by Dan Willis
“In each of the three warehouses, one of the opened crates contained radio parts.”
Alex furrowed his brow as he wrote that down.
“Why would someone break open a box of radio parts?” he wondered out loud.
“I wondered that too,” Sherry said. “So I called the radio stations where the parts were delivered. According to the secretary at each station, the parts were to upgrade their existing equipment.”
Alex felt his headache getting worse.
“So this could just be someone trying to sabotage their competitors,” he said. “Give me the addresses of these radio stations.”
Alex wrote them down as she gave them to him, then thanked her and hung up. He was tempted to call Iggy and get him started on Diego and Maria de Naglowska but he didn’t have time to explain it all with Barton expecting him out in Brooklyn.
With a sigh of resignation, he put away his notebook and picked up his hat from the little shelf. Turning, he opened the booth door and came face to face with the man from the counter. Alex realized, a moment too late, that it was the athletic man in the wool suit he’d seen in Theo’s shop. The man smiled at him — a look of immense satisfaction — then he raised his arm, bringing a snub-nosed revolver with it, and fired three times.
Alex staggered back as the bullets hit him in the chest and upper arm. It happened so quickly that he hadn’t had time to activate his flash ring or turn his back. He slammed into the back of the phone booth and dropped unceremoniously to the floor, not sure if his shield runes had stopped the bullets or if one of them had hit him where his jacket didn’t cover. Even if the shield runes had stopped the bullets, the revolver still had three left and Alex only had two remaining shield runes. If he moved or tried to get up, the athletic man would just keep shooting.
Alex did the only thing he could think of. He played dead.
Above him the gunman hesitated, then he turned and ran out the front of the shop, slamming the door open and sending the bell above it flying.
Alex waited a full fifteen seconds before opening an eye. The only thing remaining of his assailant was the swinging door and the broken bell on the floor.
“Mister?” the terrified voice of the cook called. “Mister, are you okay?”
Alex wondered just what the man thought had happened that would leave him okay. The gunman had been a pro. He waited until Alex was in an enclosed space, with nowhere to go, and had shot at point blank range.
Looking down, Alex found that his white shirt was still pristine. The gunman’s bullets had hit his left lapel and shoulder. Closing his eyes, he said a silent prayer of thanks and crossed himself.
“Mister?” the cook called out again. From the sound of it, he was still hiding behind the lunch counter.
“I’m all right,” Alex said, climbing to his feet. “Guy must have been nervous. He missed me.”
As Alex exited the booth, the cook peeked up over the counter, his eyes the size of saucers.
“Wow, Mister, you was really lucky,” the man said, finally standing up.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Alex said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. “Mr. Lucky.” He nodded in the direction of the vanished gunman. “You ever see that guy before?”
The cook shook his head.
“He just came in and asked for a sandwich.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, he bought a bunch of cigarettes, too,” the cook said. “Then he stood over there by the door while I made the sandwich. He only just came back when you came in.”
Alex nodded. The man had been watching for him and used the five and dime for cover. It was a good plan, one Alex had used himself.
Knowing that the would-be assassin was long gone, Alex turned back to the counter. Moving down to the end, he found the plate with a half-eaten ham sandwich and an ashtray with a still-smoldering cigarette in it.
“You said the man bought cigarettes from you?” Alex asked the cook.
The cook nodded, his eyes still bulging.
Alex picked up the cigarette and sniffed it, then he turned it over in his hand. It was shorter than a normal cigarette and the aroma was strange.
“Is this one of the cigarettes he bought,” Alex asked. “Or did he already have an open pack?”
“He…he bought that one,” the cook said.
“That’s what I thought,” Alex said, taking out his own silver cigarette case and flipping it open. He crushed out the gunman’s cigarette and dropped it into an empty spot in his case.
Snapping the case shut, Alex returned it to his pocket and made his way to the still open front door.
“Hey,” the cook called out. “Shouldn’t you wait for the cops? I mean, we should call the cops, right?”
Alex looked back at the man with a shrug.
“And tell them what? That someone neither of us ever saw before took a shot at me and missed?”
“Uh,” the cook said. From the look his face, he was certain there was something wrong with Alex’s statement but wasn’t able to work out what.
“Tell you what,” Alex said, taking one of his cards out of his shirt pocket and dropping it on the lunch counter. “If that guy comes back to buy more cigarettes, you call me. Understand?”
“He won’t,” the cook said. “He bought out all the packs I had.”
Alex nodded, more to himself than the cook, and walked out, shutting the swinging door behind him.
The skycrawler ride out to Brooklyn took half an hour and it gave Alex plenty of time to think. He’d been lucky, very lucky, and he knew it. If the gunman had aimed for Alex’s tie, Dr. Wagner would be scraping what was left of him out of that phone booth.
With a great deal of personal satisfaction, no doubt.
He needed to figure out a better way to deploy his shield runes, something that would cover the center of his chest. He’d thought about putting the runes on his vest, but then they wouldn’t protect his arms. Of course, if he was shot where his suit coat didn’t cover, it wouldn’t matter if he could use his arms. Like most magic, it was a trade-off, and he’d have to spend some serious time thinking about it before he changed anything.
By the time he arrived at Barton Electric’s Brooklyn Relay Tower, his watch showed just past four. He waved at the security guards, who knew him by sight, and headed up in the elevator to the top floor. As the door opened, the noise of workmen and the sounds of construction greeted him.
“Right on time,” Barton called over the din as Alex emerged from the elevator.
“Came as soon as I could,” he said, looking up. In the space where the roof had been there were only the wooden joist beams. “What’s all this?”
Barton looked up as one of the workmen walked across the joist, sending a shower of sawdust and dirt cascading down. The Lightning Lord made a shooing gesture with his hand and the dust shifted away from his navy-blue suit.
“I was going over the blueprints last night and I realized that I can extend the tower’s range another half-mile if I replace the roof with one made of steel and make it slightly convex. The problem is, it will take three days to do the work, so I’ll need you to keep putting those waterproofing runes on the transfer plate case until they’re done.”
Alex grinned at that. It was about time he got an easy request. He’d started using rune engraving to fix the roof at the old Brotherhood of Hope when he was a teenager. For the glass case he could scribe the rune into a brass plate and just mount it on the top of the glass. That would last at least a month, well past when the new roof should be done.
He explained the process to Barton, who nodded enthusiastically the whole time.
“How long will it take to make that plate?” he asked.
“I have a piece of brass that will work,” Alex said. “But I’ll need to prepare it for the rune and that will take a few hours. I’ll work on it tonight and have it ready for tomorrow.”
Barton looked up at the sky through the hole in the roof.
“Do you h
ave another of those fancy barrier runes?” he asked. “I have other projects I need to work on, but I don’t want to leave if it might rain.”
Alex nodded. Of course a sorcerer could keep the transfer plate case dry; his magic was far more powerful than Alex’s, but while sorcerers could create powerful and near-permanent spells, utility magic required them to focus on the problem. If Barton wanted to use magic to keep the transfer plates dry, he would have to stay on site.
Alex pulled out his rune book and flipped to the back where he kept the runes he didn’t use much. After a few moments of searching, he tore out his remaining standard barrier rune, mentally adding it to the growing list of runes he needed to write to restock his red book.
“This’ll hold through tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll come by after church and mount the brass plate on top of the case.”
Barton smiled and the lines of stress bled out of his face. Alex didn’t wonder about that; with the power fluctuating in Brooklyn for the last couple of days, it was a sure thing Barton was getting an earful from the city.
“The Jersey City Tower won’t be this much trouble,” Barton said, leaning wearily against the glass case. “I promise.”
Alex didn’t trust himself to respond to that. When he stepped up to stick the barrier rune to the top of the glass case, however, thoughts of Barton’s woes and the upcoming tower across the river were driven from his mind. His skin prickled as he felt the protective bubble of the still active barrier pass over him.
The rune he’d cast yesterday should have expired by now. It was possible for runes to last longer than anticipated, little things about how they were written could affect that. The problem here was that, as barrier runes decayed, the bubble of protection they created became weaker and weaker.
The bubble Alex had just passed through when he approached the case felt as it were near full strength.
“Something wrong?” Barton asked, noticing Alex’s confusion.
“No,” Alex said, sticking the new rune to the top of the glass. “It’s just the previous rune hasn’t fully decayed yet.”
“But that’s not a problem,” Barton said, his worry lines creeping back onto his face. “It’s not going to interfere with the new one, right?”
Alex nodded his assurance.
“Most runes can occupy the same space without interfering with each other,” he said, lighting the flash paper with his lighter. Rune interference would cause runes and their effects to decay quickly. It was the principle reason he couldn’t have more than five shield runes on his suit coat at one time.
That reminded Alex, he’d need to put new shield runes on his coat to replace the ones used up that afternoon.
Alex sighed as he added that to the list of things he had to do before he could sleep.
“Is it working?” Barton asked as the glow of the barrier rune faded away.
Alex could feel the fresh power of the new rune and he nodded.
“Good,” Barton said. “Get that brass plate done and then get some rest. You look like hell.”
Alex chuckled and nodded, then, before he could protest, Barton grabbed his shoulder and they both vanished.
23
Nil
“You look like five miles of bad road,” Iggy greeted Alex as he came into the kitchen at the brownstone. “Did you manage to track down the apprentice?”
Alex shook his head as he slumped down into one of the heavy kitchen chairs. Iggy was cooking something, which smelled wonderful, but Alex was just too wrung out to care.
“Well, you know about the first part of my day,” he said. “After almost getting blown up by an insane runewright, I went to look into that illustration of the naked woman.”
“Any luck with that?”
Alex pulled the thin leather book he’d bought from Theo from where it stuck up out of his jacket pocket and dropped it on the table. Iggy wiped his hands on his apron and came over to examine it.
“The Hanging Mystery,” he read the title with interest.
“I wouldn’t,” Alex said as he opened the front flap. “It’s by the woman in the picture, Maria de Naglowska. It’s her treatise on how the suspension of an intimate partner can allow people to gain magic powers.”
Iggy rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Not this nonsense again,” he said, dropping the book on the table.
“You know about this stuff?” Alex asked, sitting up.
“Such theories have been pursued and practiced throughout history,” he said, stirring something on the stove. “Every few decades someone with enough charisma manages to gather followers to go dancing around naked in the woods practicing free love and such. It’s a vulgar perversion of both magic and human intimacy.”
“So there’s nothing to it?” Alex asked.
“Of course not,” Iggy said, sounding as if the question should have been self-evident. “If that worked, I guarantee you would have heard of it before now.”
“But you said that blood magic works,” Alex countered. “And I hadn’t heard of that until this week.”
“That would seem to be obvious as well,” Iggy said. “When we draw life energy, we don’t use humans, we use swine. So why is the apprentice killing people, something that’s bound to attract attention, instead of just using animals?”
“You think it has to be human blood for him to use it as a source of magic.”
“His behavior thus far supports that conclusion,” Iggy said.
“Not necessarily,” Alex said, looking at the book on the table. “So far, Deigo has killed prostitutes, ones that he’s been intimate with, and he’s suspended their bodies, just like Maria advocates in her book.”
Iggy nodded, stroking his mustache.
“If he believed what Maria was selling, he might think the blood and the sex are linked,” he said at last. “Each one making the other stronger.”
“That would explain why he uses human blood,” Alex said. “Unfortunately it doesn’t help Danny and I catch him.”
Iggy didn’t respond as he took the pan he was stirring off the stove.
“Is there any way to modify the finding rune so Diego won’t know it’s found him?” Alex asked.
Iggy shook his head.
“You’ve already got the best finding rune I know how to make,” he said, then added, “I suppose I could give it some thought. Maybe something will come to me.”
Iggy picked up a plate and brought it to the table while Alex moved Maria’s book further down. The plate had a baked potato and a slab of meat on it, and both were covered by a reddish-brown sauce. Once Iggy put the plate down, Alex’s appetite came roaring back.
“So what else happened today?” Iggy asked, returning to fix a plate for himself.
“Someone tried to kill me,” he said, listening to his stomach growl. “They almost managed it too.”
Iggy returned to the table, setting down his own plate, then gave Alex a penetrating look.
“I see you weathered the attack well enough,” he said, sitting opposite Alex. “Now say grace for us, and don’t forget to thank the good Lord that you’re alive.”
Alex did as he was told and, once he’d finished, Iggy began questioning him about the attack in the phone booth.
“Maybe you should split up your shield runes,” Iggy said when Alex finished the story. “Put two on your vest and the rest on the coat.”
“What I need is a way for a shield rune to cover my whole body,” he said. “Could I tattoo them on my skin like the escape rune?”
“Yes,” Iggy acknowledged. “But you’d have to have them redone every time one got used.”
Alex didn’t like the sound of that.
“Maybe put two on my body and the other three on my coat,” he said. “That’d protect me if someone tried to shoot me in the head.”
Iggy prevaricated, weighing the idea.
“For now that’s a workable solution, but I want you to get that escape rune put on first.”
&nbs
p; “I’ll go see Joe Mamoru tomorrow,” Alex said. Joe was a second-generation Japanese who was probably the best tattoo artist in the city. When Alex first approached tattoo artists to do his original escape rune, most of them hadn’t even wanted to try it. Joe took it as a challenge.
“Good,” Iggy said. “Do you think the shooter is the same person who sent you and Sorsha that bottle of drugged wine?”
“No,” Alex said, though he had to admit, it wasn’t a far-fetched idea. “Whoever sent the wine was after Sorsha, not me. The drug removed her power, remember?” He reached into his vest pocket and took out his silver cigarette case. Opening it, he took out the stub of the cigarette the gunman had been smoking and passed it across the table.
Iggy took the stub and turned it over in his hand, then sniffed it.
“Nil,” he said, setting it down again. “An uncommon brand but not unknown.”
“According to the cook at the lunch counter, the gunman was very excited to see them and bought his entire stock.”
Iggy considered that for a long moment, then nodded.
“You think your Teutonic friends are back,” he said.
Alex nodded.
“Nil is a German brand of cigarette,” he said. “And the gunman’s reaction to seeing them means they are likely his favorite brand. As you said, Nil is an uncommon brand in the States, so it follows that the shooter is German.”
“It’s not an airtight case,” Iggy said with a frown, but then he nodded. “But it seems the most likely explanation. The question bothering me is why? It’s been four years since you foiled the Nazis’ plan to start a civil war here in the U.S. Seems like a long time to wait for revenge.”
“True,” Alex admitted. “But as far as I know, I haven’t had any other interactions with Nazis.”
“Maybe it’s about something entirely different,” Iggy said. “Just because the gunman hails from Germany doesn’t mean he’s an agent of their government. Maybe the gunman is connected to one of your current cases.”
Alex had considered that idea, but Diego didn’t seem like the type to have others do his dirty work, and he wasn’t even close to catching the gang who broke into the warehouse. As far as he knew, they didn’t even know he was after them. When Alex expressed these doubts, Iggy gave him a steady look.
