by Lil Hamilton
“What do you need me for then?”
“I want you to keep his neural activity stable. I don’t want any spikes or for it to drop too far down. While I’m riding around in there… it could give me quite the boot which could take a while to recover from.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then just do what you do to someone who is stuck in a healing mesh who has gone too far… yank me out.”
“Ah, got it. This is a sort of merge spell on some level and you just need a tug if it gets rough.” She stepped behind him, rubbed her palms together causing a crackle a blue electrical static. It was freaky how much energy the witch carried around. It wasn’t my place but I felt like telling her as a natural feeder she should be shielding better or draining off the surplus, or she would get addicted to the energy high. She placed her hands on each side of his head about three inches from touching, letting a sort of glow hover around him.
I yanked on my charmed fae goggles and Liz snickered at me. I smirked back, knowing how funny I looked in the old style goggles drivers wore when cars didn’t have windshields. Worked great to hold the spell. Illusion spells gave off a great deal of heat. They sparked off all sorts of spell residue and witches never could get how the fae could see through their illusions so well. Glamours were manipulations of the mind to see what the spell caster wished, sometimes with a layer of illusion to it as well. A lot harder to peal apart and less residue spitting out. Glamours designed to hide places even more so because they intentionally folded the spell residue back in so little leaked forward. Thus my goggles. Since it wasn’t an active spell it shouldn’t affect Warren at all. It just enhanced my vision.
I crouched down and prepared to dive into some nasty muck. Not that I planned on touching any of it. The trick to this sort of spell was to skim the surface, snag a memory and just sort of sail along the edge. Not even get into it really. To really get into a memory I would feel what he felt, hear what he heard and get the entire emotional and mental gunk. I really didn’t want to go there with Warren and there were a couple of reasons not to. One, it might trigger the spells wrapped in his brain. Two, I might get sucked into his mind onto a level I really didn’t want to go into.
I touched his knees with a grimace. I really loathed going into the mind of a human. It was insanely messy. The mind of this sort of man had to be a mire of all things nasty. I began to trigger words to the spell I had already prepped which was substantially longer. Quite frankly, trigger phrases and words, to the pre-spun spells we had hovering in our under consciousness made Seelie seem like wicked spell-casters, but work still needed to be done and power used. I felt the power surge within me as each word was spoken, “Petvio ut universities mental, dis fionus unis.” As the last word was dragged from my lips the ground lurched beneath me and I felt myself surge forward on a wild roller coaster ride, only without my body.
When the vertigo stopped I was slammed with a barrage of noise. Just brain noise. The man was practically brain dead and still it was an assault of sensory information, impulses, emotions that were barely even conscious, instincts and sort of half-conscious thought processes and semi-aware thoughts from the state he was in. And this was a barely conscious human. This wasn’t even organized chaos as far as I was concerned. It was just chaos. Memories darted in and out of existence seemingly at random as soon as a thought lit one up, or an emotion, or a scent. There was no segmenting for thoughts, sense date, emotions and thoughts. I could easily drown in the sea of muck chasing after an elusive memory.
Unfortunately, I needed to dive right in to where the memories were, no matter what came with it and try and skim along the surface. Like someone tossing a stone across a lake, hoping to jump it lightly along the top rather than sinking to the bottom. Like a fish I dove downward, just not as deep as the subconscious. As Freud acknowledged there was a lot of crap beneath the tip of the ice berg that I didn’t want to even glimpse. Images began to float past. Most recent first. I needed to snag one of those so I didn’t want to go by too fast and end up at his first wet dream or something equally disturbing. I needed a hook to slow me down and that hook was Myra’s face. I pictured her and landed on an image of him and her in the Warrens, which was damned perfect. I sunk right into the image and immersed myself just enough that I was behind Warren’s eyeballs but it was like watching a silent movie. No alarm was raised because I was not deeply set enough to raise awareness that I was intruding and I stayed back enough that even his vision to be was hazy, so that Myra herself was not clear to my eyes. I damned well knew it was her given the halo of an aura she had, but the spells within him were not alarmed that her identity was revealed enough to be alerted. I hovered like this for a bit and even sped the memory forward a bit, like a person would if they were lucid dreaming or watching a really boring film. This was far from boring even blurry. It was watching Myra and Warren tag unsuspecting prey with a spell that would essentially mark their location, so Warren’s team could then go hunt them down like animals.
Fortunately this was not one of those times where they remained together. They parted ways for Warren to continue his walk through of the Warrens to meet with some of the faelings as Bianca had mentioned. I sped through that part as well, since he got up and personal with those prostitutes, who he planned on enslaving. It was when he began his walk out of the Warrens I sank in just a little deeper and cleared my vision. I flooded my eyes with just enough energy to allow me to see fae energy even if he couldn’t.
I paid close attention when he entered the Gutters. To every building he passed to see if it glowed slightly. Or wavered in the corner of his vision. A sign it was glamoured to appear other than it was. Another sign was something that appeared to be an empty lot but flickered with lights, indicating it was actually a building and there was a spell around it not only to make it look like a lot but also to ensue people avoided it. I doubted Myra had this skill. But I had to make sure I looked everywhere because I only got the one shot.
All I saw in the Gutters was shabby bars, by the hour run down hotels, strip clubs and more than one brothel. Most of the places had the sign for the infinite, the sideways eight, above the door saying they were vampire friendly feeding joints. Meaning some of their staff were legal donors. Some also had a coven sign on it saying the establishment was run, and protected by a specific coven, which was as far as you could claim in neutral territory. So the streets were not warded or spelled or trapped. The establishments were ward protected. Looked like the general protection sorts. From the signs on the windows the warning stated no aggressive magic permitted; once you crossed the barrier your magic will be dampened. Guess they didn’t trust each other that much. Interesting those. Warren led ‘us’ right into a rundown strip club called ‘The Lady in Black’. Inside it was not too shabby really. Nice smooth wooden floors, kept to a shine. A good center stage where a lean man and a rather too thin woman were dancing erotically together in such a fake way it made it look obscene and ugly.
The club had about forty tables of five scattered around the stage. Five pool tables on the right and a decent sized dance floor to the far left. What immediately caught my attention as Warren crossed to the bar was half the patrons were vampires. Two were lower demons. One was Unseelie.
As he scanned around so did I and I hit pay dirt. By the dance floor is where the bar was located and it curved towards the stage, leaving a large gap of space for people to make their way to the bathrooms and back stage. And there was a spot in the back, guarded as a VIP area, leading upstairs, which likely was where the strippers earned a few more bucks. But also, just beyond the VIP ropes was a door in the wall, liking leading downstairs, that no one could see it at all. It was glowing all fae blue, with a slimy coating of black from Myra’s life-force. With her witch life force marring the spell any fae would have caught it. Easily. If I gave the witches who were coming in some fae Goggle charms they would see it clear as day.
I began to mentally recede from the memory. I think I
must have got caught in an updraft or something because I was sucked into a current of rapid flowing memories. I realized quickly Chera’s physic attack inflicted on him the torment of his victims had caused a sort of physic feedback loop within is brain. There was this vortex of replaying segments of memories replaying over and over again. Not a damn one of them pleasant. He seemed to be having a mental argument with himself about them as well. ‘She asked for it!’ and ‘I was just doing my job!’. For each of these came a swell of reaction from the other side of ‘I didn’t do anything to you’ or ‘It wasn’t your job to be sadistic’. He was a slaver, what he did was for the money but he did enjoy humiliating people and causing suffering. I began to pull myself out of the quagmire knowing that the cycle was going to keep looping if he kept justifying what he did. This meant he was going to be stuck in this catatonic state for some time.
Until one memory caught my eyes and I fell like a piece of lead straight into it. Once again I was behind Warren’s eyes but with time with full sound and sensations. In front of me were two rows of dog kennels stacked on top of each other. At eye level inside of one was a stick thin, naked pre-teen girl with dead eyes and lacklustre pale hair. Chera, I thought. She looked so thin, so young and so broken.
Warren’s head turned and I realized a vampire stood beside him, also looking in the cage. The same vampire Viv had taken down when we had closed down his illegal collection of people he had bought ripe for the turn, some to keep for himself and some to sell to other vampires.
“Is she is shock? Perhaps a little frail for me,” the vampire said, sounding bored, but his ruby colored eyes never left Chera.
“No, she’s at least an eight on the psychic scale. We’ve been keeping her drugged constantly. She’s that sensitive. Which won’t make a difference once she is turned. I expect her abilities will be highly useful to you as well, Robert. High level intuition, mid-level clairvoyance and high level energy signature reading. She can trace any spell signature, sort any energy trail and perhaps even more once she is trained.”
“That won’t be for quite some time. She is too young to be turned.”
Warren touched Chera possessively on a finger that was close to the bars and she jerked back violently. “I thought you like them young. That is why I kept her specifically for you, my friend.”
“The Law forbids us to turn them young these days unfortunately, and they always find out about that.”
“But you can enjoy her in the interim,” Warren cajoled.
The secretive smile and spark of desire that lit up in the vampires eyes made me ill. “I expect you have already tried her out yourself?”
“Oh no. I played with her a bit, but I ensured she was a virgin and stayed that way. She will cost you because of it but I know she’ll be worth it.”
Knowing what Warren had intentionally done and knowing this was fact already caused a seething rage inside me. I couldn’t save Chera from being sold to the pedophile. She had been in that camp years before we saved her. Years. I had guessed some of what she endured. But I had not known this. With my rage came a surge of power. I felt the sudden twang of the mental alarms. The spells sensed someone in his mind with power, messing around. I was bumped from the memory and hurled into a void. Just as quickly I felt a rush of heat and a Wump noise and I was blown backwards so violently I was blown out of the body, into my own and back into the wall so hard I cracked my head, a few ribs and felt the taste of blood in my mouth. All of which didn’t concern me in the least. I stood up as my demon teeth thrust through my gums, and my claws lengthened into two inch killing mode.
“Whoa! What’s up, girl?” Liz asked, still standing behind the man I was about to slice and dice.
“Get out of the way,” I growled.
“Now wait a minute. I don’t know what you saw in there but-”
“Get the fuck out of the way!” I screamed. It came out as a more guttural roar as my vocal cords were adapting.
I saw that moment of awareness where she realized I wasn’t going to be rational about this and she might be in deep shit. Her aura pulsed protectively and I saw charms sizzle into activation even though I had no intention of harming her and was in my right mind. At least enough to know friend from foe. Her eyes darted to the door but she must know the room was soundly shielded and no help would come. I would have my way. Warren would be gone before anyone interfered. Still from the way her eyes moved and widened slightly I looked over to the door and that was a fools error on my part because when I turned back she had a basketball sized raw bundle of black energy in her hands.
“I won’t allow you to break your oath and kill your damned self over this idiot,” she snapped and flung it at me.
I snapped a second protective shield in place but the spell was obviously designed just for that because it just slapped against it like tar. Electric tar that stung right through my shield and down to my very bones. On top of that the substance was thick and prevented me from doing much of any sort of casting through it. I would have to blast my way through it. Which I fully intended to do.
Liz was in front of me within moments while I pulsed raw energy through her sludge spell. “Now while I got you preoccupied I want you to listen to me for one damned minute. I read up on his file so I know he copped a deal when that vampire camp was taken down. The one Viv’s ward was found in. I know he got a minor sentence by giving evidence up. Blame that on the Accords Council witches, not Inter. That was then. That won’t happen this time.”
“Bullshit!”
“We have all the evidence we need. We have Warren tied to the demon binding, the kidnaping, the spells to wipe the minds of those enslaved and soon to the sex slave brothel. There are only two punishments for such crimes when it comes to witches. Full and permanent binding of their magic or death. Since he has prior convictions, it will be death. Trust me, I will ensure it.”
I stared at her intensely, gauging her seriousness and determination. “He is comatose. He will appear to have had a psychotic break or something. His lawyer will plead insanity and he will go to some nut house until he breaks free of the loop Chera put him in and then he’ll be free.”
“No. I will not allow it. I know what she did. And I can undo it. As soon as we have him secure at the department lockdown facility I will take him out of the state he is in. He will stand trial and this time the charges will stick. Also he will not remember Chera attacked him, just in case he is being spiteful.”
I nodded slowly. “Good. I trust you. If it doesn’t go as you believe I know it will not be for lack of effort on your part and… accidents happen in prison all the time.”
She smiled grimly. “Good.”
“Will you release me now?”
She looked at my hands with the normal sized fingernails. “Okay.”
She waved a hand and the tar dispersed.
“What the hells was that spell anyway?” I asked.
“Impressed?” she asked.
“Hell yeah.”
She laughed. “We witches have some tricks up our sleeves. That bit of nasty is my own creation. It melds two spells together. One is an inversion spell used to attack a shield, as you no doubt felt; it turns some of your own energy used for your shield back on you and gives you quite the jolt. That probably didn’t work as well on you as it might on another, but it’s like a taser usually. It should have dropped you. The second part is a common enough defence witch spell; a general diffuse energy spell, to thicken the energy around them and slow their ability to tap their own. Now mine, is designed to stick like taffy to the other witch to inhibit them from casting back, or at least slowing their attack down considerably. Now the problem is, it takes about five days to prepare, but I keep it locked in the amulet I wear around my neck.”
“Wow. Turned my own shield against me and crippled my ability to cast back. That is impressive,” I said. I liked it so much I was going to see if I could write something up myself that was similar in design.
“Glad
to have caught you off guard,” she said genuinely pleased. “But now I’m beat and we still have to check out where the coven House is said to be located.”
“I got a few power bars and a refresher spell or two you can use.”
“Great. Better than tapping everyone for energy accidentally,” she said dryly, but fact was she would unintentionally. “Now, before I go tell Hanson the information about the brothel… you want to tell me about the other witch you have tied in the corner?”
I glanced at the woman tied to another chair, wrapped in a considerable amount of duct tape, glaring at us with pure hatred. She was the one we snagged from our assault on the ground in order to get our hazy Intel that Lily was at the main coven House. “I did wonder if you were going to bring that up,” I mused. “Do you think I ought to get a dungeon? Just for ambience?”
“I know you think you can get away with anything because you are the ambassador, especially within the District grounds since technically it does not have the same laws and all, but you really push it sometimes.”
“Yep.”
“Blatantly.”
“I know.”
“Instead of kidnaping, unlawfully holding and interrogating. Maybe you should try just interrogating, wiping the memory of it and releasing. Like fishermen. A capture and release sort of thing. Save us all a lot of paperwork.”
“Oh, I do. Just in this case I rather thought you didn’t want them released.”
She sighed. “Good point.” As we walked out she added, “Take Mary with you to check out the House. I think I might need to rest a bit before we do the take down tonight. Next time you have a fit give me a heads up and I’ll prepare for it.”
“Given the nature of the beast within, that’s not going to happen,” I said with a chuckle.
We strolled out of the room as if nothing had happened into a haze of incense and chatting coming from my work room. “Witches and their damned incense. I’m ninety-nine percent positive your spells would work without it. Nasty stuff. It’s an affront to my senses.”
