Modern Magic
Page 92
Being a freelance installation, troubleshooting, and upgrade geek meant crises came up when they came up, and never when it was convenient. Moreover, his clients needed his services the second they called. No bids, no waiting, and they paid out the nose for his availability and skill.
Most days, the urgency was energizing. At other times, when he’d been fighting some supernatural terror in someone else’s backyard, it just made him weary beyond telling.
Still, when the situation was dire, just like with magic, corporate decision making was fast and clean. When he quoted a fee, no matter how high, given his reputation, the client usually just said, “Do it.”
And when he saved everything, which he usually did, they thanked him and signed the check.
His other job—his real job—wasn’t nearly as lucrative or clear-cut. And it was even more unpredictable. Being Metro DC’s Adept Enforcer for the Eastern US Magical Council didn’t pay much, but it came with the perk of a shielded condo in this fabulous building.
With plenty of clients for his computer work, there was an elegant dovetail with his magical work. A flexible schedule was a plus when magical work called him out at odd hours and for odd happenings. Computer work did too, so no one was the wiser. And it came with a haven of protected rest when he was exhausted from dealing with either one.
“Morning, Mr. Bayliss!” The cheery greeting came from Ken, the night guard. He was packing up a backpack, ready to go off shift and head to class at American University.
“Hey, Ken.” Aiden managed to pretend cheerfulness as he strode to the counter. “Wow,” he said, catching a whiff of a heavily floral perfume. He waved his hand in front of his face. “I guess Mrs. Federline from the fourth floor’s been down already this morning.”
Ken looked surprised, but nodded. “I don’t get how you always know,” he said.
“It’s the perfume,” Aiden said. “Heavy duty.”
Ken nodded, but said, “I guess so, but I just don’t smell it like you do.” He gave an exaggerated sniff. “Only a little bit when she’s right at the desk. And not at all after she leaves. Anyway, you must be real sensitive.”
“Yeah, I guess. So, quiet night?” Aiden asked, changing the subject.
“Usually is, sir.” Ken turned to the old fashioned mail slots behind the desk. Aiden could see that his neighbors had mail, including the mostly absent Three-A, but instead of reaching into Aiden’s, which was empty, Ken hefted a big mail bin and passed it over the counter. “Here’s your mail.”
Thankful for the distraction, Aiden shifted his coat and computer so he could pick up the bin. Talking about the perfume wasn’t very smart since he didn’t want to draw Ken’s attention to the smell of scorched wool and the faint coppery overtone from the blood on his clothes. Aiden’s custom-tailored suit hadn’t fared well in the fight. Both Aiden and the suit had gotten toasted when the poltergeist slipped out of the shadows in the old warehouse and took the first shot.
Aiden tried not to wince as he lifted the bin. It hit the bandage on his wrist dead on as he brought it off the desk, and Aiden muffled a grunt of pain. The bastard poltergeist had gone for his sword arm.
Just like in the Atlanta battle.
The stab of guilt came right on schedule. It was a duller ache now, instead of sharp and blinding, which bothered him. He wanted it sharp, like the burn in his arm, like the pull of the stitches on his back. He needed the reminder of what happened when you let your guard down.
Right now, though, all that paled in the face of the need for sleep. He wanted to shower and fall into bed for, oh, about thirty-six hours.
Switching gears, he said, “So, Ken, any chance you’re going to finish that degree early?” Ken was an exceptional hacker and troubleshooter. Aiden had started him on getting his government clearances. He had a job waiting for Ken the instant he graduated.
The Council said they would consider Aiden’s latest request for a transfer. Miami, Dallas, and Seattle were open, but the Council was still cautious. When they finally agreed to transfer him to a hot zone, he’d need someone in place to serve his DC computer contracts.
Ken was perfect. He’d handle the clients, do the fix if he could, and call Aiden for the big stuff. Good for Aiden’s company, good for Ken, good for the clients.
“Nah,” Ken said ruefully. “But I’ll be ready in May, if the offer’s still open.”
“It is and will be,” Aiden said. “Keep me posted, all right?” For all his push about time, May would be perfect, if the Council would just get a move on and transfer him. Magic worked that way sometimes.
“Will do,” Ken said, turning to greet the incoming day-guard. Since the two men were talking, and not watching him, Aiden limped slowly up the short flight of stairs from the lobby to his condo.
Everything hurt. He’d landed on the ground, been thrown, actually, four or five times by the ’geist. He’d fought off a couple of feeders—non-corporeal energy thieves which followed ’geists and dark energy threats like remoras followed sharks—before he and Robert had dealt with the poltergeist. The ’geist had manifested fully in this dimension and had used its claws on him, then repeatedly tried to set them both on fire. So not only did Aiden ache everywhere, he also smelled like a chimney.
“Shopping,” he said, thinking about the ruined suit and the need to replace it. He hated shopping.
“Home, sweet home,” Aiden muttered, finally making it to the top of the broad stairs. He was so tired he considered just lying down on the oriental carpet under the table in the center of the upper lobby for a little nap. The four condos off this elegant upper lobby were among the biggest in the building. His apartment had been the residence of DC’s magical monitor since the building was built in 1905.
He drew in a deep breath, glad to be home.
A peculiar odor stopped him in his tracks. He’d expected the air to be clear, away from the echo of the floral perfume in the lower lobby. He smelled his burned clothes, of course, but there was more.
Something smelled odd. Off. It was faintly musky, and acrid, but in a different way than the loud perfume or the scorched fabric smell of his clothes.
Pivoting in place, he looked around. All the doors were closed, including the one that led down to the courtyard garden. Since none of the current tenants had pets, it wasn’t used.
He glanced at the mail, wondering if that was the source of the smell. He spotted the feminine handwriting of a former girlfriend. She still sent him a birthday card, trying to keep the door open for a relationship that could never be.
He’d told her it wasn’t her. It was him.
It was always him. A magical adept, one of the highest level practitioners, didn’t often get involved with long-term lovers or a wide circle of friends. You didn’t provide the enemy with ready targets if you could help it. And an Adept Enforcer—an officially sanctioned regional protector, and the strongest magical practitioner available—never gave evil a target.
Enforcers couldn’t afford those connections. Or those feelings.
Especially not when you’re a freak of nature.
The bright red ink announcing OVERDUE! on several of the envelopes on the top of the pile distracted him from that train of thought.
“Crap! I need a minion.” Which made him forget the smell and wonder for the umpteenth time if he could persuade Carol, his second in command, to take on his personal stuff.
Carol was an ace software geek, though, not a personal assistant. She managed his accounts in Atlanta. Carol had told him repeatedly over the three years since he’d left Georgia to find a PA. Better yet, two. One for personal, one for business.
He repressed the full-on flashback that tried to surface when he thought about Atlanta. After three years the panic attacks weren’t bad, but they still came. His last magical battle there cost lives and put him in the hospital for a month.
After the fifth surgery, and when they were sure he’d survive the physical wounds, the Council put him in DC, to let him
recover from his magical ones. Since DC was a null zone, magically, he’d been sent down to the bush leagues. Not even the minors.
For the first year or so, that had been just fine. Not any more, though.
Aiden was a freak of nature. He had more power than any Adept Enforcer in recorded history. Even his mentor hadn’t had the same level of power. Skill, yes. Power, no.
But since Atlanta, the Council had marked him as high risk. A liability. Up until recently, they’d not trusted him to go back to the big leagues, even to help. Especially not a hot zone.
Here, in DC, they’d reassured him, his magical work let him avoid the kinds of powerful entities that stalked Atlanta. It kept the stress away.
Nobody had expected him to become the on-call backup for every adept on the East Coast. But still, even with those the baddies were usually mid-level at worst. Calls from his regional associates didn’t come every day, or even every week, as they had in Georgia.
Three years ago, busted all to hell, he’d needed that break. Now, not so much.
Then again, no one expected what he’d faced in that last Atlanta battle, either.
Last week, he’d reminded the Council that, as good as DC was for healing, an Adept Enforcer of his power and skill was needed where there was real trouble, not in the relatively still waters of the nation’s Capital.
He pushed the restless thoughts aside and fished out his keys, shifting the bin of mail to his left hip. There was a bruise there too, he discovered as the mail bin hit it. Time to get clean, change the bandages, and sleep.
He unlocked the door, and a familiar disorientation hit him like a brick. Time slowed. He swayed in place, losing his grip on the bin. Mail and keys crashed to the floor as a vision hit him, full force.
A woman’s face, strong and angular. It melted and changed. Another face—and yet was still her.
Rapid-fire snapshots of a possible reality. Brunette, then blonde and green eyed, she disappeared in a welter of fire, smoke and crushing concrete.
The vision was so real, so urgent, that Aiden threw out a hand, drawing in power to act, forming the words to a spell that could save her. He couldn’t lose someone again, not like Atlanta. Not like this.
Before he completed the spell, the vision shifted.
Still blonde and green-eyed, vibrantly alive in a fiery red uniform covered in braid and bristling with weapons—two of them pointed straight at him.
The vision changed again.
She was naked in his bed—and holy gods she was magnificent—rising over him in passion, filled with a power of her own that made her seem to glow from within.
The vision stopped cold. It departed like a sucking vortex taking the last erg of his energy with it. He staggered into the wall and had to brace himself to keep from falling. Even though he’d known it was a vision, such was the urgency, the near reality of it, that he’d automatically drawn power to act.
“Whoa,” Aiden muttered, bracing on the doorframe. “Holy crap.”
Since no one was there—and thank the gods for that—he took a moment to let his heart rate slow, to get re-grounded in his aching body. Every strained muscle wept as he bent to pick up the scattered mail and the keys he’d dropped.
His hands shook as he opened the door, and he kicked it shut with more force than he’d intended. As if that would help. It took him a full five minutes to gather his wits.
What in seven hells was that about?
He was inside the building’s shields, so it wasn’t from an outside force. It was a true vision. It was also the most realistic, real-time vision he’d ever had.
He’d never seen the woman, didn’t recognize the uniform. The change in appearance she’d manifested bothered him, as he knew of only one shapeshifter and that one was a man.
Despite the current fad in fiction, shifters were rare, very few and far between. The whole process was so convoluted and painful, it was a difficult genetic trait to survive. Most never made it past their first shift.
She wasn’t a succubus. That would have shown in the changes he witnessed. A succubus couldn’t hide its darker nature. Not from an adept anyway.
What the hell?
More disturbing than the visions were the feelings which accompanied it. He felt the pressure of imminent danger. From the woman, he’d felt a sense of power and purpose.
He hadn’t had a vision in months, and not one that strong since Atlanta. They always preceded trouble, like a harbinger telling him to prepare. Much as he’d like to blame the sexy babe vision on fatigue or his underserved libido, he couldn’t. He knew better.
He took stock, now that he was more grounded. The immediacy wasn’t tomorrow, even though it was soon. That meant he’d better be ready.
He dropped his keys on the table, set the mail on the floor and held out his hands. They shook.
Ready meant strong. Recharged. At the moment, he was anything but.
He set his phone to silent, and stumbled to the bedroom.
Chapter Two
Kithship Malkali (Star’s Light)
Rim Planet Orbit, *****7690-90384, Sixth Sector (Earth)
Slip-Drop: ST Patten (Earth Human)
Melodious chimes woke Cait at exactly six-hundred-thirty, standard time. If that hadn’t woken her, the smell of coffee would have.
“Nectar of the Gods,” she muttered, and swung off the sleep ledge to pick the mug up with both hands. The colorful patterns on the stoneware were bright. The letters said Barcelona.
A souvenir.
She had quite the collection now. Very little shipweight penalty, and they reminded her she was an Earth human in a strange, strange world. Kithship captains were wont to allow these kinds of foibles from Slip Travelers on Rim planets.
“What’s a little weight in comparison to keeping us sane?” Cait let the cynical words ring out in the cabin’s deep silence.
She sipped, and felt the world renew. She might be in space, working for aliens, but she could still, by God, get Kona coffee.
Mug in hand, she headed for the shower. She liked eight hours of sleep before a mission, but with the typical pre-drop nightmares—usually a full-on, real sight-and-sound memory version of the World Trade Center collapse—it wasn’t always possible.
Last night hadn’t been as bad as some. She hadn’t gotten to the part about being crushed by tons of concrete.
Regardless, the nightmares preceded a drop. A drop meant going home.
Home.
Cait’s heart jumped a little at the thought. Tears stung her eyes. It happened every time she thought about home.
She looked around for Lance. He’d brought coffee, so he knew she was up.
“Hey Lance,” she said, letting him know she was willing to talk to him. He knew better than to appear before coffee. He knew all about her. Too much.
“Good morning,” he replied from the doorway, all masculine heat and sensuality. “Would you like breakfast now or after your shower?”
“After. And I’d like—”
“A refill? Of course.” He waved an elegant hand, his full sleeves making the move cinematically graceful. “I have another cup brewing.”
She grinned at the picture he made. Dressed like a buccaneer, right down to the billowing shirt, breeches and tall, polished boots, he was pure sexual fantasy, hotter than a match head, and totally devoted to her pleasure.
She’d picked his wardrobe. The Kith—her supervisors—thought it was a sex thing. The Kith might be a race of six-foot felines, but they were as obsessed with sex as a fifteen-year-old boy.
Lance’s rakish garb wasn’t about sex though. It ensured she never forgot he was an android, a fantasy of a man. No heartbeat, though she could have programmed that.
No heart.
The Kith believed regular sex kept a being healthy and sane, and she agreed. Mostly. But Lance was her warden as much as her lover. She never wanted to forget what it was like to be with a real man.
She smiled into her cup. Unlike Lance, re
al men were often selfish. They frequently dressed like the homeless, even if they weren’t. And good or bad, they had hearts. She never wanted to forget that especially.
She drank deeply, fighting the melancholy. So the nightmares hadn’t been bad this time. Instead, she got teary depression.
She shook her head.
Snap out of it, Patten. Get your head in the game.
Cait rinsed down in the shower and stepped into the air chamber to dry off. Lance was a conundrum.
She perversely chose the constant reminders that he wasn’t real. He was there to repair weapons, do laundry, keep the sexual machinery well-oiled, and hold her when the nightmares came. And tell the Kith about all of it.
She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he reported the nightmares to someone.
Thirteen years ago, Cait had awakened on a spaceship. The Sh’Aitan and the Kith had retrieved her from the World Trade Center’s collapsing North Tower at the last second. They’d healed her injuries, old and new, even the battle wounds that had cost her a career in the Marine Corps. Then they’d offered her a contract to be Earth’s ST, its Slip Traveler.
Earth was a Rim planet, a planet almost-but-not-quite ready to be made aware of the Alliance and of the worlds out there full of other beings. Those worlds had people—some slimy or scaly, some furred, some two-legged, some five-armed or some who combined all of the above.
Some were aware of the Alliance, and some were not. Until Earth grew up a little and opted to join the Alliance, the planet needed protection.
And she was it.
Of course, since death was the alternative to signing on for her tour of duty as Earth’s ST, it hadn’t been a tough choice. But they were watching her, because to them, she was the alien. Another reason she kept Lance separate in her mind.
Lance appeared beyond the frosted plas-glass, and she smelled breakfast. Her stomach growled.