by M. D. Massey
I spat blood to the side as I addressed my attackers. “Did you guys pick those outfits on purpose, or do you just throw darts at a 5.11 catalog and order whatever you hit?”
Their only reply was a boot heel to the face. And to that, I responded by blacking out.
Seven
An indeterminate amount of time later, I woke up tied to a chair with a bag over my head. Rather than stir and let my captors know I was awake, I chose to remain still and silent so I could gather information on my surroundings. The last thing I wanted was for them to come in and start working me over before I had an idea of my odds for escape.
I’d already surmised that one of the Cold Iron Circle’s tactical teams had abducted me. For one, no one else dressed like that outside military and police circles, and to my knowledge special forces and SWAT operators didn’t use magic when they renditioned a suspect. Even units that were clued in preferred to use breaching explosives, bean bag guns, flash bang grenades, and the like over spell work, because the results were much more predictable.
I wondered if these guys had been loyal to Gunnarson. If so, I was fucked.
Time to get to work, McCool.
When it came to gathering information, Finnegas had taught me that most people rely on their eyesight way too much. As a druid, I was trained to use all my senses, and part of my training was going through Finnegas’ version of SERE school—which stood for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. More than once, Finnegas had “abducted” me and put me in various restraints and confines, forcing me to devise ways to escape.
I’d hated it at the time, but right now I was glad the old man had been such a hard ass during my early training. I began to inventory everything my other four senses were picking up, starting with taste and smell. The room stank of commercial detergents or disinfectants, combined with my own sweat and blood. I also detected a faint whiff of engine oil, gas, and exhaust.
Interesting.
Next, I carefully and gently tested my restraints. I’d been duct taped and not zip-tied, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, my captors had seen fit to restrain my hands behind the chair. They’d also taped my ankles to the chair legs, and my chest to the chair back. I had to hand it to them; these Circle dickheads did thorough job of it.
Once I had a handle on how I’d been restrained, I listened to my surroundings. Traffic noise echoed in the distance. In an adjoining room, someone was watching an old spaghetti Western—The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, based on the musical score. There were footsteps in at least two—no, three—directions.
Still outnumbered. Not good.
So, I was in some sort of garage or warehouse that likely housed a carpet cleaning or pressure washing business. All my captors had stuck around to keep an eye on me. I was still in the city, that much was clear. But chances were good they’d brought me here because they needed privacy, either to question me, torture me, or both.
Why they’d taken me was anyone’s guess, but I suspected it had to do with me killing their leader a while back. If so, they weren’t going to treat me with kid gloves. I needed to escape quickly, before they decided to do their worst.
I was just about to start heating up my restraints when a door slammed somewhere in the building. Faint sounds of conversation carried through the walls. Two men were talking, but I couldn’t tell what they were discussing. I cast a cantrip to enhance my senses and tuned in to what they were saying.
“Is he here? Did he agree to come?” It was a man’s voice, high and uptight.
The second speaker had a deeper, gruffer voice. “Yeah, we got him.”
“What do you mean, ‘you got him’?” There was a pregnant pause. “Holy hell! You mean to tell me you lunkheads brought him here by force? Are you fucking insane? If he snaps, he could rip you idiots in half and level this building without breaking a sweat.”
Gruff voice cleared his throat and spat. “He doesn’t look so tough. One spell and a boot to the face, and we had him.”
High voice actually went up a few octaves as he replied. “Did you jackasses even read his dossier? Intelligence classifies him as a Class Seven supernatural threat. Class fucking Seven! If you managed to abduct him without any casualties, either you got lucky or he let you take him.”
Yeah, that second one… let’s go with that.
“Geez, McCracken,” gruff voice replied. “I don’t see why you’re getting all bent out of shape. It’s not like we waterboarded your pet hipster or something.”
Hipster? Seriously? Now I was really getting pissed.
“That’s Lieutenant McCracken to you, Keane, and you’d do well to remember that. Commander Gunnarson isn’t here anymore, and the person you assaulted and abducted is the one who took him out. While you might have thought it’d be cute to get a little revenge for Gunnarson and your dead buddies, you had no authority to take liberties with the parameters of this mission.”
Keane started to protest, but McCracken didn’t allow him a word edgewise. “Not one fucking peep, Keane! Just take me to him, and you’d better hope you didn’t fuck this up for me, because if you did I’ll see to it your whole team gets assigned to a werebear monitoring station in Alaska.”
I decided to play like I was still unconscious. Soon, footsteps approached, a door opened nearby, and two people entered the room.
“Son of a bitch, would you look at him? Keane, you are a world-class fuck-up,” McCracken hissed. Silence followed, presumably because Keane knew when to shut up and take an ass-chewing. “Well, don’t just fucking stand there, you walking steroid commercial—go cut him loose!”
“But if he’s as dangerous as you say, I think—”
“No one pays you to fucking think!” McCracken shrieked. “If he kills you it’ll be your own damn fault. Cut him loose.”
Heavy footsteps crossed the room. I heard the snikt of an automatic knife, then someone began cutting the tape that restrained me. Finally, they pulled the bag off my face… and that’s when I sprang into action.
I grabbed the chair for balance as I stomped the inside of Keane’s knee. Not hard enough to buckle it completely, but just enough to get him to drop his weight forward and bend at the waist. As I stood, I grabbed the hand that held the knife, and in the same movement I hit him with a nasty palm-heel strike that snapped his head back.
Since his head was coming down when I hit him, it should have knocked him out. Unfortunately, the guy was a dead ringer for Stone Cold Steve Austin and had a neck like a bull, so the blow merely stunned him. Despite getting less than the intended result from my attack, it was enough to allow me to disarm him. I spun him around while he was still dazed, using him as a shield with the knife at his throat.
“My Bag, now! Or I open Keane’s jugular and bleed him like a pig.”
McCracken was staring at me with eyes like saucers, and his hands were open and up in front of him. “Please, Mr. McCool—I can assure you, this has all just been a misunderstanding.”
Several sets of footsteps echoed outside, and three other Circle operatives rushed into the room. One had a sidearm drawn and pointed at me, and the other two had spells at the ready. Of the two magicians, lightning crackled between the first magic-user’s fingers. The other was forming a fireball in the air between his hands.
I felt Keane tense as he realized the deep pile of shit he’d stepped in, so I pressed the side of the blade against his neck. Having sharp, cold steel at your throat tended to make you think twice about fighting back. The guy knew better than to make a move on me, so instead he barked orders at his teammates.
“Shoot this fucker or fry him, now!” His teammates looked at each other, unsure if they could take me out without endangering their leader. “Damn it, that’s an order!”
McCracken’s voice was taut as he yelled at Keane’s teammates, all while keeping his eyes on me. “Belay that order! Stand down, before you get us all killed!”
Keane’s team looked back and forth between him and McCracken,
who obviously didn’t have as much authority here as he thought. Finally, the magic-user spinning up the lightning spell lowered his hands.
“Stand down,” he said as the ozone smell of lightning magic faded away. The others complied, banishing the fireball and holstering the pistol.
“You just got us all killed, Smithson,” Keane declared.
I punched him in the back of the head, finding that his switchblade made a nice fist load. “Shut up, Keane. He just saved your life.”
Keane’s legs buckled slightly from the blow, but he managed to remain standing. “You should’ve just killed me, McCool,” he said. “Because I’m going to stomp a mudhole in your ass when this is all over.”
“Hmm, sounds kinky, but I’ll have to decline.” I looked at McCracken. “My Bag, if you don’t mind.”
McCracken looked at fireball guy. “Don’t just stand there—do what he says. Now, Cullen!” Cullen ran out of the room while McCracken continued to speak. “Mr. McCool, I apologize for how you were treated. I promise, these operatives were only supposed to deliver a message to you, and that was it. They were not authorized to undertake this”—he gave Keane and his team a contemptuous look—“well, this cluster-fuck. I have the full authority of the High Council behind me, and I can assure you they’ll all be reprimanded accordingly.”
Unlike the rest of these assholes, McCracken didn’t have that ex-military look about him. He was short, maybe five-foot-eight, and slight of build, although he obviously stayed in shape. With his conservative haircut, casual dress shoes, slacks, preppy windbreaker, and polo shirt, he looked more like an accountant than a field agent. If I had to guess, I’d say he was an analyst, a desk jockey. But that didn’t mean he was harmless, and it definitely didn’t mean he was on my side.
“I’m touched, McCracken—really, I am. The thing is, I don’t take too kindly to being ambushed and abducted, so you’ll have to forgive my skepticism.”
Cullen ran back into the room carrying my Bag. He slid it across the floor in a lame attempt to get me to expose myself. I didn’t fall for it, of course. Instead of giving up control of Keane to grab it, I stopped the Bag with my foot, kicking it behind me.
“Alright, that’s a start,” I growled. “Now that we’re developing rapport, let’s keep it going. I know you cock-juggling thunder cunts have some zip-tie restraints around here. McCracken, I want you to disarm these morons, then I want you to cuff them together, back-to-back.”
“I can assure you, Mr. McCool, that isn’t—”
“Now, motherfucker!” I roared, accidentally nicking Keane with the knife as I tensed up in anger. Settle down, cowboy. You lose control and you might do something you’ll regret.
Keane winced as blood began to trickle from his neck. McCracken squeezed his eyes shut as he exhaled in frustration, then he complied with my request. He removed an assortment of knives, sidearms, and back-up weapons from the team, then cuffed them and tied their cuffs together with more zip-tie restraints.
“You three, have a seat,” I said to Keane’s teammates.
Cullen looked confused. “How the hell do you expect us to do that?”
“I don’t know, just figure it the fuck out already,” I replied, exasperated. They tried to lean on each other to squat on a three-count, but fell on their asses instead. I fought the urge to crack a smile. “Alright, McCracken, zip-tie their ankles.”
“He’s going to kill us, once you comply,” Keane muttered. McCracken did what I asked, ignoring his subordinate’s warning.
“Now, hand Keane some zip-cuffs and turn around,” I commanded.
“McCool, this really isn’t necessary,” McCracken said.
I tsked. “We’ll see. Better do it fast, because this knife is getting awful heavy. I’m getting the urge to stab it into something so I can rest my arm.”
Once Keane had cuffed McCracken, I punched the steroid jockey as hard as I could at the base of his skull, just to the side of his spine so it wouldn’t paralyze him. I was feeling a lot angrier than my normal self, but I hadn’t completely lost control, after all. He collapsed like a slinky, to which I gave a satisfied grunt.
I closed the knife and pocketed it, then dragged Keane over to his buddies and zip-cuffed him to the group. My next few minutes were invested in doing a more thorough pat-down of Keane’s team, all while keeping McCracken in view. The search turned up a few neck knives, a Beretta Pico .380 that McCracken had somehow missed, and a few razor blades concealed in waistbands and paracord bracelets.
Clever.
Once done, I stood and searched McCracken, relieving him of an Emerson CQC combat folder and a stock Colt .45 caliber semi-auto pistol, both of which I kept. Keane’s teammates were starting to give each other looks, so I figured I’d better take care of the magic users before they decided to get cute. I grabbed the roll of duct tape they’d used on me and taped all their mouths shut, then taped their fingers together.
“Try spelling your way out of that shit.” I turned to McCracken. “Have a seat, asshole—since you went through all that trouble to get me here, I may as well hear what you have to say.”
McCracken sat in a folding metal chair, hands cuffed behind his back, looking up at me. I leaned against the wall a few feet away from him, arms crossed with my Glock in my hand.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“It’s obvious you’re the High Council’s butt boy,” I said, “but that doesn’t explain why these clowns abducted me or what you want with me.”
“I’m here to help you,” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that obvious?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, plain as day.” Then it hit me. “Wait a minute—you’re my liaison?”
“Those are my orders,” he replied. He nodded at Keane’s team. “Before these dipshits screwed it up, that is. They were only supposed to deliver a message, to ask you to come here for an initial meeting. Unfortunately, they took it upon themselves to get a little payback. They’re no Gunnarson loyalists, mind you, but they had friends who were killed in that battle.”
I rubbed my jaw where I’d gotten kicked. “Haven’t you idiots ever heard of electronic communications? A phone call, email, or text would have sufficed.”
McCracken shook his head. “Uh-uh, not after we found out the fae are monitoring all our communications. Magical wiretaps are hard to root out. It’s not like you can ward an entire cell network. That’s why the Council ordered me to only communicate with you face-to-face and in private.”
I tapped the muzzle end of the Glock’s slide on my arm. “Makes sense, I guess. Not much sense, but for a clandestine organization run by paranoid xenophobes, ostensibly dedicated to eradicating all supernatural threats from the earth—I can see why you’d choose to go that route.” The truth was, I probably wouldn’t have taken the call. I’d been avoiding the Cold Iron Circle like the plague since I’d been appointed as druid justiciar… lucky me. “Still doesn’t explain why you sent these geniuses to speak with me.”
McCracken blushed. “They’ve, uh, been assigned to keep an eye on you. It made sense to have them reach out.”
I rubbed the cold metal of the Glock’s slide against my forehead and sighed. “You guys just don’t learn, do you? When are you going to figure out that I’m not a threat to humanity?”
McCracken cleared his throat, but his voice still cracked as he replied. “In all fairness, the Circle named you as a Class Seven threat for good reason.”
“Hold up—what does ‘Class Seven threat’ even mean?”
The lieutenant perked up at my question—obviously, this was his wheelhouse. “Oh, that’s easy enough to explain. Logically, there are ten levels on our threat scale.”
“At least you didn’t assign me a color code,” I quipped.
McCracken laughed nervously. “We started with a color code system, but it got too confusing. Operatives and analysts argued over how many colors we should include, whether there should be different hues at each level to denote which entitie
s were more dangerous, that sort of thing. So, we scuttled it and went with the ten-point system.”
“Fascinating,” I said, standing up to kick Cullen in the ribs. He was getting fidgety, and I didn’t want him getting any ideas. I sat on the desk again facing McCracken, whose face had considerably blanched. “You were saying?”
“Um, yes—yes, of course. So, ten levels, with Level One being the weakest and more or less benevolent creatures. You know, Japanese baku, jackalopes, halcyon birds—that sort of thing. Levels Two through Four mostly consist of more dangerous cryptids and your lower-order fae. ’Thropes, wyverns, red caps, selkies, and so on, as well as vampires less than two centuries old. But Levels Five and Six—well, that’s where it gets interesting. Most higher fae are considered to be Level Five, with the older ones being classified Level Six due to their proficiency with magic. Older vamps and ’thropes are usually classified as Level Five or Six as well.”
“Wait a minute… you guys consider me a greater threat than Maeve?”
McCracken shook his head. “Oh no, she’s definitely a Class Eight or Nine, for sure. But she’s also a special case. For decades, we’ve suspected that she was one of the Tuatha, but we haven’t been able to prove it.”
McCracken looked at me expectantly, but I maintained a poker face and kept my mouth shut. I might not have been on good terms with Maeve, but I wasn’t a snitch, either. Besides, she’d never dish on me to anyone who might wish me harm… at least, I didn’t think she would. If Maeve wanted me taken out, she’d do it herself.
McCracken frowned at my reticence and continued. “But as for you, well—you’ve certainly proven yourself to be more than a match for most higher-order fae, and most anything Class Six or below, really. There were those Germans—you took care of them quite handily, as I recall. I’d be remiss to leave out that Norse demi-god—don’t think that didn’t raise a few eyebrows among our analysts. And then there was the matter of the Mayan deity’s avatar. Oh, now that was an impressive kill, I have to tell you. I’ve watched the footage of that battle at least a dozen times, and it gets better every time.”
