"Well, they do have the blessings of an actual Goddess, Viggo. Tell me, do you have any idea how to kill them, or at least defeat them?"
"There we can be of some assistance. My associates did some research with some of our family from the Mexico City area. They assure me that fire, or beheading, will kill, or at least banish from this realm, any of these beings. They are avatars of a Goddess, so holy medals and such things will not help, even for a true believer, which I am sure you don't qualify as, John." I could hear a trace of humor even over the phone. If only he knew how true of a believer I was these days. Having a God hit you up side the head with a sword has a tendency to change your religion. Still, it's better to leave a card or two hidden, just in case.
"How about silver? Will that do anything to them?"
"No John, I'm afraid not. They're not quite Vampires, as you mentioned when you visited. They seem to be somewhere between a Vampire and a Deity, which let me assure you disturbs me more than it does you. Silver is no more a poison to them than it is to a normal human. 'Cold Iron' should have some effect, much like a member of the Fairy realm. Oh, and John, try to avoid their touch, and especially their kiss."
"Avoiding their touch may be a bit difficult if I have to go hand to hand to kill them, but I assure you, I do not intend to kiss one." I didn't say it over the phone, but EUUH, YUCK. "I can't give you full details, but we do seem to have the name and photograph of the individual that is controlling or commanding these beings, and I have enough for a 'Probable Cause to Arrest', so we may get lucky."
"I'm sorry John, but I'm not sure what a 'Probable Cause to Arrest' is. I'm afraid I rely on hired lawyers to understand the modern legal system."
"Oh, sorry Viggo, a P.C. to Arrest is what is called by 'Holly-weird' an APB. It sends a message out to every police department in the state, that if they see this individual they have authority based on our report to detain the person in question. It also gives the photograph, description, and precautions. In this case, the precautions include known offensive magic user. So an officer that makes contact will probably do a full felony stop on the person. This usually involves taking them at gunpoint. Oh and Viggo, have you seen the news in the last couple of days?"
"Yes, why do you ask John?" Viggo had a baited tone to this.
"I was involved in testifying in a court case recently, and the defense attorney knew quite a bit more about me than he should have. Classified things, a few of the things that came out in our recent visit to your office. I should hate to think that any of your associates are carrying tales out of school. This could ruin any working relationship we might have."
"John, I understand what you are saying. An officer in your Navy Criminal Investigations Service stopped by last evening with similar questions. Did you by any chance have anything to do with sending him?" He sounded a bit pissed.
"If you mean, did I send him, the answer is no. If you mean did I tell the Government that some of your company knew more about me than they should have, the answer is yes, I did. Viggo, this is a very serious thing. Not because I was outed as a 'Thrope, though that caused me some great family issues, my dad had a heart attack over it. I am subject to recall, Viggo, which means I may do that sort of work again against the enemies of this country. Your adopted country, Viggo. If I'm 'made' it could cost me and my Team our lives, and the failure of our mission. I don't think you did this thing, but a few of your associates were less than pleased with me, and I would not put such petty things past one or two of them. This needs to die Viggo, and die quickly and quietly, and never come up in public again. There are a few things that the people do not 'need to know' as I am sure you are aware."
"Yes, John. I understand the seriousness of this. But why did I hear this from a stranger? Why did you not come to me with this question?"
"Because I didn't have a chance. NCIS reached out and touched me immediately after the news broke, and they wanted to know who knew that I was involved with the Teams. I had to mention you and your associates. You must understand that this is part of the world in which I live, you don't keep such information quiet, lest you be believed to be working for someone you shouldn't. How did you know I was with the Teams?"
"John, we have our intelligence sources too, just as you do, and just as the Government does. I will not tell you how I knew, but I will assure you that I will find out if the leak to this attorney is from our end. And if it was, it will be plugged." That had a very final sound to it.
"All right, I can live with that, at least for now. Thank you Viggo for your time and effort. I will be in touch." And with that, I hung up. I had no more than let the receiver go, than it rang.
"John?" Mary sounded scared. "There's someone here that wants to talk to you."
A different voice came on the line. This was a woman of indeterminate age, with an accent from some where in Central America. She sounded like tapes I have heard of Eva Peron. "Mister Fisher, you have intruded in the middle of a simple case of justice. Also you have possessions which belong to my family. I want them back. Now. You will return my property to me, and you will stop your interference in my affairs. Otherwise, I will kill this squaw of yours. Then I will hunt down the rest of your associates. You will meet me at the site of my son's death in two hours. Is this clear Mister Fisher?"
Well, FUCK, I thought. So much for trying to figure out how to lure this bitch out into the open for a trap. And she has Mary. Lovely. How in the hell did she manage to trap Mary? Damn, even if I wanted to get the damn gold tonight, I couldn't. There is NO procedure to extract something from the Federal evidence locker after hours, and just trying to get such approval would take all night. OK, time to see if I can talk my way into some time.
"Ms. Colhuacan, I can't get the items out of lock up tonight. No matter what you do, or who you kill, I can't get them out until tomorrow. I promise you, Marina, if you hurt Mary in any way, I will not just kill you, I will EAT you. Further, there are many powerful people and beings who will help me with this mission. There will be no place you can hide, no hole deep enough for you to crawl in that our combined forces can not find you. We will destroy not just you, but your entire religion. Or, you can meet me tomorrow, wherever you want, and I will make the exchange. The earliest that I can get anything out of the lockup is 08:30 tomorrow morning. Any time after that, I can arrange the exchange."
In my mind, I swore an oath by all that I hold holy that if this woman hurt Mary in any way, I would make her death last for days. Damn it, I understood that she was irate that her son had been killed. But murdering those five boys for it was not justice. From what I knew, the death of her son had been a fair fight. Now, were the growers guilty of felony murder, (the circumstance of having someone die as a result of your committing a felony)? Yes. Did they deserve to do time for it? Yes. Did they deserve to die horribly? Hel no. I had everything but a confession from this Bruja, and because it was murder by magic, the only sentence was death. But that wasn't why I was going to kill her. Mary had come to mean a great deal to me in a very short time. If associating with me caused her to die, I would never forgive myself. Taking Mary as a hostage had made this BITCH number one on my better off dead list, and I was going to do something about it.
"Well Mister Fisher," she sounded exasperated, "as I am aware of just how difficult it is to retrieve something from that facility, I will give you until tomorrow evening. I will be in touch." Click.
I felt a cracking crunching sound, from my hand. I looked down and saw the remnants of the phone receiver falling to the floor. Lars walked into the room, looked at me, and said, "Ground and center, boy! What happened?"
So I told him. Everything I heard tonight, and everything I knew about this woman, her Vampires, her religion, all of it. And then we began to plan. I knew that Lieutenant Murphy would never let Lars participate in this thing. I also knew that I needed him, and that his place in this was right beside me. Yes, this was a murder investigation, and a hostage negotiation situation. But it was
also a magic thing, and Lars was the closest thing I knew to a magic cop.
I knew I sure as shit didn't want the assholes at the FPI messing with it, if ever there was a way to screw things up and get Mary killed, they would find it. So that left Lars as my only magic backup unless someone could get flown in from back east, fast. Well it turned out that Lars had a few things up his sleeve that he hadn't told me about yet. One of them was the ability to pass unseen. It wasn't true invisibility, you could still see him, you just didn't notice. You know how you can drive by something for years everyday and not really see it, and then one day something changes and you ask "how long has that been there?" Only to find out that it was built in 1965. Well it's sort of like that. That or the grouse that you just don't see until you almost step on it, because you're hunting elk, and not looking for birds. Anyway the point is, that he could be along for the ride, and unless someone bumped into him, no one would notice him.
That made me feel a lot better, as I was sure that we would need his help before this was over. After we ironed that out, I called the Lieutenant to inform her that the rules had changed. She of course, had a coronary right over the phone.
We immediately started to work on the situation. Within an hour I had a taping team set up in my living room, complete with voice stress analyzers, and a call tracer system. We did a back trace of the last number called into my house, and got a cell phone, registered to one M. Colhuacan. Unfortunately it was one of the older phones that didn't have the GPS tracker. We could tell that the call originated out of a tower near Gold Bar, so she was local.
Obviously she wasn't up on the technical things or the trace would have been much harder. We got in contact with the magic user the Stateys have on retainer, to try to do a locater spell on Mary. No such luck. Marina may be behind the times on tech, but she obviously knows what she's doing when it comes to magic, damn the bad luck. The mage may recover the full use of his powers in a couple weeks. The map that he was using for his spell, and the table underneath it however, will never recover.
We called up the rest of the FSRT, and put them on hot standby. This was going to be a short-fused thing no matter what we did. The 'Bad Guy' (or girl in this case) had all the initiative. They decide the meeting place, they decide the time. They can be set up before we get anywhere near the place, and we will have to respond. The only thing we had going for us was better equipment, and better training. That would have to be enough.
We put the FSRT and the Helo at Jim Creek Naval Communications Station. From there they can respond anywhere faster than I could drive. Of course they didn't deploy me with the team, I was to be the bag man. We also brought in the hostage negotiator that the FSRT uses, and woke a profiler/empath that is on the Federal payroll. This particular discipline is almost unknown in the civilian community, on purpose. He/she is a long range empath that can 'home in' on a particular individual if provided with some information on them, they are also trained in abnormal psychology, and criminal mind set. These folks are almost one hundred percent when it comes to getting inside the bad guy's head. You can buy or make a magic shield to guard you from telepaths, but empaths are much harder to shield from, and psychology works whether you are aware of it's use or not. All in all, I was amazed at the level of assistance and support that we received.
Of course Pam took over as Officer in Charge. I understand the rationale, I even agree with it in my more calm moments. Not that I was going to abide by her instructions or direction for a second, if it disagreed with my own plan. I felt this was something that Pam didn't need to be bothered with though. After all, she had a major crime scene to handle. One thing I did let them do was give me a sleeping spell. Pills don't work well on the fury, but magic still works like a champ. I knew I needed to get some sleep before the balloon went up, but I just couldn't manage it.
17
I woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn, as usual. I started to get up and do the morning stuff, and then the events of last night hit me. Calisthenics weren't the thing anymore. Katas were the order of the day. I spent about twenty minutes doing my very best to wear myself out. It didn't work of course, but it took the edge off.
When I thought about it, I could hear and smell the rest of the folks that had been called in that night. Most of them were up or getting up by the time I got done with my katas so I went downstairs to greet the day. Lars was in the kitchen starting on breakfast, I gave him a hand, and we did a short order cook thing for a while. By the time everyone got fed, it was around eight o'clock, and time to go get the evidence out of the lockup.
While I slept, Pam had been busy, arranging cover officers and tracking devices for the Durango. I would be driving downtown with a whole parade, albeit one that should go unnoticed. A helicopter, two chase cars, and an officer in the back laying down, all as backup. Personally I thought it was a bit much, if Marina is going to try for me, she'll wait 'till dark. But I wasn't going to argue with the boss, I save that for things that matter more than whether or not we're wasting the taxpayers money trying to protect my dumb ass.
As the parade was getting ready to go, it occurred to me to wonder why Marina didn't just do a spell on me, instead of doing something as sure to piss me off as taking my girlfriend hostage, so I asked the two most likely individuals to know, Lars and the profiler/empath. Well, it seems that those two had been trading stories long into the night. They were old drinking buddies! Gods, is there no one in the magical community that DIDN'T know Lars? Well long story short, the reason she didn't just hex me is twofold. First she wanted the gold more than she wanted my ass. We didn't know why she wanted it, but that seemed to be a prime motivator for her. Second, she couldn't hex me. Seems that Lars and Tyr had sort of put the kibosh on such things, at least at home. There was a shield around the house that could bounce the magical equivalent of a thermonuclear device. Further, between my normal resistances as a Master 'Thrope, and my resistance as a 'Guardian' (pro tem) or whatever in the hell my swearing in with Tyr had made me, hexing me at all had become a difficult proposition. Oh, she could still curse me, but it would have to be up close and personal, and I would be able fight against it. Not like those poor bastards in the morgue.
*****
The trip to the Federal building was uneventful, except of course for the traffic, horrible as usual, and the weather, which was back to normal for the Pacific Northwest in winter, cold driving rain. We didn't even think of not getting the actual gold, this gal seemed to be able to sense the stuff, at least when it was on a body. Hey, wait a minute, they could sense the stuff on a body, but not while in the ground on a corpse. What the fuck is up with that?
I gave the boss a call and explained my curiosity. She told me that the magic user we had was pretty burned out by the backlash of Marina's counter spell. OK, if we can't use the mage on the payroll, I asked, how about one of Mary's associates at the U.W.? I thought for just a second of Uncle Lars, but this didn't strike me as his sort of thing. Pam gave me permission to go talk to the good folks at the School of Applied Magic, provided I kept my babysitters with me. Well this seemed a bit like overkill, but once again, it wasn't worth arguing over. I gave the rest of the parade a heads up as to the change of plan, and headed for the U.W. campus.
*****
When I got to the campus, I checked in with the college cops, and headed for the Applied Magic building. When I got there, two U.W. cop cars were parked in front, empty. I walked in with my escorting officer in tow, and headed down the corridor towards Mary's office. The smells were just as bad as I remembered, but after a bit, I got to her office, and found the operators of the aforementioned cop cars. It immediately became apparent to me that no one had bothered to tell these guys that Mary had been kidnaped. They were going over her desk with a fine tooth comb.
I started to walk in to the office, and was stopped by a guy whose name tag said B Lewis, Officer since 2002. Officer Lewis was a black man about five foot eight, two hundred ten pounds or so, and loo
ked like he had at least half a clue. He also looked like he wanted to pound something right now, and didn't much care what.
"Who are you, and what do you want in Professor Two Elks' office?" he said.
Well, getting in pissing contests with the local law was not in my best interest right now, or ever for that matter, so I just gave my best harmless smile, and said, "How are you? I'm Detective Fisher, FPSP. I guess you guys didn't get the word."
"FPSP?" asked Lewis, "what's a FPSP, detective? And what are you doing in our missing persons case?" He didn't seem real impressed.
"Look, it's John, and it's not a missing persons case, it's a kidnaping. And I'm afraid it's our case because the kidnappers contacted us. We have something they want."
"Oh, John Fisher, Yeah I have a note in here somewhere about you." He pawed through a ticket book style clipboard for a second, "Ah here it is, one of the faculty's secretaries suggested that you should be questioned about the case, she didn't think much of you."
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