“But who the fuck would fire off an infectious curse?” Amy stomps over, arms crossed like she’s angry, but I can see the panic running through her veins, the little twitches, the foot now tapping out of rhythm. “Unless it was some kind of freak accident, this could only be a deliberate act of terror. Releasing the magic equivalent of a bioweapon.”
“Methuselah?” Riker tugs his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through his contacts, landing on Commissioner Bollinger’s entry. “This level of chaos is right up their alley, based on what they did to the Wellington Center.”
“But what’s the motive, Nick?” Ella waves off a light rain of ash drifting her way, then glances at the burning deli. The firefighters are setting up their hoses on the nearest hydrants, preparing to douse the blaze. “The MG rogues are practitioners themselves, and we know they’re actively recruiting. Why would they risk sickening practitioners?”
“We can speculate later.” Riker holds up his hand. “For now, let’s get this damn scene cleaned up, have Schultz take a look at that wizard’s body for any clues, and then head back to the office.” He nods at Ella as he raises his phone to his ear. “I’m assuming Navarro has already instituted building-wide quarantine procedures.”
“Yeah.” She gnaws on her thumbnail. “But I don’t know how effective they’ll be. They’re meant to ward off a regular disease, not an ‘infectious curse.’ For all we know, this thing can spread just by someone being within a certain distance to an infected person.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Riker confirms. “But we’re going to learn it all.”
The captain makes his call to Bollinger, and afterward, things speed up tremendously. We finish helping move the injured survivors to the waiting ambulances and then bag up those who weren’t so lucky and line them up for transport to the morgue. Three vans from the ME’s office barrel onto the scene behind the line of flashing cop cars not long after we wrap up, and from the van in the middle, three people clad in hazmat gear emerge, alerted by a quick call from Ella that they need to treat the wizard’s body as a potential biohazard.
While it’s unlikely the wizard can still spread the curse now that his soul has crossed into the Eververse and his magic has summarily dissipated, the fact we don’t know exactly how the curse “infects” someone means we should play this carefully. Erica explained to me once that spellwork can be insanely complex, and if it was indeed the MG who created this curse, I expect it to be no less sophisticated than the complex map of wards that took down the Wellington Center. We can’t afford to take a chance with these people. They’re criminals. They’re terrorists.
The hazmat-clad people surround the wizard’s body, and touching him as little as possible, place him in a special hazard bag, haul him onto a gurney, and wheel him away from the scene. Once they’ve loaded him into the truck, they speed off for the morgue, where Natalie Schultz is no doubt impatiently waiting to perform his autopsy. She and her assistant medical examiners have at least two dozen bodies coming in today, possibly more, depending on whether any of the injured succumb to their wounds. I’m sure we’ll be hearing her workload complaints for weeks.
I wonder how she’ll react when she learns this may only be the beginning.
By the time the last morgue van rolls away, the fire is out, five buildings are damaged or completely destroyed, there’s a massive crowd of onlookers on either end of the street, and six news vans are already on scene, reporters actively filming segments. All us DSI agents, now with nothing left to do, regroup near our SUVs and wait patiently for the final two ambulances to clear the scene and open the road that leads back to the office. Lassiter is in one of those ambulances, being attended by two paramedics who are trying to rouse him. Just as the doors of the ambulance are swinging shut, I think I see him stir.
Though it could be my vain imagination.
After all, Lassiter, who’s helped me out more than once, got hurt because DSI failed to stop a supernatural threat.
It’s hard to avoid the guilt.
The ride back to the office is quick and quiet, everyone contemplating how far down the rabbit hole we’ll be tumbling this time. We pull into the parking garage and spill out of the vehicles, hurrying toward the entrance in anticipation of finding out how bad things have gotten since we left. The answer is pretty shitty, judging by the fact that quarantine protocols extend all the way to the doors. There’s a soft plastic, multi-stage decontamination cube erected around the entrance, with two agents in charm-laden hazmat gear stationed in the hallway behind it. They’re armed with semiautomatic rifles, and the charms—anti-curse charms, I assume—are so strong that the suits are faintly glowing.
Entering the first stage of the cube, we find boxes of identical hazmat suits piled on one side, and without complaint, we strip off our black coats and struggle into the suits. After we’re all dressed, we move through the other two stages of the cube and emerge into the hallway. The two guard agents nod in deference to Riker, and the one on the left says, “Infirmary level is totally sealed. No one in, no one out. Dr. Navarro is commanding the floor from inside his own quarantine chamber. He’s not sick yet, but he’s not taking any chances. We’re up to twenty-four affected agents.”
“Any fatalities?” Riker asks, his voice muffled by the hazmat helmet.
The guards exchange uneasy glances.
The one on the right answer solemnly, “That analyst, Regent, died a few minutes ago. We got word as you were pulling into the garage.”
My stomach drops into a hole, and my knees grow weak. Brittany wasn’t much older than me. She probably has living parents, maybe siblings, possibly even a spouse and young kids. And she’s only one out of twenty-four, so far…
Everyone in the hall gives Brittany a respectful moment of silence.
Then Riker jumps back into captain gear. “What frequency are the suit coms on?”
Left guard answers, and we all tune in. Immediately, Navarro’s voice comes over the feed, handing out various instructions to members of his medical staff.
Riker says into the mic, “Navarro, do you have a status on the woman who collapsed at Kelly’s this morning?”
There’s a pause, and Navarro replies, “Ah, good, you’re back. And yes, I located her. She was taken to St. Bartholomew’s. Lisa Bower. Twenty-nine. Pronounced dead ten minutes before we lost Regent. I informed the administrator that we have a potential contagion, and the hospital is now locked down. But there’s no telling how many people Bower may have come into contact with when she was first brought into the ER, or whether she infected people with the curse before she collapsed at the restaurant. It’s very possible this thing could be spreading before the infected start showing symptoms.”
“Have we gotten any other reports at St. Bart’s of new patients with similar symptoms?” Ella asks, her arms awkwardly crossed inside the large, wrinkled hazmat suit sleeves. “Or from the other hospitals?”
“I put everyone on alert,” Navarro says. “But I haven’t heard anything yet. Given how quickly this curse is killing, however, I suspect reports will start pouring in soon. There’s no way we nipped this in the bud. We caught it too late. I know it.”
“The wizard on Wayland,” I say, finger on the mic, “we have no idea where he went after he left Kelly’s. If he crossed paths with any other practitioners before he entered the deli, which is likely, because practitioners tend to run in the same circles, we could be looking at a very rapid spread from this point on.”
“What I don’t understand”—Desmond leans against one of the metal turnstiles we have to badge through—“is where this curse originated. And I don’t mean who created it. Obviously, that’s the mystery we need to solve. But rather, who was patient zero? Bower? The wizard? Someone had to cast the original iteration of the curse on a specific target.”
“Maybe there’s more than one,” Amy says. “Maybe the curse maker cast it on multiple people, in order to make it spread through Aurora faster.”
&
nbsp; Naomi shakes her head inside her suit, the face plate not moving with her. “But if that was the case, wouldn’t we have more infected by this point?”
“Also, how was it delivered?” asks Newman. “You think somebody would’ve noticed a magic practitioner casting a dangerous spell on them.”
“Maybe not.” Navarro’s voice is more distant now, like he’s turned away from the mic. “There are thousands of ways to cast a spell. If you’re clever with it, the intended target may not even realize something is wrong until it’s too late.”
“So how do we approach this?” Desmond raps his gloved knuckle on the top of the turnstile, creating a loud, tinny knock. “If we can’t reliably track where the curse originated from, how do we find out who created it, specifically? I mean, it’s one thing to say this may be a Methuselah plot. But it’s another to track down the actual culprit. These people tend to operate in small cells beholden to the orders of higher-ups who rarely reveal themselves. That’s what makes them so hard to catch. The various branches don’t know what the others are doing.”
“Damn it.” Amy scuffs her boot against the tile. “If we only had a few of those fuckers in custody.”
“Someone does,” Ella murmurs off the com feed, almost inaudible through her suit. “Delos.”
“You think he’ll let us interrogate them now that we have an active threat on our hands?” Naomi asks, shuffling closer to Riker. “He’s denied us access so far, but this curse threatens his own people. The ICM is the most at-risk group.”
Riker mulls it over. “I think he’ll still be a stubborn ass about it, but we have no choice except to press him until he stops stonewalling us. This is an extremely dangerous situation, and we can’t allow the arrogance of a single practitioner to cost us the lives of countless innocent civilians.”
“Ahem,” Navarro breaks in, “not to go on a tangent, but I wanted to ask…Kinsey, how are you feeling?”
“Me?” I shift uncomfortably in the suit. “Fine. Why?”
“Well, it’s just…” He sighs. “I looked up Regent’s personnel file to see if she was on record as a minor practitioner, but she wasn’t. She was, however, on record as having a lesser magic skill—specifically, magic sensing. Like you.”
“Whoa, wait.” My mouth is suddenly dry. “Magic sensing counts as a magic skill?”
“It does. To sense magic, you must have magic, but not necessarily a lot. See, only one out of every million people has enough power to reach ICM practitioner status. Only one out of every quarter million qualifies as a minor practitioner. But somewhere around a quarter of a percent of the total world population has a very tiny amount of magic, just enough to have one or two extremely weak skills. Among those skills, magic sensing is the most common.”
He pauses for a shuddering breath. “The reason I bring this up is because if this curse is exclusively meant to attack those ‘with magic,’ then Regent contracting the curse means it’s not limited to actual practitioners, but includes that quarter percent of the population with lesser skills, like you, Kinsey. And many other agents at DSI. And many, many civilians in the city who don’t even know they’re not totally average, who don’t know magic exists. Most people with lesser magic skills never even realize they have them. And—”
“A quarter of a percent?” Ella wrings her hands as she does the math. “Navarro, are you saying five thousand people in this city are at risk of contracting the curse?”
He hesitates before answering. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“But…” Joe Adelman struggles to get his words out.
His brother finishes for him. “But what if it spreads outside the city?”
Riker wheels around to face the twins. “It won’t. Because as soon as I get to my office, I’m going to call Mayor Burbank and tell him to bring in the National Guard. We’re going to quarantine Aurora, Michigan.”
Chapter Six
When Robert “Iron” Delos blew into town a few months back, he established what Allen Marcus had never been bold enough to: a public face for the ICM, thinly disguised as an adult learning center. Up until then, the ICM held clandestine basement meetings and rented out temporary venues for large functions, probably to keep away the prying eyes of their enemies, and not-quite allies like DSI. But now, thanks to Delos and his uncompromising desire to bring order to the naturally chaotic practitioner community, we know exactly where to go when Delos refuses to answer his phone and give us the time of day.
Leaving Naomi to manage the office situation and sending Delarosa out on patrol—because it’ll only be a matter of hours now before the sick start rolling into the hospitals en masse and the media realizes they’ve got a month of hyped headlines ahead of them—we strip off our hazmat gear, hop back into the SUV, and take off for Delos’ base of operations. Twenty minutes later, we skid to a stop in front of a generic office building constructed sometime during the seventies when architects lost their fashion sense.
Before we’re even out of the vehicle, we have a problem. Standing on the front steps like watchdogs are six practitioners. My stomach folds up like an origami crane and tries to fly away when I spy Erica among the group, back against one of the glass entry doors, looking bored and not at all worried that a team of DSI agents, the very detectives who’ve been hunting rogue practitioners for months, just flew in like a SWAT crew about to kick some doors down.
The last time I saw Erica, she erased her memory of me and every unsanctioned interaction she’d ever had with DSI, in order to protect herself from Delos’ infamous mind probes. But even though I know she doesn’t remember me, our friendship, or our short-lived casual sex arrangement, it still hurts when I climb out of the SUV and she eyes me like I’m a wad of gum stuck to the dirty sidewalk.
My team loiters at the base of the steps, and the practitioners at the top, each group sizing up the other. Finally, one of the wizards, a black man of moderate height and build, wearing a nice button-up shirt and tie, imposing only because we know he wields considerable magic, advances two steps down and says, “I’m afraid Wizard Delos isn’t available for a meeting today, Captain Riker.”
Riker walks two steps up, cane clacking against the stone. “I don’t care for Delos’ excuses when it comes to avoiding contact with DSI. There’s an unfolding situation involving magic practitioners in the city, and it presents a danger to every single ICM member, including you, including Delos. I’ve already spoken to Mayor Burbank on the matter, and he’s assured me any lack of cooperation on your part will be passed up the chain, first to the governor, and, if necessary, to the federal government. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that the office of the president has the final say regarding the continuing operation of the ICM as a sovereign organization within the United States of America.”
“Big words,” says the wizard, nonplussed. “But what you don’t realize is that Wizard Delos is already aware of the ‘situation.’”
“You weren’t on Wayland,” I throw in. “I would’ve seen you.”
The wizard’s gaze casually rolls over me, and though we’ve never met, a spark of recognition crosses his face. “Magic sensing only covers those with magic powers, Cal Kinsey. We weren’t there ourselves. But we have eyes and ears all over the city, same as you. From the witness statements, all it took was putting two and two together. A rational man like Wizard Dorset unexpectedly goes on a rampage, then drops dead for no obvious reason? Clearly, the magic practitioners of this city are under attack.”
Ella climbs a single step, a quiet threat. “If it’s simple math, then you should realize that working with DSI is in your best interest. If we cooperate, we can probably uncover the truth behind this attack more quickly and efficiently, thus better protecting the practitioners of Aurora.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” The man raises his hands in a mockery of a placating gesture. “With DSI still raiding our homes and businesses unhindered, viciously hunting for virtual phantoms and in the process, r
uining innocent lives, the official line of the Aurora ICM community is that we will no longer cooperate with your organization until you come to the table dealing compensation for the terror you’ve inflicted. In regards to the current matter, we’ll be instructing all practitioners to remain in their homes, unexposed to the public, except for those who work in this building, until such time as the problem is resolved.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” Amy growls. She marches halfway up the steps, fingers flexing like she’s about to charge her beggar rings. “How dare you paint us like some secret police, spiriting off innocent civilians in the night. The only reason we have to break down doors and risk our lives raiding your shitholes is because you can’t keep your own people under control. If you weren’t complete shit at your own jobs—maintaining ‘balance’ in the global practitioner community—then Methuselah wouldn’t exist, then the Wellington Center wouldn’t have come down, then there wouldn’t be another goddamn tragedy in the making today. Honestly, screw you bastards.”
“Major,” Desmond warns.
Amy ignores him and spits on one of the wizard’s shoes. “You know, when this is all said and done, no matter how you try to frame it, there’s going to be a losing side and a winning side.”
The wizard tucks his thumbs into his pockets, an amused smile playing at his lips, pretending Amy didn’t just defile his patent leather. “And who do you think is going to be on the losing side?”
There’s a sudden shift in Amy’s posture, from tense and bitter and pissed off to utterly furious, and though I can’t see her expression, the way that all the composure drains from the wizard’s face in two seconds flat tells me she’s wearing the hauntingly hostile look only a soldier who’s seen war can possibly sew on in the face of an enemy. Amy says, low and cold and dangerous, “Listen up, you little fuck, because I’m only going to say this once. If I have to slit all your throats from ear to fucking ear, kill every single person in that piss-ugly building behind you, in order to save the rest of the people in this city, I will.”
Doom Sayer Page 7
