“Sir,” I said to Mason, “could we move this meeting indoors?” Simon’s face had taken on a pale cast, and I knew that being outside during the day was taking its toll. Sunlight or not, it was draining him and we needed him at full strength.
As if reading my mind, Mason looked over at Simon and glowered. “Fine. It isn’t exactly parade weather today anyway.” He turned and began marching towards the barracks that loomed off in the distance. Two soldiers ran up to flank him; the rest formed a horseshoe around Ben, Simon, and me, carefully watching our movements as we followed in Mason’s wake. They may not have hated us, but they sure didn’t trust us either. “You may have noticed that we are a bit under strength at the moment,” he called over his shoulder. “Most of the soldiers that are stationed here have been called up for crowd control over in the First City.” He cast a steely glare at Ben. “It’s gotten pretty bad out there.”
“We know,” Ben said apologetically.
Mason grunted and faced forward again. “Yeah, well don’t let that fool you. They still left me the baddest mothers I got to defend this base. Isn’t that right?”
Twenty soldiers chorused “Oorah!” back to him.
As if to retaliate against their defiance, the rain started coming down harder and lightning flickered out over the bay. “Double time!” Mason shouted, and broke into a quick trot. “Hope Inquisitor life hasn’t coddled your people too much, Ben, ‘cause Bravo Company’s barracks ain’t roomy. Hell, I don’t think they’d even be habitable if it weren’t for the Staff Sergeant constantly berating them about what a bunch of slovenly animals they are. Isn’t that right Bravo Company?”
The cry of “Oorah!” again, this time louder and prouder. Glancing sideways at the two men that flanked me, I saw that they were smiling. Their expressions bespoke men that felt like a family and looked to their commander as if he were their father. After being an Inquisitor for three years, I found this remarkable and envied their obvious camaraderie. The way our organizations operated were polar opposites; where the army prided itself on its units, teamwork, and chain of command, we concentrated on the individual. Initially we were trained as teams, but in the end it all came down to one person for one city. Also, the chain of command was much simpler for us: Inquisitor, Inquisitor General, and Committee member. One could go without hearing from either of the other two for months, even years at a stretch during peaceful times. But if you got a call from a Committee member, as I had from Jae Kwon, it was akin to a private getting a call from the Secretary of Defense. It shouldn’t happen, and was usually really bad if it did.
Commander Mason stopped in front of the barracks and waited for us all to gather around him. “You four,” he pointed out four soldiers, “stay inside with our guests. The rest of you get back to your stations.” There was assorted grumbling at this. “Oh cry me a river, would you? Ben, you’re with me. I want to finish our situation report.”
Ben nodded and looked over at me and Simon. “Keep your eyes peeled, but try not to spook the warlocks.” He grinned wryly at me as Mason muttered obscenities under his breath.
The crowd dispersed, leaving me and Simon with our four guards. Before entering, I looked out over the base. At first I was looking for the raven, but my eyes were drawn to the squat buildings surrounding us, the faded colors of stacked freight containers in the distance, and the rain that crashed against the ground like miniature explosions. It was as if this place was grown instead of manufactured, a garden of concrete and steel.
The guards escorted us inside and made awkward small talk for a minute before telling us to make ourselves at home. We picked a couple of bunks halfway down on the right side of the room. The guards took up stations at the front and rear of the room, one of them casting baleful looks at Simon. I guessed that Simon had chosen his bed to sit on.
After laying my sopping wet coat over the back of a chair near the entrance, I slowly lowered myself down onto the mattress. It must have looked almost reverential to the other people in the room, but I was beyond caring. Whether I was scared half to death that a Demon was going to rip my face off or working up a sweat with a slinky vampire in a closet, I had been on a roller coaster of adrenaline and I wanted nothing more at that moment than to lie down.
I fell asleep with my shoes on and my gun digging into my ribs.
* * *
“Do you still think he’ll show?”
“Huh? Wha’zat?” I replied groggily. Say what you will about magic-induced sleep, but it just isn’t as rejuvenating as the real thing. That is what I thought of as I mopped drool from the corner of my mouth and stretched. Sitting up, I rubbed at my sore ribs and groaned.
“Christian,” Simon elaborated, still seated on the bunk next to me. “Do you still think he’ll come here?”
“He’ll show,” I said with more confidence than I felt. From the amount of saliva on my pillow and the way Simon’s earlier pallor had given way to his normal tan, and, ahem, lively appearance I must have been out for at least a couple of hours. What did it mean that Christian hadn’t made his move yet? He must have known what had happened to his master by now. Would he simply give the Book up as lost once he saw where Ben was keeping it? There may not have been a lot of soldiers here, but add Simon, Ben, and myself to the mix and it’s a pretty potent force. Plus there were the two mysterious warlocks that I had yet to meet. Even with his necromantic power and his overblown ego to keep him going, would he think that he could beat all of us? If not then we may have been out of luck, because by now he could have slipped out of the state, or over to Mexico. Not that the Inquisition cared about little things like a country’s sovereignty. If he had jumped the border the Shadowcasters would chase him down wherever he was, and it wouldn’t be Alcatraz for him. With the list of deaths and dark magic works laid at his feet, Christian’s only possible sentence was death. I sat up straighter as that last thought sank in. “He has to come. It’s either victory or death for him now, there’s no middle ground.” I nodded to myself as I followed through to the logical conclusion. “With the Demon’s protection gone, our Adept trackers will be able to hunt him down.”
“His wang’s hanging in the wind, huh?” He said with a smirk. “Listen, Frank, earlier when you were “feeling out” this place did you notice anything weird about the storm?”
“The storm?” I echoed dumbly, taken off-guard by the question. “No, but I wasn’t really looking at it. Why? You think Christian has something to do with the storm?”
He waved a hand lazily through the air. “Maybe. You know how his Demon master brought that darkness with him wherever he went? Well, something about this storm feels…I don’t know… unnatural. It’s making all of my senses tingle, like I’m about to get struck by lightning or something.”
Scratching the stubble on my chin, I stood up and walked to the front of the room. The two guards peeled off to the side to allow me access to the window. White lights cut into the murk outside, but not so much that there weren’t places to hide in the long shadows of buildings across the way. “The only necromantic energy I’ve felt was from that raven that followed us here.” The two guards traded a nervous glance at this. “And without the Demon’s power he shouldn’t be able to pull off anything that big. A storm this size would suck up a lot of power, and it’s been going all day.”
Sneering, one of the guards ambled over to me and said, “You two have spent way too much time with the magic shit, sir. Sometimes rain is just rain.”
Turning from the window, I took in the soldier trying to decide if he was trying to antagonize me or not. The sneer transformed into an easy grin and he spread his arms to encompass the interior of the barracks. “You two need to relax a little. This place is sealed tight and, magic rain or no, nobody’s getting in here.”
“He seemed pretty relaxed when he was drooling all over Suarez’s bed,” one of the soldiers called from the back. Everyone laughed and I felt the blood rush into my face. Even Simon’s face split into a wide grin. Bef
ore I knew it I was laughing too.
“Menendez is just messin’ with you, sir,” the soldier next to me assured me. “Besides, if you had ever heard him snore you would know that he is the last person to give sleep etiquette tips.”
“Your girlfriend never complained,” Menendez quipped back with a wink. He stood and glanced from me to Simon, bright blue eyes set in a face that looked as if it were chiseled from granite. “But regardless of private Owens’s other shortcomings,” again the wink. This time accompanied with a devilish smile. “He is right to be confident about the safety of this base. This is Bravo Company territory, my friends.” Leaving his rifle on the bed at the other end of the room, he walked over to us by the window. “And no one dares mess with the baddest unit on base. Ain’t that right?”
“Amen,” Owens said, nodding.
A flash of movement behind the glass to my left. A shadow separating itself from the deeper darkness and slithering through the rain.
BAM!
Two pinkish palms rammed against the window followed by a ghostly face that seemed to float between them. A pink tongue darted out to taste the glass.
“Jesus Christ!” Owens yelled and grabbed for his rifle.
My pistol was already in my hand and pointed at one of the green eyes before I realized what was happening. I flicked off the safety with my thumb. The face froze into a shocked O as the eyes tracked up the barrel of the gun to my face. Something was wrong, I realized a second before I pulled the trigger. His eyes were a clear emerald green, not milky and clouded over from death. He was alive.
“Hold your fire!” Menendez yelled and pushed my arm away an eternity after I had already decided not to shoot. The training, I knew, had saved this man’s life. He ran over to the door, opened it, and leaned out. “Smitty! Get your ass in here!”
A shorter man in a black rain parka shambled into the room. With a slightly trembling hand he pulled the hood back and laughed. “I hope that’s just rain water puddling at my feet.”
Menendez closed the door and stood in front of the dripping man. “What the hell is wrong with you? You almost got killed by a civilian for Chrissakes! What a freakin’ embarrassment that would be, Smith. And imagine the paperwork that the Commander would have to do.”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” he said, but he still had that bright smile plastered on his face. “I couldn’t help it. It was like divine comedy timing; the three of you huddled around a window and me in my black rain slicker in the dark. It was a no-brainer.”
“No wonder you did it,” Owens said, checking his rifle over to make sure everything was in proper working order.
“I didn’t count on the civilian being so fast, though.” Smith looked over at me, the smile faltering for a moment before he recovered his confidence. “How did you do that anyway? It’s almost like your hand knew where to point the gun before you did.”
“Training,” I said, and shrugged.
“Something I think you are sorely lacking, Smith,” Sergeant Menendez snapped. “Now what the hell are you here for? And if you tell me you just wanted to stop by to lick the window clean then I’m going to have you do every one of them on the base, including the housing units.”
Smith gulped audibly and straightened up, hoping to project some professionalism. “No, sergeant. I was sent to ask the civilian if he was doing anything that we should know about.”
Menendez looked back and forth between the two of us. “Clarify, private.”
Smith looked between me and Simon. “Are either of you using your powers?”
“No,” Simon and I said in unison.
“Oh, then I think we have an intruder.”
30
Bravo Company had split up to scour the grounds, and supposedly so had the special ops team but I still hadn’t seen hide or hair of them. Ben was still up at the army terminal with the commander while Simon and I tagged along with the soldiers through the naval supply center. I could feel his senses ranging out over the grounds looking for whatever had tripped the base’s defenses. The one good thing about having someone here who wasn’t supposed to be here was that now we didn’t have to rein in our powers. My Second Sight was wide open, my perceptions expanding yet becoming less real, as if I looked through a kaleidoscope. I could see the thin threads of wards that the warlocks had placed, the weak afterimages of magic long gone, and the more recent impressions of paranormals who worked the docks.
And above it all was the storm. Simon had been right; someone was messing with the weather, but it wasn’t Christian. I was confident of that. The energy that suffused the clouds was not necromantic or dark in nature. It was, however, immense in scope. Whoever was doing it was incredibly powerful, and the fact that they had been holding it together all day told me that they had enviable stamina. Before our group had broken up, Sergeant Menendez had said that the warlocks should have been able to detect an intruder straight away but something was interfering with the spells performance. It had to be the storm.
My attention being directed above my head at the veins of blue energy that flowed through the air, I failed to notice the hole in the ground until I had stepped into it, my foot sinking into the puddle that had formed there and sending me sprawling to the ground. I cursed my clumsiness as I wiped gravel from the palms of my hands and tested my ankle to make sure I hadn’t twisted it too badly.
“You alright sir?” one of the soldiers asked. He was one of the soldiers that had surrounded our car on first arrival, but I hadn’t caught his name.
“Just peachy,” I growled. From beneath his parka he held his hand out to me to help me up. I took it and grumbled my thanks, thinking how much of a fool I must have looked to the two of them. Being human they had only their primary senses to guide them, and thus wouldn’t understand what I had been doing looking up when it was obvious to them that I should have been watching where I was going. But it was hard not to look up if you could see what I saw. A beautiful bouquet of pale colors danced through each cloud following each flash of thunder as if chasing prey. I could imagine the old god Zeus sitting upon a cloud up there directing each strike, transforming the sky into a brilliant tapestry for my kind to admire. Sights like this were not meant for human eyes.
“Are you sure you’re alright, sir? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, as my mother used to say.”
Blinking away the unceasing rain that battered my face, I tore my gaze away and looked the soldier in the eyes. “Someone used this storm as cover to get in here, and I think I know who.” Turning in a slow circle, I reached out with my mind, waiting for that distinctive pressure of someone pushing back. Someone who doesn’t want to be found.
“I’ll call for backup,” the other soldier said, bringing a radio out from under his slicker.
“No,” I said, holding up a hand. “Not yet. It might be nothing.”
I could feel the confusion flowing off them, the anger at being given orders by a civilian, and the panic that was creeping on them here between these rows of old cargo containers. Lots of places to hide here. Too many nooks and crannies to get lost in. Sodium lights tossed the shadows of sleeping giants across our path, taunted us with just enough light to see all the places that we couldn’t see. Tiny waterfalls spilled from the lips of the containers and pounded the earth below.
There.
My senses latched onto something on top of a dull red storage unit. In my mind’s eye I could see glacial blue eyes staring at me from the cover of darkness.
“You want to come down here, or were you just planning on skulking about for the rest of the day?” I asked conversationally. I knew she would hear me even over the sound of rain pounding on steel.
“Who are you talking to?” one of the soldiers asked. They took up positions next to me and raised their rifles partway, ready in case I wasn’t crazy.
“A friend…sort of. Just don’t shoot her, okay?” Reconsidering, I added, “Unless I tell you to.”
A shape revealed itself where I had felt her pr
esence, porcelain white against the surrounding gloom. “Are we friends Inquisitor?” she called to me. The two guards who had been keeping their eyes at the ground level suddenly swung their rifles towards where the voice had emanated from. With inhuman speed and grace she leapt from her perch, spun languidly in the air, and landed soundlessly scant feet from where we stood. The soldiers, breathing hard from adrenaline, spun to keep her in their sights. She ignored the two of them. “Some people use that term too lightly.”
“Hello Clara.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t shoot her?” the soldier on my right asked breathlessly.
My eyes drank in the sight of Clara, dazzling in the rain, her short blond hair hanging in wet tangles to the side of her face except for one unruly strand that slithered snake-like over her forehead, between perfectly arched eyebrows, and down her sharp nose. A powder blue tank top clung to her as if painted on, revealing every curve and swell of her body in breathtaking clarity. The ankh amulet she wore around her neck pressed through the fabric. If her heart had still been beating I would have seen it. The white pants and sneakers she wore were a bit of a shock. I had never seen her in anything but opulent dresses and heels that accentuated her statuesque legs. But I guess it’s hard to leap over fences and elude pursuers in a dress and heels. Lips shaded the color of frost tugged upward at one corner as my eyes met hers. Seeing her like this, like a normal girl caught out in a rain storm with the imperfections and disheveled appearance of same gave her a realness that she could never achieve when she was in Selena’s court. There she was the height of perfection, a goddess of marble with ice chips for eyes, never to be addressed or approached. Back at the STS building I had been in the dark, literally and figuratively. In some part of my mind I knew that if those lights had come on I would have seen the vampiric flawlessness of her and the spell would have been broken. We would have returned instantly to the roles that we had been given. But here, now, she was attainable. All I had to do was step forward and sweep that one strand of hair from her face, and then…and then…
Demon's Play Page 30
