by Thomas Green
A frown crept onto my face. Other tracks of aether were present, mostly shades of yellow. If it was one track, it would be normal since aether wielders weren’t that rare, one in ten thousand. But this suggested multiple aether-wielders frequented this place, and I didn’t remember this bar being sanctioned by the Dewin Institute. My palms started sweating and the contorting shadows people threw around them made my gaze dart in every direction.
A few minutes of searching found me two things. First, there was a door with two guards where the gray aether led and second, there was one owner of the yellow aether at the bar. I could do some reckon before making trouble. I leaned on the bar, nodded at the barman and half-shouted, “Tequila.”
I let the skimpy-dressed waitress get me the drink while I examined the aether wielder standing nearby. He was skinny, wore torn jeans and so many chains around his neck I couldn’t make out what was on his t-shirt. Tattoos covered his tanned skin and a green-painted Mohawk towered atop his otherwise shaved head. That made him easy to spot.
I contemplated for a moment while staring at the shot. I should have ordered water, but I was also tired and needed a boost. Downing the shot gave me the enjoyable burning feeling in the throat. I dove back into the club. Who would have ever thought that the regulation requiring smoke alarms to be installed everywhere could be so useful? Ironically, they were bound to be functional no matter what this place was. If this was a legal business, they had no reason not to maintain them. And in case this club hid something less than legal, they wouldn’t want to attract attention of the authorities by failing a random smoke detector check.
I swooped three beer coasters from the bar and withdrew to the side. A drunken couple stumbled away from the crowd and hit me. I pushed them off and I found a smoke detector, a round bulge on the ceiling, and under my coat, took out my lighter.
Four men stood by my side. One looked at me and stretched out a hand holding black molds. “Want some?”
Ecstasy… no, thanks. I ignored him. The beer coasters finally caught ablaze. The four men were gone, replaced by a kissing couple. Once they burned nicely, I raised them up so the fire could almost touch the smoke detector.
Seconds later, the fire alarm rang through the air and water poured out of the sprinklers. How thoughtful of them to install automatic sprinklers. I smirked and enjoyed the panic. People screamed and started running out. I kept my gaze on the Mohawk-guy and slid toward the guarded door. From the two stationed men, one disappeared inside and the other ran out with the people. As expected, Mohawk ran toward the door. He was fast, stable on his feet while weaving through the screaming crowd.
He was a touch too sure with his steps to my taste, moving like this wasn’t his first time. I waited for him to run through the door. But I didn’t let them close. I caught the wing and snuck inside. Beyond were barren stairs from which still echoed Mohawk’s steps. I descended between the concrete walls, my step light as I shifted my weight to make no noise. That slowed me down though. One couldn’t be both fast and silent.
Before I got down, the guardsman appeared below, running up. He froze as he looked up the stairs, seeing me five feet away from him. Without thinking, I made a swift step and kicked him in the chest.
And bless the heavens I didn’t hit his face. My strength slipped, of course. His back smashed into the wall and he screamed with pain. He crumpled to the ground, coughing out blood.
Sorry.
Ah well, no point in being silent. I turned the corner and froze. Before me was a hallway rimmed with cells. Men with assault rifles, Mohawk among them, were shoving along eight roughly sixteen-year-old girls. The girls had their hands tied behind their backs with heavy, iron shackles and wore little excuse for clothes. They cried and screamed as the men kept forcing them to move out.
My first instinct was to reach for my guns. But a shootout here would lead to an unnecessary massacre. I drew a GPS tracker on a magnetic mount and tossed it at one of the girls, aiming for the shackles. I hit and the tracker latched on at about the same second the men noticed me. They shouted something in Spanish and aimed their rifles at me. I slid back behind the corner and sprinted up the stairs with arms raised behind my nape. They fired a couple bursts after me, but luck was on my side and no ricocheted bullet hit me.
The screaming of the girls drowned the steps, so I couldn’t judge if anyone ran after me. I didn’t expect them to. This place was apparently part of a sex trafficking scheme and they needed to move the prisoners away before firefighters arrived.
Why did the trail of the statuette thief lead me here? No way this was a coincidence. The club above was almost empty. I picked up a girl who lay trampled on the ground and dashed to the exit.
The crowd has gathered outside. Everyone was trembling with cold, as the cool autumn breeze didn’t bode well with drenched club clothing. I placed the girl by the wall and pushed through the crowd. I started sprinting the second I had the chance. Behind the corner, I almost hit a trash bin.
The traffickers were fast. I glimpsed them closing the door of the last van and rushing to the seats. Better safe than sorry, so I drew another magnet-mounted GPS tracker and tossed it at the van. I hit the roof as intended.
With a sour smirk, I slid back behind the corner and grabbed my phone. The vans drove away, and I called Katherine.
She picked up after three beeps. “Hmm?” Even through the sound, tension played on her voice.
“I need you to arrest someone, Paladin.”
She sighed. “Tell me you’re not making fun of me now.”
“I ran across a sex trafficking gang ran by aether-wielders. I put GPS trackers on the vans they are, right now, using to move their prisoners.” I smiled. “Pick me up two hundred feet north of Taracas at Jamaica Avenue.”
“I’ll be there in five,” Katherine replied, tone an octave lower. She hung up.
I lit up a cigarette and walked where I told her. Her dark-green Mazda soon pulled in next to me. I tossed away the butt, took off my hat and sat inside.
She scrunched her nose as I did. “I should have covered the seat in plastic.”
Yeah, I must have stunk pretty badly after spending the entire day walking through New York. I turned on the tracking app and showed her. The lights of the two active trackers showed a location at the northern part of Long Island, up near Lloyd Harbor.
She nodded and started driving. “How exactly did you run across a sex trafficking gang?”
I couldn’t tell her the truth. Okay, I could have told her the truth, but that never worked for me, so I chose the usual excuse. “Professional secret.”
Katherine snorted. “You were sticking your nose where you shouldn’t have and got lucky, didn’t you?”
She knew me far too well. “Did you get anything on the murder?”
“You know I’m not going to tell you anything about an ongoing investigation.”
“Yes.” But she also arrived a bit too fast to have been in the pub, meaning she was working on something. And I couldn’t smell beer on her, which never meant things were going well.
The rest of our ride was marked with awkward silence. Neither of us was willing to risk slipping out secrets the other could use. And since we weren’t for idle chatter, we had nothing to talk about. At least we could cooperate for a higher cause. That was something, I supposed.
Huddling houses gave way to a forest with large villas. Parked cars disappeared from the streets and we now essentially drove through a maze of live fences. Neither tracker was moving anymore and we were close. Katherine slowed down. I glimpsed the top of one van through the trees. “There.” I motioned.
Katherine pulled over, hiding her car under the tree fence, and we got out of the car. I moved my guns from the sides of my chest to my thighs and tied the holsters. That would quicken my draw. Katherine kissed the cross pendant on her silver necklace before hiding it beneath her shirt.
“The prisoners are in the back?” she asked.
Checking my pho
ne, I replied, “Yes, about two hundred feet in. There must be a villa there.”
“Go secure them. You have fifteen minutes, after which I’ll call reinforcements and storm in through the front.”
The typical procedure. The gang could have a bribed cop of two, who would tip them off if we were to wait for reinforcements. And everyone from the Church had to be busy preparing for the Summit, so we had few reinforcements to call from there.
I nodded and stepped into the trees. Dense forestation surrounded the villa and I moved at its edge with ease. Beneath the cover of darkness, I doubted I could be seen by anything short of thermo vision. The cold of my wet coat started getting to me and I had to swallow a couple of coughs. The smell of woods pleased my nose, a welcomed distraction from car fumes and my own sweat. Branches tried to lash my face, but my cowboy hat held them at bay… mostly.
The villa was large, painted white, with a wide terrace and a garden overflowing with weeds. By my estimate, someone used to live here and then the gang bought out the place and turned the villa into their hideout. I checked for aether.
Various shades of yellow aether covered the house. But there were also marks of the misty gray one. The trail started in the vans, but wasn’t exiting from the door, but from the roof. What the hell?
I followed the marks with my eyes. They led up the wall of the house and onto the roof. There stood a cloud of concentrated aether. Like wisps, gray lights swirled through and I could make out the frame of a person, either a woman or a slender man, with a backpack and rollerblades instead of shoes. The person wasn’t moving, but also wasn’t visible with normal sight.
Okay, maybe mission wasn’t always first. Sure, to deliver on my job for Lucielle, the best approach would be to ambush him. But doing something righteous for once couldn’t hurt me and so I kept the course, aiming for the villa’s back.
Of course, they had a guard there. A single man stood by the back porch, leaning on the wall, smoking a joint. He didn’t have a Mohawk, but looked the same otherwise, just had a leather jacket over the t-shirt and two guns tucked into his belt. Around him were almost sixty feet of grass with no cover. How the hell was I supposed to get close to him? It may have been night, but the moon was high in the sky and the lights were on.
I searched the surroundings for a path at least partially concealed by darkness. After long minutes of searching, I found nothing useful. My arsenal of spells also contained nothing helpful. Everything I could do was either internal or more or less a blast, and that was loud and too destructive.
As I pondered my options, gunfire echoed from the villa’s front. Those weren’t fifteen minutes. Katherine must have run out of patience and went in alone. Fuck. She was too strong for her own good.
“What the fuck?” The man guarding the back door reached for his guns.
I bolted forward. Now, I could run pretty fast even normally. Fuelled with my overflowing aether and motivated by being late, I blasted forward like a rocket. I crossed the sixty feet of distance within a second and slammed my shoulder into the man. Bones crunched and his back hit the door. The wood broke and I ran through, pushing him with my shoulder. He wasn’t screaming, so the shock must have knocked him out. I ran into the hallway beyond, splinters flying around me and stopped running. The man flew off my shoulder and fell on the floor made of wooden tiles.
Gunfire thundered through the air. I scanned my surroundings. Dirt soiled the floor, but that could have been from me. The ceiling was painted white and featured a halogen light. Why did I even look there? I gave a closer look to the walls and noticed scratches. Did one of the prisoners try to fight and scratched the wall with her shackles?
Possibly. I ran through the hallway and tried every door. One revealed stairs that led down into the cellar. That looked like a good place to search. I descended the stairs, fully reinforcing my body with aether, and ran into the next door, shoulder first. The intoxication of aether made me not feel the impact. I barely noticed the man I sent flying across the room.
What was once the cellar was rebuilt into a prison with eight cells hidden behind iron doors. Holy shit, that was a lot more than I expected. This must have been their central hub before distributing the girls further.
Feet shuffled behind me. I instantly stepped aside and whirled. A throwing dagger flew where my nape was a split second ago. The dagger hit the wall and clanged on the concrete floor. A man stood in the door I came through. He was short, slender, Japanese with long, black hair, and wore what looked like a black combat suit with a Kevlar breastplate complemented with guards on shins and forearms. In sharp contrast, he had a pair of white gloves with a pentagram-like symbol at the top of each hand.
His aether was light blue, but he bore stains of the misty gray. Not my suspect, but someone who had been close to him. I smiled. “You’re the worst assassin I’ve ever met.”
“And you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, gaijin,” he replied in decently fluent English.
I had no idea what the last word meant or what exactly he was doing here. Okay, sure, he came to kill me, but a lot of people did that lately. Why he wanted to was the more interesting part. The gunfire echoing from above ceased and was replaced with women screaming and the gang members cheering. Shit! Katherine needed help. No time to play around with my newest assassin. “Sex trafficking? Your mother must be so proud of you, midget.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Was that supposed to taunt me?” He clapped his hands together as if in prayer. Blue light buzzed around them. He ducked and placed his hands on the ground. His aether formed the arcane pattern displayed on his gloves, filled the concrete and the floor bent, its parts shooting out like snakes, aiming at me.
All right, this was going to be a mage duel. His body contained so much aether I was sure a bullet would bounce off his defenses. I bolted forward, sliding among the concrete snakes and punched at his face. He ducked and swung at my ribs.
I left that to my aether defense and grabbed his shoulder. His fist burrowed into my side like the kick of a horse. Pain blasted through me, air blew from my mouth and I staggered. He hit too hard for his small size. Before I recuperated, he kicked me with his left leg. The foot hit my stomach and sent me flying ten feet backward. I landed on my back, contorted with pain, my vision reddening.
He clapped his hands and touched the walls. From the ceiling launched a concrete spear, aimed at my chest. I gritted my teeth and rolled to the side. The spear pierced the ground, creating a column. I watched the aether he used for the spell withdraw into his body. He was pushing around the magical energy to bend the concrete to his will.
With three swift steps, he charged forward and launched his right arm at me. I bent under the punch and leapt to the side to avoid the following left kick. This was the second time he was in a good position to hit me with a left punch and he didn’t. The right arm and left leg had to be special in some way.
I could work with that. He touched the ground and the concrete snakes launched after me once more. I drew my gun and shot. One, two, three. All three bullets bounced off the aether shield he had over his face. But they made him blink and lose focus on the attack. To make concrete move must have required absolute concentration, which was why he attacked physically when I was close. I let go of the gun, clapped my hands and formed the same pattern I saw him do. I placed my hands on the wall behind my back and focused my thought to bend the concrete, copying his spell.
The wall stretched out and flung me forward. He swung with his right, again. I weaved my head away, grabbed the arm, planted my foot into ground and spun, using the momentum I had. His body bent before me with the arm I held high up.
Normally, this would have shattered his right shoulder. Except that he only smirked and placed his free hand on the ground. The concrete under me shot up like a spear, aiming at my groin. I let go and leapt back. His right arm was mechanical, wasn’t it? The cheering above got stronger. “Next one will get her!” I heard and a chill crept up my sp
ine.
Katherine needed backup, now. The man rose slowly, his hand returning to a natural position. “Your friend has overestimated herself,” he said with a wicked smile. “She will join you in hell.”
I narrowed my eyes and breathed deeply. I couldn’t help Katherine if I didn’t end this instantly.
He slapped the column with his palm and concrete shot out like bullets. I stretched out my hand, formed the rotating sphere of aether and led the spell go. The ensuing blast shattered the bullets, threw him back against the wall.
I charged. He got off the wall and met me with a wide kick of his left leg. I ignored it and dove for his right leg. He hit me in the hip, which sent an explosion of pain through me. But I grabbed his ankle, lifted it and leapt sideways, shooting up my legs. That sent us both to the ground. He clearly never wrestled as he fell flat on his ass. I clenched my legs around his thigh, fixed my arms around his heel and spun my upper body. If this were a fight in an octagon, I would stop the movement to let my opponent tap out.
But this wasn’t for sport. I finished the move. His knee tore apart as I spun the leg the way it wasn’t supposed to. He wailed in pain. I let go and swiftly pushed myself to get on top of him. He slapped his palms on the ground and the concrete shot out as snakes. He could cast spells with this type of wounds?
Impressive. I scrambled to dodge. He punched at my chest. His arm was too short to reach me, so I ignored it. A blade extended from the top of his hand. It hit my chest, slid up the collarbone and cut my shoulder. I shouted out in pain, grabbed his arm and pulled him under me. He punched with his left. This one wasn’t mechanical, so the hit bounced off my side. I pinned his right under my knee, postured, up and punched at his face. He used his left arm to cover. Like that would matter.
Punch after punch, I hammered his arm into his face and then his face into the concrete. His body soon went limp. I exhaled and rolled over onto my back. Fuck. The second of peace got interrupted by cheering from above. Katherine was in serious trouble.
