pull,” I instructed my little pretties.
The door unlocked itself and swung open. Giving the camera above me a smile, I walked out.
Chapter Five
Maybe leaving my cell wasn’t the greatest idea I’ve had this week. That was the statement running through my brain the moment I stepped outside. While it wasn’t the room I was in, the hallway didn’t look any different.
“Where now?” Looking both ways all I could see was white seamless walls and doors, lots of doors.
Beeeep. Beeeep. Beeeep.
Any choice I might’ve had was taken away from me when red and yellow lights started flashing up and down the hall. The clanging of doors and locks from one end brought me up short. “Crap.”
Looking up, it was all I could do to not smile. A trio of cameras, mounted high on the wall, all stared at me. Waving my hand, I ripped them down. Telekinesis was still a pretty cool power to have.
“Left it is then.” I ran down the hallway.
Bringing up my hands in a fighting stance, I punched outward even as I projected my power outward. The doors in front of me burst outward with a crash as a fireball the size of a small car hit the advancing guards. “Whoa! That’s a big improvement there. Now if that’s all of them...”
My entire time in dreamland with Khonsu wasn’t just to train my mind. We worked on fighting styles and magical attacks as well.
“Stop right there!”
Bits of door flew everywhere as six more heavily armed men in body armor came charging through the doors even as they collapsed around them.
I had no intention of returning to the box they had me in, so I didn’t even think to slow down as I ran for it.
“I can feel her, I tell you!” Fergus yelled even as he jumped up and down on the kitchen table. Since Agatha’s disappearance, he’d spent most of his time split between the Blackmore estate and Agnes Pickleberry’s antique shop.
Briarwood may have been cut off from the modern world, but that didn’t kill it. Humans in town had always known of the Others. Verity Blackmore was the founder, after all. The first wave of English settlers were shocked to find the Blackmore manor upon the hilltop surrounded by what would become the Garden. Which is why the house resembled a patchwork collage of architecture. Everything from classic Tudor style to Victorian was represented.
Jumping suddenly, the micro unicorn appeared inside Minerva’s living space located to the right of the kitchen. “She’s back I tell you!”
Minerva grimaced at the dancing unicorn trotting across her collection of cookbooks. With all the extra residents the mansion had been attracting of late she’d had to get more creative with expanding the portion sizes of things. “Damn it to hell, Fergus! I’m working here. Who in all the names of the Goddess are you screeching about?”
Fergus stopped dancing and looked up at the older Witch. “Agatha of course. She’s back, I can feel her again.”
“Are you sure about that?” Minerva shook her head negatively. “I only say that because of the last couple of times. You said the same thing both times.”
Shaking his whole body like a dog drying off, Fergus stamped his feet, “No. Those other times were real. I swear! She’s West of here somewhere. I can feel her in my head.”
Minerva wanted to believe the little hay burner, but this was the third time he’d said the exact same thing. Agatha was apparently witch-napped after killing the Dragon Prince on the coast of Maine. Searchers from both Briarwood’s forces and that of the government scoured every house, outhouse, and doghouse. Everyone wanted a piece of her. Other than blood, nothing was found. Then a month later Fergus announced he’d found her. Sort of. The little unicorn had reacted just like this, jumping around with dance maneuvers. He’d sworn up and down that Agatha was alive and close.
Marcella, with the aid of the Pack and every scryer in t
own, searched half the country for her granddaughter with no avail. Even using truth spells on Fergus were useless. Agatha’s original spells cast when she was still a child effectively made him immune to magic. It was his word versus the evidence.
Three months later he tried it again, announcing he’d found her. Small actions were taken, but no search parties, and no major scrying spells. There was way too much happening in the world to drop everything on the word of a tiny mischievous unicorn.
It started almost immediately after the Dragon invasion. The death of the President started it. Vice President Montifort, no President Montifort, showing his anti-paranormal sentiment, replaced his predecessors cabinet with like-minded ones. It seemed that Montifort’s moderate political leanings were all a lie.
Far right radicals not seen in years were suddenly on television both in the White House and out of it. Congress stood on its ear as late term elections surged with anti-paranormal activity, pushing many old school members out of office. The new agenda was clear. America was for the normals. After more than a century of open dealings, paranormals were being forced underground again. This time it was at the point of a gun.
Almost nowhere was safe now. It was so hard to believe it all happened in less than six months. Only Briarwood was truly safe now. So called hidden enclaves were everywhere, but most modern paranormals lived amongst humans now. Going into hiding when everyone knows your name is almost impossible. Throw in the new American Defense Corps and the President’s new relocation agenda and an unconnected Paranormal was screwed.
“Fergus, seriously, third time's not the charm. You have to stop. Don’t you see what this does to Marcella?” Minerva explained to him.
“No! No! She really is there. I can feel her inside my head. No matter what you think or what you believe I am telling you the truth, just like those other times. She’s alive and I’m going to find her,” Fergus shouted up at her.
