#
It took David most of the next two days to truly unpack everything. He saw Ix every so often, and the demon made a point of accompanying him the first time he hit up one of the communal cafeterias for food.
As he lined up to partake of the government-paid-for “fine cuisine”, David spotted Leila Stone collecting a tray of food and waved to her. She returned the wave, and the Mage made her way across the mostly empty room to David and Ix.
“David!” she greeted him. “How’re you doing? Rumor around here has it that you fucking wandered into a bloody shitstorm on your first damned deployment.”
David blinked at the stream of profanities interwoven with the question, and for a moment wondered how the Mage had ever remained an Inspector. With a smile for the woman, he realized it was probably why OSPI hadn’t been sad to see her move to a less-public face of Omicron.
“It was unpleasant,” he admitted as he began to shovel food on to his tray with half an eye on the blonde next to him. “We ended up having to fight—and kill—a murderer hunting gay men.”
“I heard he was a goddamned priest,” she replied.
“He was,” David said shortly.
“There’s no excuse for that shit,” Stone said tightly. “I’ve been bloody stuck on the damned Campus since I finished training,” she told David as they took a table together and he began to eat. “They assigned me to ONSET Twenty-One, but the fucking unit only exists on shithouse paper. It’s me and two Empowered—we don’t have even have a goddamn team Commander. We’re just playing glorified fucking garrison around this bloody place.”
The conversation drifted into normal life on the Campus, which Stone had spent more time in than David, and the active duties of ONSET, which David had spent more time in. Ix interjected on both sides of the conversation, revealing little about himself but proving a fount of information on ONSET.
While Stone swore worse than most cops David had ever met, she also had a perspective on ONSET that David didn’t, and he appreciated the point of view. Dinner passed in conversation before David finally returned to his unpacking.
#
It was noon the next day, the second to last before ONSET Nine went back on duty, before a knock on David’s door heralded the return of another of Nine’s members. He’d just finished setting up the leather couch that was the only new piece of furniture he’d brought, so he took the opportunity to collapse onto it as he shouted, “Come in!”
“I see you’re all moved in,” Kate observed as she stepped into his apartment. The blonde was dressed for the cooling Colorado autumn in black jeans and a light red zip sweater, unzipped low enough to show just a hint of cleavage.
“I brought most of my things up from Charlesville,” David admitted. “I decided to sell my house there.” For a moment, he considered telling Kate about why he was selling the house, but it seemed unnecessary. “How was your week off?”
“Quiet,” Kate replied as she took a seat next to David on the couch. “Went to visit a friend of mine in Seattle. He owns a boat, so we spent most of the week on the water.”
“Drink?” David offered. “I actually have more than water now,” he added with a grin.
“Coffee, if you have it?” the blonde answered.
David threw on the pot in his coffee maker, and turned back to look at Kate. The younger woman had shed her sweater in the relative warmth of the apartment, revealing a clingy low-cut T-shirt underneath it. He had to admit to himself that his teammate was a very attractive young woman.
“How was your trip home?” Kate asked as David returned with the coffee. She took a cup and gently blew on it as he considered his answer.
“Different,” he said quietly. “Everything seems the same, but there are so many things that bother me now that I never would have seen before.”
That was about as much as David really wanted to say to anyone right now about the mess back home. He’d reported it when he’d returned and he’d left his suspicions and concerns with Chief Hanson who, as well as being capable of dealing with them, was also the appropriate authority to do so.
“For us, there is some truth to the claim that you can’t go home,” Kate told him. “I haven’t been back to California in years. It’s easier to see old friends in new places, where it’s less jarring.”
David nodded slowly. He saw her point, even if a part of him considered not returning to California a somewhat harsher task than not returning to Maine. That he’d found the darker side of his friends in the safe haven of his old hometown had made the betrayal worse.
He took a sip of his coffee to hide his discomfort, as he didn’t want to talk about that to Kate just yet.
“How long did it take you to adjust?” he finally asked. He realized as he did that that he had no idea how long Mason had been with ONSET. He knew she was in her early twenties, so it couldn’t have been too long.
“There are days I’m not sure I have!” she replied with a laugh. “It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that the people I see outside of Omicron, even the other Wiccans, don’t believe in magic in the sense I wield it. Oh, I could give them such heart attacks,” she finished wickedly.
“Wiccans?” David asked slowly. The term wasn’t something he was familiar with, though it did ring a bell somewhere.
“My coreligionists,” Kate told him, touching the silver five-pointed star where it hung in her cleavage. “Think of it as tree-hugging turned into a religion,” she advised with another wicked grin.
Religion wasn’t something David knew—or cared to know—much about, so he let a semi-companionable silence descend over the room as he halfheartedly cast about for a subject change.
“Have you hit up the training room since you got back?” Kate finally asked into the silence.
“I’ve been too busy moving in,” David admitted. “I probably should, though.”
He’d promised Michael that he’d make up his missed training, he realized. With the move and the distraction of the events in Charlesville, he’d completely forgotten to take the time to do so.
“Well, if you’ll let me go change into more appropriate clothing, I’ll join you for a sparring match,” Kate offered.
“Sounds good to me,” David responded. While Krav Maga seemed to have been installed into his brain wholesale, he was sure that didn’t mean he didn’t have to practice and exercise to keep it there.
#
Training Hall K was empty when David and Kate reached it in the early afternoon. They were the only members of ONSET Nine looking to train, it seemed, and the other team they shared the hall with was on active duty in Montana.
Kate showed David the set of controls hidden in a concealed panel by the door that opened the sliding concrete doors built into the underground walls.
“You go change,” David told her after they’d opened the door to the floor mats. “I can grab the mats.”
“Show-off,” the Mage teased him as she entered the closet they’d opened. A number of padded karate gis were hung along one wall, and she grabbed one as David hauled the heavy mats out of the room easily.
Instead of ducking into a side room to change, however, she put the white robe over her shoulders and began to remove her T-shirt underneath it. She was mostly concealed from David by the gi, but he firmly focused his attention on the mat as she changed.
Kate’s laugh let him know when she was done changing, and he turned back to her with his cheeks flushing. Much as he enjoyed the young woman’s friendship, David remained aware of her physical attractiveness. Most of the time, it was a peripheral awareness, but every so often, she seemed to rub it in his face.
With a wry grin at his own thoughts, he gestured the gi-clad Mage to the mat and took one of the sets of padded robes and pants into a side room to change. He emerged in a few moments to the sight of Kate stretching her muscles.
He paused for a moment to watch. David recognized the smooth flow of her movements as that of someone long-practiced with the moti
ons, and wondered how much of that was Koburn or another trainer’s supernatural ability at work, how much was the years of training it suggested, and how much was just the woman’s natural talent and flexibility.
After the moment of watching, he joined her on the mat and fell into his own stretch routine. For several minutes, only the grunts of stretching and the smack of bare feet on the mat sounded in the training hall.
Finally, David finished stretching and turned to look at Kate. By now, the Mage was done with her own stretches and was waiting for him.
“Ready?” she asked. “Don’t hold back,” she continued when he nodded. “I hate it when people hold back.”
The pair assumed positions and, before David could even take a breath, Kate moved. She stepped forward into him and her fist snapped out, heading for his face. His forearm blocked it, knocking the blow aside as he stepped back for more space.
The Mage stepped forward aggressively, and for a moment, David gave more ground, blocking each of her strikes with precision. He slowly released his Sight, allowing himself to predict her blows and block them all.
Finally into the rhythm, he suddenly moved from defense to offense. He knew she was going to overextend, and grabbed her arm as she did so. A shift of his weight, and the Mage was stumbling across the mat as his open hand slammed into her back, shoving her away faster.
Kate turned and gave him a flash of a grin before driving back at him. This time, David moved into her blows, blocking and returning with strikes of his own. It didn’t take him long to realize he was vastly stronger than she was, and in the back of his mind, he started to worry.
He began to pull his blows, ever so slightly, so as not to strike with full force when he hit. The slight pull meant that Kate blocked more and more of his blows, but that was fine with him. With his longer reach and greater strength, he was now in control of the match and they both knew it.
Then he pulled a blow a bit too much, and Kate’s eyes flashed.
“I said,” she panted, “don’t hold back.” The Mage spat three words that David didn’t understand, and then moved.
A blur that might have been a fist slammed into David’s right shoulder, sending him stumbling back. A second blur, definitely a fist to his Empowered eyes but glowing to his Sight, slammed into his left thigh, taking the leg out from under him. As he began to fall, her first fist blurred back again and impacted on his chest.
With a burst of light, David was lifted off his feet and thrown clear across the room, slamming into the pile of mats in the storage closet with a loud crash.
#
For a long moment, David simply lay in the mats, catching his breath from how thoroughly and suddenly he’d been defeated. He slowly rose from them, rubbing his aching chest, to the sound of applause.
He glanced over at the noise to realize that, at some point, Michael O’Brien had entered the room to watch the sparring match. He was the one now applauding.
“She means it when she says not to hold back,” the werewolf told David, inclining his head to Kate. Like David, the Mage was still catching her breath. “That’s called Aureus Pugnus—the Golden Fist. The full name is much longer and more dramatic, but it was created by Hermetic magicians, so what can you expect?” he asked with a small smile.
“It’s a combination of martial arts and magic,” O’Brien continued, as Kate gestured that she was still catching her breath. “The Elfin have a similar form, called the Flame of Andúril—you’ll remember Riley’s idiots complaining about it—and I believe the vampire houses use a style called Spell Fang. Kate is usually generous enough not to use Aureus on the rest of us.”
“It’s a good thing to have in reserve,” the Mage added, having finally caught her breath. “I do know others who can sustain the form for longer. It really takes it out of me,” she finished ruefully.
“It’s an unpleasant surprise,” David told her as he reached the mat. “But I like unpleasant surprises for our enemies,” he reminded her with a smile, just in case she’d taken his words the wrong way.
Michael nodded, and then sighed. “Speaking of unpleasant surprises,” he said softly, “Kate, can I get you to give David and me some privacy?” he asked.
The young Mage raised an eyebrow but nodded. She grabbed her neatly stacked pile of clothing by the mats and disappeared off into one of the changing rooms. David found himself wondering just what the hell was going on, and turned to Michael.
“What’s up?” he asked as Kate disappeared through the door out of the hall. He was still sweaty and clad in the gi, but he suspected that Michael didn’t much care.
“It’s about Carderone,” Michael said grimly, his voice low enough to almost be a growl. “The Catholic Church has decided they want ‘independent verification of our story,’” he continued in a half-singsong. “They’re sending their own investigator, a Monsignor Cameron Rodriguez.”
“It makes sense,” David admitted. “We did kill one of their priests, after all.”
“Oh, it makes sense,” Michael agreed, his voice still a growl. “But any senior Ordo Longinus official could have done it. The Church’s supernaturals are just as present in America as anywhere else.”
David had heard vague references to the Ordo Longinus since joining ONSET. It was the supernatural branch of the Catholic Church. If you were a supernatural and a priest, you were part of the Ordo. In some parts of the world, Ordo priests were the only line of defense against the supernatural.
Logically, there would be senior Ordo priests in America, so who were they sending? Before David could ask, however, Michael answered.
“Rodriguez is coming from the Vatican itself,” he told David, and his voice was soft now, not a growl. “He’s a Papal Investigator, promoted from the Ordo Longinus but no longer a member of it. That makes him one of the Hounds of God, the Pope and Cardinals’ personal enforcers and investigators into the supernatural.”
“Damn,” David replied, his own voice soft. He’d caught one vague reference to the Hounds of God, and it had just been a mention of the term in reference to the Church.
“He wants to interview you specifically,” Michael told him, and David caught his breath. “This means he knows my reputation and hopes to get more out of you than me.”
“What should I tell him?” David asked after he managed to breathe again.
“The truth,” his Commander replied. “We did exactly what we should have done, so there’s no point in lying. You’re going to miss our next active deployment,” he continued, “as we won’t let him into the Campus. You’ll have to meet Rodriguez at OSPI Headquarters in New York.”
David’s mind reeled. He’d been just about ready to go out on another active duty cycle with his team, and now he was being completely yanked out for an interview?
“It sucks, David,” Michael told him. “But we don’t have a choice. Even if he wanted to talk to me, you’re more easily spared. The extra time to train won’t hurt you, though the rest of us will miss your Sight.”
The younger Agent nodded slowly. “When do I leave?”
“In the morning,” O’Brien instructed. “Pack to be there for a week; I don’t know how long they’ll keep you.”
“Understood,” David replied. With a glance to make sure his boss had nothing more to say, he headed for the change rooms.
“David,” Michael said after a moment, just before the junior man left the room.
“Yes sir?” David asked.
“Watch your step with Rodriguez,” the old werewolf ordered. “The Hounds have another, even less pleasant nickname.
“To those who’ve come up against them, they’re the Inquisitors.”
Chapter 18
David was slowly becoming more familiar with the transition when he traveled back into the “mundane” world from the ONSET Campus. Remembering that, to the rest of the world, nothing had really changed was hard sometimes.
His longest exposure to it, however, was the several-hour wait for his flight
at the Colorado Springs airport. An ONSET car had whisked him down to the airport and dropped him off, with only a small carry-on bag.
As a Federal Agent, David could travel on public flights armed, but the thought seemed mildly silly to him when he was moving from secured building to secured building. So, for the first time in weeks, he’d shed the concealed holsters under his crisp new black suit—not the highly expensive one Michael had bought him, but a cheaper one he’d picked up while waiting for ONSET Nine to return from their leave.
Unarmed or not, his government ID whisked him through security with an astonishing speed, and he found himself one of the first passengers on the plane to New York.
The flight was only supposed to be three hours long, so David settled down into the chair and pulled the provided blindfold over his eyes. He wasn’t sure what a Papal Investigator’s idea of an interview would be like, but he suspected he’d need all the sleep he could get before it.
#
OSPI Headquarters was tucked away in a quieter street of Manhattan’s skyscraper core. Rising thirty stories above the streets, it was an unassuming block of concrete and brick from the sixties that almost vanished into the crowd of similar buildings all around New York.
David was delivered to the front doors of the skyscraper by a suited young man who had quietly ignored his attempts at conversation. Upon reaching their destination, the young OSPI man had pulled up along the curb and popped the automatic locks.
“This is it,” he said simply. David gave the quiet youth a curt nod, a little annoyed at the man’s complete lack of companionability, and stepped into Manhattan’s streets.
Even in this quieter street, cars zipped past and crowds surged back and forth. The sheer noise and pressure of the New York crowd hammered against David’s calm. Even with his Sight all but turned off, the blur of auras and motion pressed on him.
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 16
