“We were right. The vans were carrying people,” he said and scanned the rest of the floor with his eyes. The mercenaries were carrying the abductees to rows of cages near the wall where they were loaded inside. “I see a dozen cages, but I can’t make out how many people are in them.”
“Take some pictures with your phone,” said Douglas in his ear. “Those images are all the proof we need.”
Tallow did so, getting as good of an angle on the floor as he could from his position. As he snapped photos he saw a familiar balding figure stroll into view. “Erl’s here.” He was waving around a black rod and shouting, but Tallow couldn’t hear anything.
“Perfect!” said Ross. “He’s making our job easy for us.”
“I see . . . ten thugs and just as many workers,” Tallow said. “There could be more, but I don’t have a view of the whole floor. I don’t see the mirror either.”
“Should I go ahead and call in the troops?” Brenda asked.
Tallow drew back from the window. He uploaded the pictures to her app. And looked at the time. 10:55. “Go ahead and get things set in motion, but they can’t make an assault until I give the go ahead. I haven’t found the wizard yet.”
“Roger,” Brenda said.
“Can’t you just stretch out with your energies and feel for him or whatever? Like you did in the old farmhouse?” Ross asked.
“No. He would sense my magic intruding,” he said.
“How do you know the wizard is even there?” Douglas asked.
“There is a faint ward lining the building. If I so much as tapped on the window, he would sense me,” Tallow explained. “And I think the interior is being actively muffled. There’s no sound coming through. I’m climbing up to the door at the top.”
Tallow went up the last two stairways and came upon the door. It was of solid metal construction and he could see the faint red lines of the wizard’s magic going through it. Very carefully, he reached out with his magic and closed his eyes as he placed his hands on the door.
He focused on the wards and extended his thoughts outwards, looking for weak points. The wizard who had woven the spell had used basic techniques. It was a grid-like pattern, nothing creative, but solid.
Tallow let out a low breath and reached out with his will. The thing with lines of power in a ward was that there was a fraction of a second before a broken line would be registered. What he had to do was quickly detach a line and reattach it elsewhere in the grid before the wizard noticed.
It was a sensitive process, but he didn’t have much time to do it. It was a good thing he’d had a lot of experience with this kind of thing. Tallow reached for the first line.
Suddenly, the wards around the door faded. The doorknob turned.
Chapter 27: Surprises
Tallow’s eyes widened. He rolled to the right and backed up until his butt struck the railing of the fire escape. The door opened towards him and someone stepped out onto the platform. They were hidden by the door, but by the way the iron beneath his feet shifted with their added weight he was pretty sure they were bulky.
“Well, Tallow? Any luck with that door?” Brenda asked in his ear.
Tallow didn’t dare answer. At the moment he was worried that her voice would be heard by the person who had exited the building. His nose caught a whiff of cigarette smoke.
A female voice drifted out from inside. “Would you close the door? What’s the point of going out to smoke if it just blows back in here?”
Tallow glanced inside through the small crack that had opened up between the door’s hinges. He couldn’t see the woman who had spoken, but the glimpse he caught of the room inside showed him plush red carpet and fine furnishings. He smelled perfume and a short blast of AC caressed his face.
“Yeah-yeah,” said a man’s voice and the door swung shut.
The man stood there with his back to Tallow, gazing off of the fire escape while he blew out a stream of smoke. He was of average height, had shoulder-length black hair, and a substantial gut. He was also naked but for a pair of pink bikini style briefs. A spiderweb of wicked scars covered his back, each one tattooed with tiny power-enhancing runes.
Tallow couldn’t believe his luck. The door latched shut and he acted quickly. Flows of air surrounded the man and bound his arms to his sides. The cigarette dropped from his fingers and he opened his mouth to exclaim, but Tallow stuffed a gag of air in his mouth.
With one smooth motion, Tallow reached into the pockets of his robes and pulled out a rune-covered iron collar that he swung around the man’s thick neck. The collar clicked in place. He spun the man around to face him, looked into his beady eyes, and said, “Got you, Saokarlo.”
“What?” said Brenda in Tallow’s ear.
“You got him?” Douglas asked.
Tallow grinned. “It was a fluke. He stepped out of the door as I was trying to open it.”
Ross laughed. “Unbelievable!”
Fury raged in Saokarlo’s pudgy face, but there was nothing he could do. The runes on the collar disrupted the wizard’s magic and when Tallow executed the right spell, the collar would burn the magical ability out of the man.
Tallow would have done it then and there, but quelling a wizard took time. He settled for binding the man to the railing. He showed Saokarlo the naming rune on his palm. “You probably heard that I was around. I am Master Tallow and I will be back for you.”
Pleased with himself, Tallow put the hood up on his robes, then opened the door and stepped inside. The upper loft of the warehouse had once contained manager’s offices, but they had been converted into a plush suite that would have put most rich merchants to shame.
The floor was covered in fine Turkish rugs. There were two large sofas against one wall piled so high with pillows that Tallow couldn’t understand how anyone could sit on them comfortably. Another wall was hidden by a flat screen TV that stretched from floor to ceiling. A king-sized bed took the far end of the room. It was covered in silken blankets.
A woman sat on the bed. She was petite with dark features and wore a black robe, loosely tied at the waist. She was staring at Tallow in open shock. “Wh-what did you do with my husband?”
“Your husband?” Tallow said and told himself that he shouldn’t be too surprised. Powerful dark wizards and wizardesses were known to take pretty young things in marriage. It was usually an abusive relationship, either physical or emotional. He showed her the rune on his palm, proof of his goodness and power. “Don’t worry. I am Master Tallow. He won’t be hurting you anymore.”
“What did you do?” she shouted, her shock turning to anger and Tallow realized that this woman was one of those who had developed a twisted protective attachment to her abusive spouse. “Did you kill him?”
“I’m sorry about this, miss, but I must keep the sound down,” Tallow said and sent a wad of air towards her mouth.
He wasn’t expecting her to knock his hasty spell aside. He was even more surprised by the fireball she sent back at him. He barely had the presence of mind to raise his arm before it exploded.
Fireballs were not spells designed to be used in confined spaces. If a fire wizard was dueling inside a building, they usually used a fire lance or a fire whip or a steam blast, something that could be better controlled. A fireball was meant to damage a wide area, something better left for the battlefield. Unfortunately, the wizardess wasn’t thinking tactically.
The resulting blast blew out two of the room’s four walls. The outer wall on their floor exploded over the street behind the warehouse, peppering the road with blackened bricks. The inner wall blew into the interior of the warehouse, raining down on workers and prisoners alike in a hail of splinters and flaming pillow fluff.
If Tallow hadn’t been wearing his battle robes he would have been vaporized. But the runes did their job. A protective layer of earth magic formed around him, absorbing the heat of the blast and deflecting the majority of the pressure. But not all the pressure. Tallow felt like every inch of
his body was punched at once.
The air was knocked from his lungs, his ears rang, and the Bluetooth earpiece fizzled out. His knees buckled. His vision blurred.
The wizardess should have been no better off, but where she stood was a perfect sphere of water, rippling as it reflected the flames around it.
Tallow recognized through his stunned pain that he needed to breathe and if he didn’t he would soon pass out. Unfortunately, an inferno still raged around him. He managed to focus enough to form a pocket of air magic around his head. He breathed it in and as his vision cleared, he saw the sphere of water fall away from the around the woman with a splash and a hiss.
The wizardess was drenched, water dripping from her hair and robes, and her makeup running. She waved her arm and the remaining fire and smoke rushed out into the open air.
Tallow knew that he was in trouble. The protective power in his robes had been greatly depleted. He wouldn’t survive a second attack. He needed to ignore the shock and pain he was feeling and distract her.
“Who are you?” he wheezed.
This time the wizardess chose a more reasonable spell. She pulled her arm back and a fire lance formed in her hand. In a way it was even more deadly. All the heat of a fireball, but contained in one solid rod. She hurled it at him.
Tallow managed to encase his cane in air and knock the lance aside. Instead of burning through him, it blazed through the wall behind him and left a perfectly round smoking hole in the brick. The lance continued across the street and pierced through several walls of the empty building beyond. It didn’t stop until it had used up its heat and dissipated.
Tallow realized that asking the woman her name wasn’t distracting enough.
“I didn’t kill him!” he protested, his voice stronger this time. “I simply disabled his magic and . . . tied him to the fire escape.”
The woman’s snarl faded as she looked out of the gaping hole in the wall where the metal door and the fire escape beyond had been. Now all that remained was a twisted claw of iron bending out towards the street below. Numbly, she walked to the edge and peered down to see Saokarlo’s mangled legs protruding from a pile of bricks.
She turned shocked eyes back on him.
“Like I said, I didn’t kill him,” Tallow reminded her, taking advantage of every passing moment as strength began to return to his battered body.
She shook her head and some of her anger was rekindled. “You would have. You’re a named wizard. A hunter!”
“I am the Wizard of Mysteries. Or I was,” Tallow amended. “Actually, I resigned that post. I’m just a private detective now. Living in Atlanta. Hunting dark wizards is only a hobby.”
She trembled, sorrow and horror at her mistake warring with her anger. “Then you will have heard of me.”
“I’m not sure at the moment. That’s why I asked earlier,” Tallow replied. He began to channel magic back into his robes in an attempt to replenish their protective power.
The woman cocked her head and raised her right hand towards him. Tallow felt a pulse within his naming rune and his vision shifted into spirit sight. He saw the rune of black spirit magic that was emblazoned upon her palm. “You would know me as Wizardess Jeline. But at the Dark Bowl I was named Kersath!”
Tallow tried not to react. Jeline was one of the people he had thought he might find with the mirrors. The Mage School High Council had suspected that she was strong enough to kill the master wizard who had disappeared with them. He had not known that she had been named by the Dark Bowl.
“So you’re the one who killed Master Flynn and stole his mirrors?” Tallow asked. He reached down into his pocket and grasped one of Reginald’s seeds. Killing the dark wizardess outright hadn’t been the plan, but with the collar on a dead man in the street below, he had no choice. If he didn’t do something quick, her next attack might kill innocents.
Jeline blinked at him. “You think Flynn is dead?” A laugh rolled from her lips. “True, Saokarlo and I thought about killing him. We might have been strong enough together. But now . . .” A glow started deep within her chest. Smoke rolled from her mouth. “I’ll just have to settle for killing you.”
Tallow’s eyes widened as he realized what she was about to do. The woman was pouring all of her magic into one final attack. Even worse, she had tied it to the flesh of her own body. She was going to kill herself and blow the whole building. Even if he could knock her across the street before it went off, she could do enough damage to cause the building to crumble. Throwing the seed wasn’t going to be enough. He opened the top of his cane and fumbled the pebble into it.
Erl Hillstomper chose that moment to reach the top of the stairs and barge through the jagged remnants of the inner wall. “What in garl-friggin’ blazes are you doin’ Jeline? We’re under attack, you . . !” His eyes fell on Tallow. Then he saw the wizardess glowing from within. “Turds.”
“Reginald!” Tallow shouted and pointed his cane, unleashing a blast of air through the narrow channel inside.
The pebble left the cane at the speed of a bullet. In the millisecond before it hit, Reginald had grown to three feet in diameter. It struck her squarely in the chest and Tallow caught a glimpse of a resigned look on the elemental’s chalk line face before he disappeared into the distance, a red mist trailing in his wake.
Jeline was gone, killed before the full destructive force of her death spell could be unleashed. But a pulsating tangle of fire magic remained in the place where she had been. The partially-formed spell detonated as it fell apart.
The explosion was minor compared to what it would have been, a whimper instead of a roar, but it was enough to blow both Erl and Tallow backwards into the warehouse below.
Tallow’s robes absorbed part of the blast, but their magic began to fade and as he fell, he didn’t know if they had enough strength left to protect him from a four story fall. Blindly, he pushed towards the oncoming floor beneath him with a burst of air.
He landed on his back with a metallic thump. Tallow wasn’t certain if his hasty spell had broken his fall or if his robes had given him one last gasp of protection, but he was alive. He didn’t even think any bones were broken.
The breath had been knocked from his lungs once again though. Those were his last thoughts before he blacked out for a short time. When he awoke, gasping, he became aware that he was lying in a depression of some sort. Tallow struggled to sit up and realized that he had landed on top of one of the white vans.
Erl had fallen onto the van next to his, but the dwarf hadn’t been quite as lucky. Erl had gone through the windshield and most of his body was inside the van. Just his short legs stuck out. They were moving weakly.
The floor of the warehouse around them was in chaos. Chunks of blackened wood were still smoking on the ground. Guns were being fired and giant angry boulders were rolling around, chasing down bulky men with crew cuts.
The rows of cages that Tallow had seen from above lined one side of the warehouse and were filled with people that were cowering, some of them trying to scream despite the gags in their mouths. On the other side of the warehouse were stacks of crates and another line of cages. They were all empty accept for three of them. Two contained bulky beasts of some sort that were lying still. The last one had a single occupant. Tallow swallowed.
Standing alone, a short distance from the cages, was the magic mirror. It was six feet tall and three feet wide and the frame was made of dark wood carved with gold-filled runes. At the moment it stood dark, looking like it was merely a mirror.
“Tallow!” shouted a nearby voice. His father’s. “Asher!”
Tallow looked over the edge of the van and saw Douglas with his back to it, using the vehicle for cover. “I’m alright.”
“Then that explosion?” Douglas asked.
“It was the dark wizard.” Tallow leaned over the edge of the van and let his father help him down. “There were two of them actually. They’re dead now.”
“When your com went dead, Bo
b and I came in alone. SWAT should be here any minute,” Douglas said.
Tallow looked around the edge of the van and saw one of Reginald’s forms run down a mercenary. The elemental tried to be careful that when he rolled over someone, he weighed enough to perhaps break a bone or two, but not to kill them. There were many squirming forms on the floor to prove that his tactic worked. Their hands were behind their backs, their wrists zip-tied.
“Stand down!” came Ross’ loud voice. His back was against the other white van and he was shouting out at the three Gaiana mercenaries who remained standing. He had a gun in one hand and a fistful of zip-ties in another. “This is over! You are all under arrest!”
The men had squeezed between two of the cages and were pointing guns at the abductees. Two Reginald boulders stood nearby the cages with merciless expressions, waiting for the men to try and run for it.
“Listen to me!” Douglas shouted. “Your wizards are dead! Erl is down! There is no reason to resist! Put down your weapons and I promise that the boulders will not run you down!”
Reluctantly, the men slid their guns across the floor and, eying the boulders with frightened stares, stepped away from the cages. Ross and Douglas rushed over and forced them down to the ground, then tied their hands behind their backs.
Tallow unlocked the cages of all the abductees so that Ross and Douglas could help them. Then he walked across the warehouse floor and approached the cage with the single occupant. The human girl inside did not watch his approach with interest. She wore a plain blue dress and didn’t look hurt or pained. She didn’t even look particularly dirty. She sat on the floor and stared blankly ahead.
“Polly?” Tallow said. There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes at the sound of her name. “Polly Roberts, my name is Tallow Jones. I’m the uncle of Asher Jones, your friend.”
She blinked and turned calm eyes on him. “Are you sending me back to that place?”
Tallow Jones: Wizard Detective (The Tallow Novels Book 1) Page 32
