The road wound through tall trees growing close to the road, and any car would have to slow down for that corner. It had been raining—more of an on-and-off drizzle—and I thought I had exactly the spell I needed to set up our ambush.
Standing about fifty feet before the road curved, I drew a rune in the air and said a Word. The pavement turned very shiny. A second rune spell dropped the temperature of the road and secured the first spell.
Miika came trotting down the road toward me.
“Watch out!” I shouted. “Get off the road.”
He smiled and waved at me, and veered to the side of the road, but he’d gone too far. His feet flew out from under him, and he landed hard on his back. I ran to him, careful to stay on the dirt shoulder and not step on the pavement.
“What did you do?” he asked with a moan as he rolled over. He tried to push himself to his hands and knees, and one hand slid away from him.
“Just slide toward me,” I said.
He ended up scooting off the road on his butt, like a baby who hadn’t learned to crawl, and I tried not to laugh.
“I may not be a battle mage,” I told him, “but I know enough rune magic to freeze and thaw water. When they brake for that corner, they’re going to discover they don’t have any traction.”
I showed him the thickets on both sides of the road where we could hide. “Have you figured out how you’re going to open up that car?” I asked him. Simply destroying the car and those inside wouldn’t be difficult, but we needed Adair alive. I pulled out my bow and strung it, then drew my paintball gun.
“Magic,” he said, and winked at me.
Chapter 26
The lead SUV came into the corner and braked as the driver turned the wheels. The vehicle continued straight without losing any speed until it crashed into the trees. The following SUV crashed into it. The presidential limo continued the trend. Sort of a ‘crash’, ‘Crash’, ‘CRASH’.
All three armored vehicles were so heavy that the smashup was spectacularly destructive.
Miika sketched a rune, and as the limo passed us, he spoke a Word. The SUV following the limo crashed into nothing, just as the FBI SUV had done outside the restaurant in Silver Spring. The two following vehicles smashed into it.
Awestruck, I said, “You have to teach me that spell.”
“Glad to,” Miika answered. “It’s an air spell that condenses the molecules of the air into a solid wall.”
He began to sketch another rune, an incredibly complex one, but I wasn’t able to watch him finish. Some of the men in the last three SUVs staggered out of their vehicles, and I shot them with sleepy-gas paintballs. Sliding out onto the roadway, I fired more paintballs into the passenger compartments. I put the gun back in my bag and nocked an arrow to my bow.
We waited and watched the three vehicles that had piled up in the trees. I kept glancing up, waiting for the helicopter to fly over, but didn’t see it. Miika still hid in the brush on the side of the road.
I crossed the road and entered the woods, working my way around so that I could come at the crash from the other side. I reached a place where I could see inside the cars. The two SUVs were a total loss. The airbags had deployed and obscured my sight to an extent, and I didn’t see any movement.
Sneaking closer, crouching low so that anyone inside the cars would have to look down to see me, I made my way to the first vehicle. One of its doors had popped partially open, so I fired a couple of paintballs inside.
Moving to the next SUV, sandwiched between the SUV in front and the limo behind, I had a very bad feeling. The massive limo had some damage, but its impact had really crunched the second SUV. I reached out with my senses, and felt four sources of life energy inside, but I could tell all four were injured.
A sizzling sound, like frying bacon, grabbed my attention. The sound was followed by a weird smell. I looked up and saw Miika standing behind the limo, an expression of intense concentration on his face. He held his arms in front of him, forming a circle with his hands, and white-hot energy poured from that circle toward the limo.
Backing away from the cars, I circled around so that I could see. The energy was focused on the back window, and the glass appeared to be melting.
The limo’s back door on the side away from me suddenly swung open, and Bronski jumped out. A silvery ball of energy flew toward Miika, who was slow to react. The energy ball struck him a glancing blow, spinning him around and sending him flying a few feet. He hit the pavement and slid on the ice.
I drew my bow and loosed, the arrow piercing Bronski’s chest. His eyes bulged, and he made a strangled noise. Staggering backward, he turned his eyes toward me as he fell. I nocked another arrow and sidled around the back of the limo, ready for Bronski to retaliate, but also trying to keep an eye on the open limo door.
Bronski lay on his back, staring at the sky, and I relaxed slightly. The front door of the limo popped open, and the driver rolled out. He raised a pistol and fired. I heard a popping sound to my left, and I moved to my right as I pulled and loosed my arrow. It hit the shooter in the upper left side of his chest just as he fired again. I ducked behind the limo and heard the popping sound of the bullet passing above me. A scrabbling noise came from the inside of the limo, and then the sound of a second person scraping along the pavement outside. “You okay?” I heard, then a strained response, “Yeah. Watch your ass. She’s damned good with that bow.”
I took that as my cue to put away my bow and draw the paintball gun again. Lying prone under the limo, I fired five paintballs, hoping to get lucky, or at least sow some confusion. Rising to a crouch, I sprinted past the two wrecked SUVs into the woods, then looked back from a hiding place behind a tree.
I got lucky. The man struck by an arrow also had a pink splotch on his side and lay still. The other man had tried to run, but the ice on the road was as unforgiving with him as it had been with Miika. The guy lost his pistol when he fell and slid, so I simply walked around the end of the ice and approached him from the other side of the road.
His face radiated hate as he looked up at me. I shot him twice with paintballs and watched him fall asleep.
From where I stood, I could see into the limo. Adair peered out at me, fear and anger warring on his face.
“Mister Adair,” I called, “It would be better if you got out on the other side of the car. I’m afraid the road here is too slick to stand.”
“Who the hell are you?” he shouted. “Where are we? What the hell is going on?”
Rather than answer, I skated over to where Miika lay. I held my breath as I bent down, but he was breathing, and his heart was beating strongly. I couldn’t see any obvious wounds. The spell Bronski used looked a lot like a spell I knew, using a rune to draw energy from the world and coalescing it into a ball that could be thrown. It was a minor weapon compared to the fireballs and heat lance I’d seen Miika use, but that kind of power was far beyond me.
Leaving him there, I slid the few feet to the edge of the road and looked back at the wrecked cars. Adair had taken my advice and stood by the open back door of the limo.
“What is going on?” he asked.
I motioned at Bronski’s body. “Alan Bronski is a blood mage, if you know what that is. He cast a spell on you, a compulsion spell, and turned you into his puppet. You named him head of the PCU after he assassinated the agents above him, and then had you convince the President that paranormal beings are conspiring to take over the government. Does any of that sound familiar?”
He stared at me with narrowed eyes, then shook his head and put his hands over his face. When he lowered his hands a couple of minutes later, he said, “And who are you? How did we get here?”
“The President is speaking to a joint session of Congress tonight. You are the designated survivor on your way to Camp David. As for me? I’m the one Bronski accused of leading a conspiracy by non-Humans to enslave you all. Which is pretty insulting. What the hell am I supposed to do with six billion slaves?”
He looked confused, which was understandable. I pulled out my phone. “Would you like to speak with David Torbert of the PCU? Jim Roberts is in the hospital, and my understanding is that Torbert is his second in command?”
“Yes, that would be correct.” He looked around at the trees and all the wrecked vehicles. “What about the director of the FBI?”
“Torbert said that the entire leadership was unavailable for one reason or another. I think a couple of them are dead, a couple in the hospital. Some are just missing.” I handed him my phone.
He and Torbert spoke for about twenty minutes. I used the time to pull Miika off the road into some shade. I retrieved a water bottle from one of the SUVs and tried to pour a little in his mouth. Other than that, I had no idea what to do.
I knew some of the government men needed medical care, but I didn’t know if any or all of them were willing participants in Bronski’s conspiracy. I hadn’t shed a tear for those who tried to arrest Torbert and Karen. Elves didn’t overthink moral choices the way Humans were prone to. In any case, I wasn’t a healer, so I doubted I could do much for someone who was injured.
Adair walked over and handed me my phone. “Agent Torbert wants to speak with you.”
“Kellana,” Torbert said when I answered, “we’re going to get a helicopter out to you. Adair says there are injured people there?”
“Yes, there was a big car wreck, and one guy took an arrow. Everyone is sleeping now. But I don’t know if a helicopter can find us. There was one that followed the convoy from DC, but Miika did something, and I haven’t seen or heard the helicopter since. Miika’s unconscious, so I can’t ask him about it.” I thought about it. “Can’t you send some people from Camp David? I was under the impression there’s a permanent staff there.”
“There is. I’ll do that.”
“Have them send a doctor. I don’t know what to do with the people who are hurt. What did you and Adair talk about?”
“He’s put me in charge of the PCU. Got a lot to do, call you later.”
A convoy of SUVs, two ambulances, and a couple of cars came down the road about forty minutes later. Two state police cars showed up from the DC direction twenty minutes after that. They had to cut two of the men in the middle SUV out of it. There were broken bones, cracked heads, and numerous minor injuries, but thankfully, no one died except Bronski.
I tried to slip away with Miika, but they caught me. He was just too heavy to run with. They took us to Camp David and shut us up together in a bedroom in one of the lodges. They didn’t take our phones away from us, though, and to my surprise, they didn’t find Miika’s car. They also didn’t take my bag, where I had all my weapons and Miika’s sword.
He woke up about two o’clock in the afternoon. Although he was a little shaky at first, he recovered quickly. We took the hinges off the door, walked out, put the door back in place, and locked it again. A twenty-minute run brought us to where the car was hidden.
I hung on so hard that my hands hurt as he drove back to DC, going well over one hundred miles an hour most of the way. He must have done something to hide us, as we passed several police cars, and none of them noticed us.
We pulled into the driveway in Chevy Chase about four o’clock. Several cars I didn’t recognize sat in the driveway or parked out on the street. When we walked in, I saw several of the men from the meeting at the restaurant. There were numerous TVs in the house, and every one of them was tuned to a news channel. All the news was about the President’s speech and the threat of the ‘paranormals’, as the media liked to call anyone who wasn’t Human.
Riots and lynchings had erupted in parts of the United States, and there were rumors of a battle in Mexico between witches and government soldiers. Depending on which channel the TV was tuned to, the witches were either winning or losing.
I barely had time to eat something when Isabella called. “Nieminen is leaving Adair’s house,” she said. “I’m following him.”
“Saddle up,” Torbert called out. “Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do.”
A few minutes of hectic activity later, Miika and I stood alone with Karen in the middle of the kitchen.
“We’re supposed to follow Isabella and Nieminen,” Karen said.
Chapter 27
Aleksi Nieminen drove to a parking garage near DuPont Circle and left his rental car there. Isabella parked a few cars away from his and tracked him by scent into the Metro. She lost him when he evidently boarded a train.
Karen took my phone and advised Isabella, “Head for the W Hotel near the White House. Take the Red Line to Metro Center.”
She handed my phone back. “He parked more than a mile away from the Justice building. I guess he doesn’t want to walk after he blows up the city.” She went back to talking on her phone.
I checked a map and found that the parking garage would indeed be beyond the circle of destruction.
“Is that where I should go?” Miika, who was driving, asked.
“Hell, no,” I said. “If we don’t stop him, we won’t need a car. Get as close to the hotel as possible.”
While we were parking, Isabella called again and said she had picked up the scent on the train platform at Metro Center. Her nose must be phenomenal, I thought. I never would have been able to separate the smell of one person on a train platform. Actually, the whole idea of getting my nose that close to a train platform made me rather nauseous.
I checked the time when we reached the hotel. We still had three hours until the scheduled start of the President’s speech.
Isabella stood in the lobby waiting for us. “He went to the Justice Department and just waltzed in the door. They wouldn’t let me in, so I came here to wait for you.”
Karen pointed to a door marked, ‘Authorized Personnel Only’. “That’s how we get in.”
Four men in suits approached us. I could tell they had pistols under their jackets. Karen pulled out her identification and held it up. The four men did the same.
“Agent Wen-li?” one of them asked. “I’m Agent Patterson, Secret Service. This is Agent Clark, Agent Nugent, and Agent Jones.”
“These are the contractors working with us,” Karen said. “Miika Apthenir, Kellana Rogirsdottir, and Doctor Isabella Cortez. Ms. Rogirsdottir and Dr. Cortez know the suspect on sight. Mr. Apthenir is a mage. If we run into a problem, please try not to get between them and the problem.”
All four nodded. “We’ve worked with paranormals before,” Patterson said.
He led the way to the door Isabella pointed out, slid a card through a scanner, then put his eye to a round, hollow bump on the wall. The door clicked and he pulled it open. We walked down a hallway to another door where he did the same thing. That door opened onto a stairwell, and we headed down.
The Humans’ footfalls on the metal steps echoed loudly as we descended twelve flights of stairs. Turning onto the final flight, I saw two soldiers with automatic rifles standing on either side of the door at the bottom. I surreptitiously sketched a rune and noticed that Miika did the same.
When we reached the bottom, Patterson held up his identification and said, “Secret Service.”
In a voice with no inflection whatsoever, one of the soldiers said, “You are not authorized.”
Miika and I said the same Word simultaneously, and then the soldiers started firing. The noise was deafening in the closed space. Isabella ducked, while Karen and the Secret Service agents all dove to the floor, drawing their pistols.
I exchanged a glance with Miika and said, “I’ll do it.” I drew my paintball gun, and he jerked a short nod.
The soldiers ran out of bullets and reached for replacement magazines. I dissolved my spell and fired. Pink splashes on the soldiers’ chests turned into a pink fog, and then they both slumped to the floor.
“Are they—” one of the agents started.
“Asleep,” I said. “They’ll wake up in about four hours. The range of this gun isn’t very far, though.”
&
nbsp; Another agent asked, “Is that stuff for sale?”
I gave him a wink. “If we all survive this, buy me a drink and we’ll talk about it.”
Patterson unlocked the door, and we emerged onto a platform overlooking a pair of train tracks. He motioned to his right. “The Justice Department is that way, about five hundred yards.”
“What’s in the other direction?” Isabella asked.
“The White House.”
“Do you know where Nieminen might be going?” she asked. “He’s been in and out of the building fairly regularly, so I assume he has a place he plans to work.”
Karen answered. “Attorney General Adair told Torbert to find a mage named Susan O'Shaughnessy who has been working with Bronski. Her office is on the third floor.”
Isabella and I exchanged a look.
“Can you find out if she has another space? A laboratory or storage room, or something like that?” Isabella asked.
“Maybe when we get above ground,” one of the agents said. “We’re too far below ground to get any service here.”
“He won’t be doing any rituals in a third-floor office,” I said. “He’ll want something more private. We don’t even know how long the ritual takes. He may need to start on it hours ahead of time.”
“You know what bothers me?” Karen asked. “We don’t know who the bad guys are. Some of the people trying to kill us are agents I’ve had a drink with, like Kilpatrick.”
I nodded, thinking of the Secret Service agents injured in the car wrecks near Camp David. “You have to assume that anyone who gets in our way needs to be dealt with. Like I told Torbert, this is a war. Just remember Arlington. Everyone, including us, will die if Nieminen completes his plan.”
Patterson gave me a long look. “If we fail, we get another Arlington?”
“Yes,” Isabella said. “Maybe worse. That was his first attempt to use the artifact. We don’t know what he learned from that, or what he’s learned since.”
“Let us know when we’re getting close,” I said. “I’d prefer to avoid any repeats of that scene under the W.”
Gods and Demons Page 19
