by D. R. Rosier
I snickered, “No, we can try if you want. I’ve just never tried to teach someone before, but I know I’m good at it because of who taught me.”
She nodded as she handed me a plate full of eggs, sausage links, and some bacon.
I added, “There is one more thing to consider, did you want to tell your mom? It’s never too late to be awakened, and she’d need to be taught as well.”
We dug in and ate. The eggs were moist and fluffy, and I was starving from last night’s activities.
After a few minutes she replied, “Let me think about it some, I’ll call her and find out what she wants and let you know, and… thank you.”
I smiled in response. After breakfast she needed to do forest ranger stuff, and I had a couple of hours to kill before my family meeting at lunch. We exchanged numbers. I was tempted to just give her a communication necklace but decided to wait until things were more solid. I kissed her goodbye, lingeringly, and then ruffled the top of Barry’s head before taking a portal home.
I tried to think of a way to expand the blocking of world gates. The current enchantments used a smaller direction wave far away from the Earth. It actually shouldn’t be that hard to make it omni-directional, but it would take much more magic to do. I wasn’t sure if it was a feasible thing. I thought about asking Dawn to check with Rafe on how far they could get through space, but I didn’t want to tip off the dragons that we were working on it.
I also had no idea how to locate the other dragons here, I was sure there was more, but had no clue how many or where they were. I could probably get my detection aura out a couple of miles, but that would mean a lot of passes just to search a city. Forget about searching the states or the whole world that way.
I blew out a breath, we’d better figure something out. I decided to head to my grandmother’s an hour early, maybe grab a drink or two. My mother had moved out to Chicago when she was a young woman, and me and my sisters lived here too. My grandmother Sandy still lived in NY in the mansion her lover Jezebel had inherited so long ago.
I felt a little guilty. I hadn’t really been out there in about two years although my grams had visited me a number of times. I opened a portal to the front lawn and stepped through. The mansion was huge, it was also considered an official embassy for the angelic race. I let myself in, the guards nodding at me as if I were here every day, and I made my way to the lounge off the main center hallway.
I immediately went to the full bar and poured myself a drink. It wasn’t long before my grandmother came in. She actually looked just a couple of years older than me, she’d figured out how to control her age a long time ago. Age modification was one of the things witches never talked about, not even to each other.
It was something the witch either figured out on her own, or died. It was an unwritten rule and never discussed. We didn’t really want the humans learning we had the capacity for immortality, at least as far as aging went. They did notice of course, my grandmother hadn’t changed in fifty years, but they assume it’s just cosmetic. Much like a succubus who can look young and vital their entire life, until they die of old age.
Sandy gave me a tight hug, then poured her own drink.
“Your sister stepped in it this time.”
I frowned in disapproval, “Perhaps, but only because she was the first witch Rafe found. Even if she’d asked questions first and tried to say no, that still would have led to a pile of shit from the dragons. Once they knew we knew of their existence, the waste was sure to hit the rotary impeller.”
Grams smiled at me, as if snapping at her was something to be proud of.
“You’re right of course, now if we could just get Dawn to believe that.”
“Hey, I activated a witch’s powers last night… any advice?”
Grams raised her eyebrow, “Like Jez did me? She needs to learn. I was conflicted, confused, and scared when it happened to me. But they ignored me and Jez’s father and Tony contacted Cat to teach me. She has no choice, an untrained witch is like giving a bunch of four year olds flamethrowers to take to preschool and hoping for the best. If you can’t be a bitch about it let me know and I’ll take care of her for you.”
I smiled, “Thanks, but I’ll give her a day or two before forcing anything.”
She shrugged, “That should be fine, she does have a little time before her powers fully come in. I assume she felt emotions this morning? It will be about a week before she’ll be able to throw the forces of nature around. At least a month before she’s at her full strength that way.”
I blew out a breath, feeling a little relieved.
My mother, Cassandra, and Cat showed up over the next fifteen minutes or so. We didn’t waste all that much time after hugs and greetings. The two main subjects were the ones I was thinking of earlier, how to find and block dragons.
Have I mentioned my sister Cassie is a genius?
Cassie said, “I think I can take care of the first one.”
Cat asked, “How?”
Cassie shrugged, “Use our natural magical aura as a spell template. Add in something to recognize racial indicators, umm, give me a moment.”
She dropped into her magic, for the rest of us it was a few seconds, I imagine it was an hour or two for her when she came out of it. She placed a small piece of gold on the table and activated the enchantment.
I’d expected something that scanned for miles around, I didn’t even consider what happened was even remotely possible until I saw it with my own eyes. A three dimensional hologram of the Earth appeared above the coffee table. There were millions of lights.
Cassie shrugged, “It takes a boatload of magic power, probably only good for two hours or so a charge, but that should be plenty for what we need it for.”
I asked, “What exactly are we looking at.”
Her eyes widened, “Oh. The red lights are demons, the green ones shifters, the white ones angels, blue for witches, and the rainbow ones are people like us, mutts.”
I frowned, “So which ones are dragons.”
“The bright green ones, you know they’re just shifters, so I added a scale of brightness. The brighter the color the more powerful the shifter aura is. So the dragons really stand out from the cat, bear, and wolf shifters.”
She studied the hologram and added, “Looks like there are six of them here all told, not counting the one you killed obviously.”
I took a look at the enchantments, they were very complex and she’d just thrown it together with as much effort as it took to pick out an outfit.
I nodded and suppressed the awe from my voice, “So good, we know where they are. I think we should leave them alone until we figure out how to block them. If we hunt them down now, they may retaliate and send hundreds.”
My mother, Ashley said, “Good, any ideas how to do that?”
No one spoke up.
Cassie shrugged, “It actually would be easy, the problem is magic though, we’d have to charge them almost constantly instead of what they need now to cover such a large volume of space. What we need is something more sophisticated. A detector that reacts.”
Cat nodded, “I think I see what you mean, if we could build a gate detector, maybe we could send one graviton pulse out in the direction of an opening gate to shut it down. But would it be fast enough to work before anyone got through?”
Cassie shrugged, “Depends on distance, the gate opening disruption travels at light speed. So if we had a detector in this room, it would take one point three seconds to discover a gate opening at the moon. Then the detector would send out a pulse going the same speed. So they would have two point six seconds to get through the gate, which is plenty if they all open their own gates.
“But that’s assuming a dragon can even make it that far on their magic, it’s quite a distance after all. But honestly I think if we put one of those enchantments on earth, a few in high earth orbit, and at all the Earth-Moon Lagrange points we should golden. If they come in from farther out then we’ll have a
hell of a warning time to get ready for them.”
That was true, and if we brought in the government that would be more than enough. I don’t care how strong their magical protection was, shoot small yield nukes at them in space and they’d be toast.
I mentioned that and asked, “How fast can we make that happen?”
Cassie shrugged, “Give me a couple of days to get a prototype enchantment up and make it work. Then it will go very fast, much faster than the other enchantments, it will only be one graviton wave instead of millions in sync.”
I nodded, “Alright, and when you get done with that, I’ll go hunting.”
No one objected, so we broke for lunch where a lot of the other family joined us. After that I tried to relax and unwind before work tomorrow. I also touched base with Terry and then Lia who were both happy to hear from me. When it came time to hunt I walked by a club and skimmed everyone on the inside, then showed up at Terry’s house.
He was very glad to see me…
Chapter 8
Monday morning started well, I supposed if anyone had the capacity to fool their coworkers it would be two spies. There were no shared or sly smiles. We didn’t act differently toward each other either, but that might have more to do with the fact we’d already gotten on at work quite well. On the other hand, another empath would probably pick up the difference in a second. Luckily I was the only one on the team.
Bill called me into his office around ten. When I walked in and stood waiting I could see he didn’t look happy at all.
“Close the door Price. Then sit your ass down.”
I turned and shut the door, then took a seat.
“What’s going on boss?”
He frowned, “Why don’t you tell me?”
He seemed really angry, and although the thought of Terry flickered into my mind I dismissed it immediately. It wasn’t against the rules, we just hadn’t wanted anyone to know yet.
“You’re going to have to help me out here sir, not sure what you’re talking about?”
He flipped his laptop around and hit play. Son of a bitch. One of the kids the other day recorded Lia and I in that confrontation.
“Anything?” he ground out.
I shrugged, “Why does this matter? The park Ranger is a… close friend of mine. The kids were a little rowdy, one of them tried to get out of hand and I knocked him out with a sleep spell.”
He shook his head, “That isn’t the issue Amber. Okay, let’s try this again.”
He blew up the picture of me that showed my clothes were a bit… threadbare and scorched in places. Then he brought up a second video window.
He sighed, “This Price, was taken a couple of hours earlier, from one of our spy sats.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine as he hit play. I doubted they could get a clean ID from the video, the resolution hadn’t been zoomed in, but it was clear some woman with black hair was talking to a tall man. Then the man turned into a dragon and at the same time a storm blocked the satellite camera view. The infrared camera’s caught the fast battle just fine though, then the storm cleared. A whole section of woods were ash, and I was lying on the ground looking very beat up.
A short time later a wolf and a second woman appeared and dragged off the unconscious one. I was a little speechless.
Bill recounted, “So, the NSA was up in arms about this, a fucking dragon, but they had no ID on you. Until a few hours later some snot nosed kid posts his video on YouTube. They want your ass for not reporting this, some believe you stopped a threat, some believed you were working with the dragon and something went wrong. I pulled some strings to get them to hold off so I could get your side first, you’re good at your job and I’d hate to see you disappear in a hole somewhere.
“So again, got anything to tell me Amber?” this time his question was whisper quiet.
Crap. I didn’t know what to say. I sighed heavily.
“We weren’t planning on telling anyone unless some kind of war became likely. We’re in the process of creating new anti world gate enchantments so they can’t come here.”
“We?” he asked coldly.
I shrugged, “My family. It’s a long story, suffice it to say the first dragon seen was about ten days ago. He seemed peaceful and engaged in trade on behalf of his world. Over the course of the first week, we learned that peaceful wasn’t a normal state for them, and that dragon and his clan were unique.”
He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, “So… what? You decided to just deal with it yourselves, keep it to yourself?”
I nodded and leaned forward slightly, “There isn’t anything the government can do, dragons can reach space with their magic, so the current gate blocking enchantments are useless to stop this race. We’re the only ones who can expand that protection to space. I know that’s kind of arrogant, but it’s true. There isn’t anything more terrifying to a government than a threat they can’t address.”
He blew out a breath, “I see, and your little confrontation?”
“I ran into him by chance, wanted to talk to him. He’s a scout, was a scout, to determine if we are a danger to them. I tried to tell him we weren’t, but dragons are alien and apex predators that won’t tolerate any threats. His idea of figuring out if we were a threat or not was to see who could kill the other. They are very predatory and instinctually driven.”
He asked, “Anything else I should know?”
I frowned. If I told him about the other six scouts some jackass in the NSA would demand we capture one to study it. It was what they did after all. That would be… ill advised. Still, I didn’t want to lie to my boss, sure I lied all the time as an agent, but not to my boss. Maybe a half truth?
“Well, there are most certainly more scouts, but we decided it would be better to wait until a new fence was put up before we hunted them down. We figured if we went after them now, before we were protected, hundreds of other dragons may come through to retaliate. Obviously, saying that would be bad would be an understatement.”
I also didn’t see a reason to mention human magic world, we were already protected from them and they weren’t a threat at all to us. I just hoped the government would be reasonable about this and let us take the lead.
Yeah… I doubted it.
He replied, “Fine, you can go. I’ll report this but don’t be surprised if the NSA comes to talk to you.”
I nodded. A thought occurred so I added, “Just one more thing sir. They come from a world so high in magic technology doesn’t work. All those magical toys the government has to subdue a supernatural won’t work on them at all. The cuffs, stunning spells, sleep spells, taser spells, all of it will be worthless to subdue a dragon. I add this for my conscience, if the NSA figures out how to find one and tries to bag it, they will all die.”
It occurred to me all the dragons are close to seven feet tall, a tweak to recognition programs should pick them out easily on CCTV cameras.
He frowned, “What do you suggest then?”
I shook my head, “A tactical nuke, or call me. Although a patriot missile might do the job, their magic is mostly geared to protect from other magic. Restrain one without killing it? I’m not sure that’s possible. They are living, breathing, flying tanks with magic, how do you stop something like that short of a tank round?”
He glared at me, “Don’t hide anything like this again. If they want they could charge you for conspiracy and breaking national security, watch your ass.”
Well, there were those other shifters that hadn’t been found yet. But that was another story. I got up and headed out of the office and went back to my paperwork. I took a moment to package the memory of my interrogation and send it to the family, they weren’t going to be happy I’d been forced to spill so much information.
Ironically, I’d have told the NSA less, I respected my boss too much to feed him a line of crap.
I felt antsy the rest of the day, I wanted to go on a mission. Even dodging Dennis’ crude co
me on tactics were annoying me more than usual. I had a feeling though I wouldn’t be sent on any. I was kind of surprised I wasn’t put on administrative leave. Perhaps they just wanted to keep an eye on me?
Paranoid, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
That evening I went over to Lia’s after feeding, to both relieve my physical needs and spend time with her. It was new to me doing it this way, or at least it was new to me that it was working. I’d talked about it with both of them, they seemed okay with the concept, but neither of them expressed interest in meeting my other lover. I wasn’t really sure what to make of that fact, but decided to just go with the flow.
I really enjoyed both of them.
We were lying on the bed holding each other in the aftermath of our pleasure.
Lia said, “I think I’d like you ta train me, I’m not ready ta meet other witches yet I don’ think.”
I kissed her softly, “I’ll do my best, we can start on the empath/telepath side, the magic should kick in for you in about five days.”
Lia asked, “Why?”
I smiled, “It’s not well known, but a witches empathy and weak telepathy are not a part of our magic, they are psychic gifts. It just takes longer for the magic to awaken. Of course, we can channel those gifts through our magic, so in the end it doesn’t make all that much difference. But I can teach you how to block other emotions, filter them, and target them among other things. Shall we start?”
She stole a kiss, a lingering toe curling kiss, and her hands started roaming to interesting places on my body.
“Maybe in a little bit love, in a little bit…”
We did eventually get around to training. She was a quick study. I wound up staying the night again and wondered if I’d be swapping back and forth every night, I hadn’t even touched my own bed since Thursday night. I could think of worse fates, was it wrong that I wanted us all together? Selfish? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t yearning for more than the appellation of vagabond lover.
I woke up early the next morning and on a whim shuffled out to the kitchen and started breakfast. It was definitely a time of firsts in my life, and I was in a good mood. By the time I was finished Lia was still sleeping, I put a stasis spell over the food to keep it hot and so it wouldn’t dry out and went back into the bedroom. She was sprawled out over the bed, I couldn’t help but stare at her beauty for a while, she looked so peaceful and satisfied.
