by John Conroe
Declan instantly froze in place, looking up at the white-hot light, a frown on his face. The air was completely still, and Buck thought of the calm before a storm.
The wind came up an instant later. Dead air to gale force, no in between. The wind screamed at them from further ahead, the air immediately filled with dust, sand, garbage, and grit. A sharp, inhuman scream cried out overhead and Buck looked up to see the dragon getting blown backward till it snagged onto a rafter with its talons and wing claws, then something blew into his left eye and he had to blink both of them shut.
Around him, the DOAA agents were hastily putting on combat goggles and when he looked at his fellow deputies, he found Devany with Oakley shooting glasses on and Hampton wearing sunglasses despite the gloom.
The blowing sand and grit made opening his eyes almost impossible and he had a sudden panic attack that he would be useless. A touch on his forehead snapped both eyes open to find the witch kid gesturing on his skin with one thumb like a priest blessing him.
The air immediately around his head was suddenly free of sand or even wind, which was weird, as he could feel the force of the windstorm fluttering his uniform and pummeling his body. But not his head, which was a wind-free zone.
Stacia nodded at him as Declan turned back forward and studied the wind. A sharp scream that cut off mid-cry caused them all to look back at the end of the group, where a pair of kicking legs and boots were just disappearing around the edge of a machine. He glanced at Stacia and Declan, suddenly worried about attack from behind them, which was actually the front. He found that Declan was kneeling down, one fist planted on the concrete, a look of intense concentration on his face while his partner faced the wind, her hair not even rippling in the breeze
The ground shook hard, like an earthquake, the whole building quaking on its foundation. Far ahead of them, something broke and crashed, like something made of masonry or concrete, and then the wind died completely.
Hollis moved up closer, looking to the boy who was somehow leading them all.
“They’re going with guerilla warfare. Distract and attack,” Declan said. “No, don’t touch your forehead, Sergeant. If the rune gets rubbed off, it won’t protect you from wind and sand.”
Buck’s hand froze on its way to his head before he forced it back down, trying to ignore the minor itch that had started on his head.
“What did you do? To stop the wind?” Hollis asked.
“I broke a wall… back there where she’s holed up. Think part of the roof might have come down,” Declan said.
“Should you be knocking down the building while we’re in it?” Stacia asked, frowning.
“Wasn’t going for a knockdown, just trying to distract her from the massive blow job she was giving us,” Declan said, slightly defensive.
“And how much did it cost you?” Stacia asked.
“Not a huge portion. Lots smaller than the machine back there,” he replied, even more defensive.
“What are you talking about?” Buck asked. “Cost?”
“He only carries so much power, magic, energy, whatever you want to call it, at a time. Depending on his environment, recharging can be quick or take forever,” Stacia explained. Some of the other pairs of agents drifted closer, listening.
“Let me guess. This environment is bad for recharging,” Buck said.
“Correct. If the power was still on to the building or a boiler was going or machines running, it’d be no problem. But it’s cold, power’s off, and dead silent,” Stacia said.
“What about her? The other witch? She can’t recharge either, right?” Hollis asked.
Stacia looked at Declan, quirking an eyebrow. He reluctantly met Hollis’s eyes.
“That’s probably why your guy is still alive… for now,” he said.
“Wait, what? She’ll sacrifice him or something?” Hollis asked, voice rising.
Declan didn’t say anything, just started checking through his bag.
“You people can do that? Kill people for, for power?” Hollis asked, getting worked up.
“I can’t. Not into death magic. She is and she can,” Declan said.
“That’s sick. That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard,” Hollis sputtered.
“Killing for power? Oldest motive in the world, next to killing for money or love,” Stacia said. “Torture? Ever hear of Guantanamo Bay?”
Hollis opened his mouth to say something but Buck jumped in. “What about the flares? Would they help you recharge?”
“They can, a little, but I would use them up quickly, and we need the light,” Declan said.
“How about Tasers? They didn’t seem to hurt you at the station,” Devany said.
“You have Tasers?” Declan asked with the immediate interest of an addict sensing a fix.
“Great. All the ways of charging you up and it has to be Tasers,” Stacia muttered. Seeing the others’ questioning looks, she explained, “He’s got a Taser addiction.”
“They would help though,” Declan said eagerly. “A couple would top up the tank a bit.”
“Ain’t much use on werewolves anyway, right?” Devany asked as he pulled a M26 Taser from under his sheriff’s department raid jacket. “Ah, what do I do?” he asked.
Declan just reached out and grabbed the end of it, where the barbs stuck out of their carrier cartridge. “Fire it up,” he said with a grin.
Shrugging, Devany zapped him. The unit buzzed before going silent in a ridiculously short time.
“That’s better,” Declan said, holding up his hand, which clearly showed the imprint of the barbs. A tiny arc of blue traveled up between his index and middle finger before disappearing. Hampton stepped forward with his own stunner. Twenty seconds later, that one was dead, too.
“What about the thermite thing?” Cochran asked, hefting another grenade.
“That would be better used during actual combat,” Declan said, watching the chunky cylinder bounce up and down in the other man’s hand. “The Tasers helped quite a bit,” he said. Stacia turned and looked at him carefully, head tilted as if listening to something only she could hear—like his heartbeat. He didn’t meet her eyes.
“Well, carry it in your gear and use it on the bitches when you think best,” Cochran said, tossing the grenade Declan’s way. A slim hand shot out and snapped it out of the air.
“When the timing is best,” Stacia reiterated before handing it to Declan.
A long, pain-ridden scream ripped out of the darkness ahead of them. Human, but just barely.
Chapter 30
“That was Kinte! They’re killing him! Why are we standing here?” one of the agents asked. A big guy, with muscles on his muscles, Buck thought, carrying a FN SCAR-H CQC shortened model, wearing all name-brand protective gloves, eye armor, and boots. Nametag read Allaire.
“We’ll get him, Andre,” Hollis said, but Agent Allaire wasn’t having it. Another heart-tearing scream echoed through the building
“Screw this, man. This tip-toeing shit ain’t working,” Allaire said, turning and rushing ahead.
“Don’t Andre! Stop!” Hollis ordered, but the big man kept running, darting past machine after machine.
He was a good thirty feet ahead when it happened. Between one step and the next, the thud of his feet was the loudest sound. Just beyond a couple of smaller machines was a pile of old lumber, much of it broken and split into uselessness. The breeze started when his left foot was parallel to the smallest machine. It went to tornado force the second his right foot came down next to the pile of wood. The entire assault team saw it happen. One moment just a mound of scrap wood, then a burst of high velocity wind, like two seconds clipped directly out of a Category Five hurricane. Allaire was instantly speared with over fifteen pieces of shattered two-by-four and split planking. The wind threw him against another machine; a single two-by-four punched right through him and deep into the metal of the machine, and then the wind died as quickly as he did.
It happened so fast
that Buck was still trying to process it when Declan moved forward toward the obviously dead agent and Hollis breathed out a short, sharp “Fuck!”
The young witch veered toward the woodpile that still had several layers of boards left on it, reaching into his bag with his left hand and throwing a handful of salt across the boards, the ground around them, and the machine behind them. Then he knelt down and rubbed the sleeve of his arm across the metal of that machine, wiping something away.
“It’s deactivated,” he said in a tired voice.
The group moved up in pairs, and Buck was impressed by their discipline to security, the outer groups keeping their attention on their assigned arc, despite their fear and horror. He was looking away from the horrible sight of Allaire, who had one wooden spike transfixing his skull, and toward the back of the group when the next attack came. A big wolf came darting around a heap of rusted mill machine, huge open jaws aimed right at an agent whose head was turned just a few degrees away from the beast. The man jerked back, his gun off target. But his partner was right there and his rifle pushed forward, firing a burst of auto fire that blasted right into the machine, completely missing the wolf but driving it away to disappear back into the shadows as fast as it arrived.
“Hold fire! Watch your arcs!” Hollis yelled.
Buck and his two deputies were in the middle of the group, and now they all faced outward, each in a different direction, theoretically adding a second layer of fire support. Buck had never seen anything move that fast and he was honestly shocked that the agent had been able to get a shot off at all. The man’s partner cursed and held up the arm of his combat shirt, which was sliced cleanly in two lines from cuff to elbow. Only his and his partner’s reflexes had saved him from losing his arm. As it was, he wasn’t even scratched. The whole thing felt like a fucked-up flashback to Afghanistan. Except how did you fight wolves the size of ponies with the brains of insurgents?
“They will use every distraction for an attack,” Stacia called out, still watching her own arc while her teenage partner removed the last of the spell he’d found. “They are faster than you, and the space is tight. Despite the guns, the environment favors them,” she said.
“Then why do you stay… you know?” Devany asked.
“In human form? Because I’m as fast as they are and this—” She shook the stubby double pump shotgun, “—fires two shots almost as fast as one. Plus I can talk and tell you to watch your damned arcs,” she said.
Her head darted up and Buck glanced where she was looking, just seeing a hint of a flying object before her gun went off and the improvised grenade was knocked down to explode among the machinery yards away.
He heard her pump, two different sounding brass tings on the concrete. A quick glance showed her picking up the unfired shell she’d ejected, leaving the single spent case on the floor and pushing the good one back into one of the two magazines on her gun. She caught his eye as she pulled a new shell from her bandolier and fed it to the other magazine. “I freaking love this gun,” she said with a feral grin.
“We’re clear here. Moving forward,” Declan said, not paying any attention to her shooting or the explosion, but his lips smiled at her words.
Amazing. Nether of them would be out of college yet but they were as battle hardened as the young men and women he’d served with in Iraq. The kid looked intense but relatively calm, focused on whatever the hell this magic shit was that he and the other witch were doing. Stacia was coiled and alert, her amazing body a predatory machine, leashed strength and watchfulness as she covered him. To see her on the street was to want a beautiful woman. To see her here and now… well, your libido runs and hides while you realize you’re in the presence of an apex predator. The boy witch sure didn’t seem to mind, though.
Buck went back to his own arc, which was from roughly eight o’clock to eleven o’clock, both eyes open and looking down the barrel of his Remington 870. Old instincts and conditioned behaviors kicked in as the group began moving past the horrible sight of Allaire’s pin-cushioned body.
Nothing happened as they moved another twenty feet through the forest of machines. The space suddenly opened up to a flat, empty area the width of the room and maybe fifty yards across. Declan immediately stopped, eyes searching side-to-side, even looking up each wall and up—up to the ceiling, which was completely dark. Across the open floor, another pair of machines waited and beyond them, Buck could see many, many stacks of wooden pallets.
“What do you think?” Hollis asked him.
“I think the security guys at Demidova would start preaching about area denial and kill zones,” Declan said, still studying the space.
“You think it’s mined?” Buck asked, wondering again what kind of corporation Demidova was.
“The witch version of mines, although I suppose that shithead that threw the bomb might have improvised something as well. Shout out if any of you see anything that raises your hackles,” Declan responded, rustling in his bag. He pulled out a black ovoid, gripped it like a grenade, pulled a pin from its top, and tossed it in a high arc out onto the open floor.
“Grenade!” Buck yelled. Most of the team crouched instinctively. Declan just stood straight and glanced back at him a bit sheepishly. Stacia ignored everything, her focus locked on the darkness around them.
The black orb hit the concrete and bounced, the top flicking off and a spray of fluid spattering around and around in a random fashion.
“Sorry. Not a real grenade—I would have said something. Paintball grenade filled with salt water and herbs,” Declan said, pulling a second one.
This one went further, landing between the first and the far edge of the space.
“So the salt water will set off the traps, or what?” Hollis asked.
“It may destroy some of the triggers. As you can see, the spray pattern is nowhere near uniform, so I don’t know how much good they’re doing,” Declan said, frowning at the results.
“How do you mine a concrete floor with witch magic?” Devany asked, eyes roving back and forth over his one-o’clock-to-four field of fire. His gun barrel traversed the floor in front of him so as not to cross any of the agents between him and the darkness, but still ready to snap up and fire. Buck was impressed with the young deputy.
“I would use chalk or paint, mostly. She could use a stone or tool to scratch spells, like she did on that machine back there. One of my fellow students uses colored sand. It might also take the form of a pile or pattern of ash, dust, bones, or almost any other representative substance she could think of,” Declan said. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m taping the bone earring to my lobe and then working my way out there. I need cover, but you all have to watch for attacks from behind and each side, as well as above. I’ll clear a path across and mark it with paint,” he said, pulling out a slim can of spray paint.
“How much shit do you carry in there anyway?” Devany asked.
“As much as I can, Deputy,” Declan said with a grin. “But I’m starting to run low. Only one more pair of those cheap tights, Stacia,” he warned her, pointing at her lower half.
Buck felt his eyes drawn to the aforementioned clothing, almost against his will, and then jerked his eyes up to see she was now watching them all with raised eyebrows.
“Eyes on your assigned positions, gentlemen, not my legs,” she said.
The kid, who was using a little strip of duct tape to fasten the bone earring to his own right ear, noticed the number of men whose attention had followed his finger and frowned. Heads snapped away much faster.
“I’m going with you,” Stacia said, deftly threading the second earring into her own pierced ear.
“I thought you might. Just like practice, okay?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” she said with a smirk.
“That’s better. In fact, I like that. Keep it up,” he said.
“That’s what I said,” she said in a sultry tone. The kid actually blushed, even as he threw a handful of salt ahead of him.
Hollis, all business, watched him carefully, his helmet camera following the kid’s every move. “That work like the water?”
“It can’t hurt. Strong enough spell might ignore it or be only slightly weakened,” Declan said. He took two slow steps onto the concrete and stopped before his third step, foot raised, frozen. Backing his leg down, he crouched and studied the floor in front of him. Then his hand went up to his earlobe as he kept his eyes looking all around. “Change of plan. I don’t trust this thing.”
The hand came away with the bone earring and then went into his trusty bag before coming out with what Buck thought was a collapsed metal baton.
“Hey, that’s mine,” one of the agents suddenly said.
“Yeah, I might have borrowed it when you and your pal tried to Taser me,” Declan said, snapping the baton open. More duct tape came from the bag and the bone earring was taped to the metal button on the end of the baton.
