Modern Magic
Page 97
Still planning her course of action, she gathered her things and walked back to the Chain Bridge parking area.
She returned to the condo in the fading light of late afternoon. An unfamiliar car sat in the formerly empty space marked for Three-A. She’d also seen a limo parked near the entrance as she drove down into the garage.
Matching this with Aiden’s comment about the shack up pad, she decided the couple must be pretty well off, or very highly connected.
The sight of a dark-suited woman perched watchfully on one of the stiff lobby chairs told her highly connected was dead on. The woman was, ostensibly, reading The Washington Post. The minute Cait opened the door from the garage, the woman tensed and leaned forward.
Cait recognized security in one glance, possibly government by the clear earpiece tucked discreetly in her collar. That meant a team. Cait smiled a hello, then pretended to ignore the woman entirely.
Shit. She’d better let the Sh’Aitan know to deepen and broaden whatever cover they’d created for her.
Tarik had left at five, and an older night watchman, Dave by his nametag, was on duty. She accepted another FedEx package and raised an eyebrow, tilting her head toward the watching woman.
“Three-A?” was all she said.
Dave flashed her a gap-toothed smile. “That’s right. Quiet-like most times. Then right active, if you know what I mean.” He said it with a wink.
“You bet,” she replied in the same laconic tone. Taking the mail, she wished him goodnight. Ms. Protective Detail watched her climb the stairs. Cait grinned. After Serbian rebels and the various aliens she’d faced down, the stare of a plain old human guard didn’t faze her.
Once inside, she checked her own security measures. With what looked like a Senator, Congressman or woman, or possibly a cabinet member, boinking next door, she wouldn’t put it past some officious protector to check out the new neighbor’s condo.
To her relief, all her telltales were still in place. She shut off the infrared monitors and picked up the small slips of paper, stacking them on the desk for later use.
If she’d known she’d have a cheating dignitary as a sometime neighbor, she’d have insisted on a different living space. For an ST, exposure was NOT an option. If the press found out about whatever was up next door, her anonymity could be compromised. That could mean the end of her job, and possibly the end of her life. The Sh’Aitan didn’t play when it came to secrecy.
She so didn’t want to go there.
Her stomach rumbled. Early for dinner, but she was starving. Unfortunately, the refrigerator was bare.
She borrowed a takeout menu from the security desk and called in an order. The day guard had clued her in that she’d broken protocol by having the pizza guy come to the door.
“They should be here within thirty minutes,” she said to Dave as she turned to go back upstairs. “You’ll give me a call, right?”
“Yes, ma’am, sure will,” Dave assured her.
Security Chick watched her the whole time.
Cait stopped in the hallway, listening intently. The shack up was none of her business and she didn’t care. But what happened around her that could expose who she was? That was a different thing. It paid to keep eyes and ears open.
All that came through Three-A’s door were the faint sounds of conversation. Since that could be the television, it was useless.
Without warning, the hair on the back of Cait’s neck rose. She spun to look down the stairs. She was out of Dave’s line of sight and the security chick’s as well. Yet she still had the sense of being assessed. Measured. Watched. It was even stronger outside her door. Her nerves twitched and pinged.
Not good. Was it Aiden Bayliss, of the nice ass and steely gaze? Or the yet-to-be-met Mrs. Potts?
Cait hurried inside. Grabbing her PDA, she set it to scan for alien life forms, or any prying electronic eyes.
Adrenaline pulsed when it beeped a fast-busy sequence, but the excitement was short-lived. Within seconds, it flatlined into a “no scanable data” signature.
“Dammit.” She shut it down, then rebooted. This time it went straight from scanning to flatline.
But her intuition said someone or something had been watching her in that hallway.
An alien would have registered.
Anything else would have—or should have—given her the proverbial Prepare to Freak Out symbols on her scanner rather than no data.
The Kith hadn’t reported anything else on-planet right now other than the one-probably-two Ty-Ops. And no Earth technology could monitor her without registering on the PDA.
“One of those moments,” she groused. She hated it when there was no hard evidence. She could still hear Brian Dusenberg, her squadron leader, in her headset. “Hey Mystic, got any feelings ’bout this mission?” he’d asked as the engines of the three Harrier jets roared to life and they rolled in a line toward takeoff.
When she’d said yes, they’d believed her. Trusted her. Taken all the precautions they could take. And the whole thing had gone to hell anyway, even with her warning.
That same feeling rode along her spine right this very minute.
Chapter Seven
Cait headed straight for the bedroom. She snapped open one of her stainless steel cases.
She was already armed, but she wanted more.
The glitter didn’t distract her. She slid simple silver bracelets set with gold designs and red and blue gems on her wrists.
They went with any outfit, from jeans to cocktail attire, and featured laser weapons and poisoned darts which would work on most life forms with a varying degree of toxicity.
“Now I feel better,” she announced to the quiet room. She touched a sequence on the garnet-like stones, and the bracelets contracted, fitting themselves close to her skin. The small, innocuous-looking hand laser, which she dropped in the pocket of her hoodie, was just a nod to her paranoia.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s not someone following you.”
Her Harrier strike squadron had held its fire against orders and avoided killing a platoon of marine infantrymen because of her gut “feelings.” Those same feelings had saved the other pilots and aircraft in the fiasco that had taken her military career. The ambush, which could so easily have taken them all, only caught her.
She was also one of the longest serving STs for Earth. If paranoia meant survival, she’d take it.
When the intercom buzzed, she jumped.
“Jeeeez, woman,” she chided herself. “Get a grip.”
She tugged her sleeves over the bracelets and locked the condo door behind her as she went to get her food. The I’m watching feeling had dissipated, but the taste of it was still there. Complications were not part of the plan, damn it.
All she wanted was to get the known Opthoid out of the river and get it spacebound. That would take away the primary threat. If there was a second one, and she was going to go with the Murphy’s Law likelihood that there was, she could then find it at her leisure rather than having to deal with poisoned watercourses and toxic cleanup.
Then, she promised herself, she’d take a few days of R&R before heading back shipside.
As she passed the still-hostile guard chick, a Sh’Aitan proverb popped into her mind.
Even clear waters hold monsters.
The thought, and the timing of it, pissed her off.
Back at her door, meal in hand, she glanced across the hall. Did Aiden have some kind of psi talent? People who did sometimes gave her that antsy, being-watched feeling. And there had been that blue flash…
It hadn’t registered as alien, but you never knew. Had he been the source?
A conundrum crossed with a mystery. None of which she needed.
Alternating keystrokes and bites of dinner, Cait monitored the DC-metro news. Unprepared equaled dead. Her least favorite drill sergeant had shouted that at her over and over. It had been annoying. But true.
“Speaking of annoying, what po
ssessed you to say you’d go to lunch with Aiden, you idiot?” She forked up a bite of spicy beef.
“All right, you’ll do lunch with him one time, if he asks again, which he will, given the glint in his eye. But that’s that.”
A good plan. She just hoped she could stick to it. Lance notwithstanding, she could use a little male attention.
“Either way, other than lunch, he’s off limits, m’girl,” she lectured herself. “Do the job. Get it done, and screw the complications.” She snickered. “Not the neighbor.”
Vigilance had gotten her through flight school. Earned her the wings she’d worked so hard for, and when she was shot down, it had kept her alive on the ground until help arrived. She’d survived, and so had the Force Recon team she’d fought beside as they’d defended their hopeless position. And it had paid off.
If Aiden were the source of the twitchies, and not just the sexual twitchies, an hour or two at lunch would confirm it.
Her PDA beeped with the download signal.
“Huh.” She read the dispatch twice. The words didn’t change.
According to the Kith, Aiden Bayliss was just what he said he was. A software geek. A very successful one. Her heart clenched over the childhood tragedy that took his parents’ lives, and she frowned over a carjacking in Atlanta that put him in the hospital for months, but nothing else stood out.
It was there, in black and white, but it wasn’t right.
She knew there was more.
* * *
A fight was coming. Aiden was sure of it.
He shoveled in more leftover spaghetti as he paced around the kitchen. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he’d learned his lesson. He couldn’t work without fuel.
That shielding on Cait’s condo was adept-level work. And she wasn’t on the Council’s radar.
If she was witness protection, that might explain the cleaned records, but it didn’t explain the shields.
He’d only ignored red flags like that once in his life. Because of a woman. Thanks to that woman, death had nearly taken him through the curtain in the bloodiest possible way.
The woman was still running from Aiden, and all she’d seen, as far as he knew. He’d had a chance with Marcia, or so he thought, a chance to have more than just magic and software. A chance to have a life. A real one. A future. A legacy.
Everything he’d ever wanted.
But that was for other people. Marcia taught him that.
He should be grateful, really. That hard slap of reality, that ultimate rejection in his hour of need, told him he was destined to be alone. Always. Other adepts might have families, might make lives that interconnected with their magic.
His magic was too volatile. Too dangerous.
He was too dangerous.
“Old news. Shake it off. Marcia moved on. You’ve done the same.”
Maybe after he did his evening magical scan, he’d put the building’s weight room to good use. Pounding iron was exactly what he needed to drown that line of thinking. He needed to get some of the static out of the way. The sexual tension from his neighbor. A summons from the Council. All of it was interfering with his ability to keep things focused.
Maybe the Council would finally answer his petition for the position in Seattle or Dallas. If he had to live this life, he wanted to go where he was really needed. He had to be where he could be useful, make a difference, or he was going to go nuts.
But for now, he wanted to figure out what the hell was going on in DC.
He took a quick, cleansing shower and changed to his adept’s ceremonial robe. Then he gathered his tools. Taking both sword and athame from their cases in the closet, he went to the second bedroom. One flip rolled back the rug to uncover the circle of inlaid wood inscribed with ancient symbols and glyphs for the four directions.
Shifting his altar from where he stored it discreetly under the bed to the center of the ritual circle, Aiden lit candles in tall, forged-iron holders at the four cardinal points, saluting the quarters as he worked around the ritual space. After a moment of prayers to both the God and Goddess of the Hunt for this working, he gave his usual respect to the Christian God of his childhood.
That done, Aiden called the power of the Circle around him.
Silver-blue light sprang up, gleaming around the outer edges of the inlaid wood. The intensity of the light showed that he was indeed at full strength.
Ready.
Aiden knelt and reverently laid his tools on either side of the altar. Aligning them perfectly, he called the natural elements.
“Earth is strong, and water holds my fate,” he chanted, dipping fingers in salt, earth from his native Texas and purified water. “Fire I call, and Air, its mate.”
He lit the small candle on the altar and tapped the chime that sat on it for air. It wasn’t the usual order, but it worked for him.
The shielding mantle of elemental protection rose as a second layer of fortification around him, feeling comfortable and steady.
This time, he’d start from the outermost reaches of his territory and work inward. He would See what he needed to See.
Blocking out the physical, he focused deeply into his own magical network. He let the energy flows in his body surface to his mind. A cut on his hand from the fight which he hadn’t noticed, the itch of the tape and gauze over the healed stitches, the faded bruises. The last bad bone break from Atlanta, still achy but healed. He acknowledged and dismissed those.
With deeper and deeper breaths, he shifted from physical grounding to Sight.
The map formed in his mind. Sliding along I-95, he scanned Baltimore, the harbor and all the southern suburbs surrounding that city.
There were blips and peeps of paranormal activity and magic, but all in the normal range. Every place had its ghosts, its witches, working Wiccans and solo practitioners, along with geists and haints of a more sinister kind. None needed his attention right now.
In a tighter spiral, he saw the points in his mind. “Columbia.” He called their names. “Beltsville. La Plata.”
The horse country around Warrenton, Virginia, held a well-organized coven guarded by spells and wards dating back to the first settlers. The bright green sparks of a grove of Druids winked near the Blue Ridge.
Coming in slightly, he hit the DC Suburbs.
“Potomac. Silver Spring.” He knew where all the serious groups were, so he passed them by without much of a glance. It was coming up on Samhain, so there was more activity.
A part of his mind made a note to get Halloween candy.
None of the blips were out of place. They weren’t his river culprit. Something about that power signature had him on edge.
“Nothing, dammit,” he growled.
There was activity but not what he was seeking. The Car Barn, Whitehurst Freeway, the Boathouse. Outward along Canal Road in DC.
There. The same blip he’d felt before. Different than any living creature he’d encountered. Different than a human working magic. Odd, odd, odd.
Other.
He’d pinpoint it. Could be an artifact, or a relic uncovered by the recent rains.
He continued his sweep, tighter into the city where he was the center of the web. Massachusetts Avenue. Connecticut. Independence…
The blast of energy hit him like a freight train.
For a moment, he blacked out in the face of the hideous burst of insensate agony. A sledgehammer of force drove the wind out of him, and stars spangled his field of vision as he struggled to breathe. When he regained consciousness he was face-down on the floor on top of his tools. He was unprepared for the magnitude, much less the proximity.
“What the fuck was that?” he gasped, struggling upright. It hadn’t been directed at him, but whoever got the brunt of it would need help. With a gesture and three words, he dismissed the quarters–the energy of the circle—and absorbed its elemental power.
He would need every erg of power he could summon, and quite possibly the reservoirs of power stored in the b
uilding.
With a shrug he dropped his robe to the floor and yanked on his jeans, then pulled his shirt over his head. Before he could manage shoes, the screaming started.
“Shit, shit, shit!” he cursed, leaping for the door. It was inside the building’s shields. A direct attack. Inside his boundaries!
“God dammit. Dead. I’m so dead.” How could he have missed anything crossing the building shields?
Was the Council right? Was he really that damaged?
Reason tried to correct him. It shouldn’t be possible. Not without a breath of alert. How the hell was there something within the shields?
Impossible.
But happening.
Cait Brennan lives inside the shields.
He shoved all that aside and jerked open the door. He had no backup. It was him or disaster.
Aiden braced himself and, within a second, he was glad he had. A blast of psychic energy hit him the minute the door cleared the jamb.
Death. Violent, painful Death.
The malevolence of the act broadcast with hurricane intensity, assaulting both physical and psychic senses at once.
His vision wavered, but his shields held as the roiling black-purple force of death rolled over him and past him, bouncing off the white, white walls of the upper foyer. Within a heartbeat, his eyes stopped watering, and he both saw and Saw the devastation.
The hot, coppery smell of bloody death stung his nose, overlaid with the stench of emptied bowels. A sharp, acrid, musky undertone lingered over it all, something unfamiliar and caustic.
It was the last scent that made him want to gag. The others were bad, but familiar. Human. This pungency was not, itching and stinging the back of his throat with an acid snap the way a poison might. A million times stronger, but it was the same scent he’d smelled the morning after his fight.
The day Cait Brennan arrived.
He swallowed and swallowed to wash it away as he took in the gory scene.
The high-pitched ululation was Mrs. Potts, who was riveted to the view into Three-A. Dave, the desk guard, and a dark-suited woman had run up the stairs as Aiden flung open his door. Cait Brennan’s door whipped back as well. Her hair dripped and her clothes were mismatched.