If they would have tried to kill him personally, without involving one of the local people, those he was sworn to protect, things would have been very different.
The man on the phone cleared his throat.
“I’ll see what I can do here. We need to get that binding moved up. It’s remarkably hard to get a hundred thousand mages on the same page quickly, however. It will work though. Three people, no matter how strong, can’t resist the will of that many. Without being able to use their abilities, they will be able to be subdued. I don’t know about the rest of their group. It’s one thing to call a binding on known killers. It will be harder for the others, unless they act first. We tend not to go after people for thought crimes.”
Troy locked down all of his emotions. That was the order of the day.
“Thank you. Even trying will help. I can’t really just get in touch with your President that easily. Or the human one, as has been pointed out.” Oddly enough, the vampire leadership would take his calls, most of the time.
Brad Hartley made a small, considering sound.
“I’ll see what I can do, toward that end. Is there a number I can contact you at, if I hear anything?”
He got everything Troy could come up with. Including the Chief’s private number. Detective Tran’s as well. If the man couldn’t get to his cell, which needed to be plugged in to charge, or the land line there, he had options.
When he hung up, Tran stared at him.
“What’s the situation there?” She pointed at the phone, as if he might think that she was asking about something other than that.
He took a breath, adding energy to his system, taking part of it to feed the calm inside of his mind.
“Brad Hartley. The former mage leader. About twenty years back or so. I needed to get some advice on mage law. He’s going to ask about moving the time schedule up on the binding. That should even the playing field a lot. Or, not really. We’re going to unbalance it totally. After that we should be able to find them a lot more easily. We’ll use magic, alerts and television for that. Every cop in five states, if we have to. Right now…” He didn’t honestly know.
What he did was call Krista Hall.
Thankfully, she picked up. He’d been really worried about that.
“Yeah. We saw the body on the walkway, so mom and I took off. You were there and alive. I got Avery to come get us. We’re up in Vancouver. Canada, not your Vancouver. Do you need me for something? Or… You can come here. We aren’t shooting yet at all.”
“I should be good. Thanks. Can you keep Kathy for a bit? Until it’s safer here. I’m going to be trying to get her a better job. If she wants one. A greater demon suggested it to me. There was no reason given for it, other than that they used to date and he doesn’t want to be bothered looking after her. Finias? He said he knows you?”
There was a hesitation that drew out for a while.
“I… Nope. I don’t know that one off the top of my head. Not that it’s hard to do that with that sort of person. Is… Mom all right? I probably can’t fight you for her, so I’d have to be tricky about it.”
Troy slowed for a few seconds, then shrugged.
“She’s under my protection. So was Clem, which was the point in using him. The dead guy in front of my door? Once we get this taken care of she should be fine. I… Look, it isn’t my job to tell her what to do but I think she might want to cool it on the drinking and drugs a bit. I’m not saying she can’t have fun at all, but…”
“She needs to start being an adult?”
“About like that. It’s the plan at least. Ask her what kind of things she might want, job wise. In a few weeks.”
“I’m sure that will go over well. Thanks. I mean, she seems more… like a person, now. Is that you?”
It probably was, but Troy lied anyway, laughing a bit.
“Only if my good looks are that impressive. I don’t see that happening, but… I can dream, can’t I?”
That got a soft, pleasant sound.
“Stay safe, Troy. Like I said, you can come here, if you want. I’ll back you up, no matter what.”
That was nice to hear. He didn’t know what the human woman could do, but then, he kind of did. She was offering to hide him in a different country, if things got too hot. That wasn’t a tiny thing at all.
“I will be. You as well. Keep in touch. Once every three days at least. If anything weird starts to happen… Get with Avery and leave. Go to a different reality, if you have to. It shouldn’t come up, but if it does, don’t hesitate.”
There was a small sound then, but it wasn’t worried.
“I’ll be good that way. Three days. I’ll be calling.”
Then the phone clicked, turning off.
Tran looked at him again, but didn't ask what was going on.
“Krista Hall took her mother out of the country for now. She has the apartment next to mine. It was set up by Finias, the greater demon, so not a coincidence at all. I hadn’t… Really thought about him being involved in my life any longer. I guess that the slave lines being broken only mean so much to him? It isn’t comforting.”
Before she could speak, Roy Benson stuck his head in, and then nodded.
“Good. Lopez. We need you to give a statement. Word was that you’d vanished. Going to the police station isn’t what most criminals do, so it isn’t that bad of a sign. What do you know about the body on your doorstep?”
That was a lot and oddly enough, the Chief just nodded along as he filled him in on everything. Including who his neighbor was and the magic lessons that various greater demons had been helping him with.
“Let’s get that written down? Technically you aren’t working right now. If you have to do anything, try to keep us in the loop on it. We don’t have time for loose cannon bullshit. This isn’t a movie. We can bend the rules if we have to. We have one officer that can handle this at all so far, so… We’re going to use you. Don’t go off the rails though, all right? Try not to kill anyone, even if they deserve it. I have to back all of this in court and then again with my boss. Thank god he’s a Republican.”
Troy understood that part of things. A lot more than he would have back when he was the manager of a night club. You had to answer to those over you. Worse, you sometimes had to take the blame for things those under you did. It was the kind of situation they were in at the moment.
“I’ll make sure it works out, if at all possible. That’s my part in the world. Right now… We need to go and make sure that the Hamptons are all right. If Forest is that cult leader’s son, he could be a target. They were going to kill him, or so the story goes. That means we need to make certain they don’t try to do it again.”
Standing up, Tran started to grab her things. Her gun, keys and cup of coffee. It was still early. The mages would be at home, if they hadn’t gone on the run. It was still early enough that Troy had to doubt they’d be at their shop.
It still made sense to call first. They had some numbers to try, naturally. Tran didn’t stop moving, just walking out as he picked the phone up and put in the right numbers from his pad.
The phone rang, but didn’t pick up. None of the numbers did. That could be thanks to people being asleep. He hurried, using enough speed to create pain, as he rushed to the parking lot. The sun was just coming up, searing his flesh. That was the feeling at least. It didn’t really do any damage.
Shaking his head, Troy tried to use magic to collect more energy and power at the same time he killed off the sense of pain inside of him. It kind of worked, keeping the agony at bay, for the most part. It was a bit like rubbing his tummy, patting his head and mentally doing his taxes at the same time.
Denise drove like they were racing to a crime scene. That turned out not to be totally wrong, from the look of things. On the ground, in front of the small house they pulled up to, was a single form. Unmoving. There were burns on her face and upper chest.
Nevi, the old healer, wasn’t gone yet though. Snorting a bit, Tro
y growled as he jogged to her and picked her head up.
“See, I shouldn’t have given the healing amulet back. Right. Healing magic.” It was a thing. He didn’t know how to do it, but that didn’t mean he could let the woman just die there. Cooked and battered. Something had hit her hard. Part of her lower face was gone. It was just the skin there, not the bone. That would be hard to fix.
To do anything useful, he was going to need several things, all at once. The first was more energy. A lot of it. He called on that, breathing in and out, making it happen, to link it to the circulation. It probably wasn’t needed, the breathing in and out part but changing that up at the moment wasn’t a brilliant plan. He knew one trick for that kind of thing at the moment. Figuring out a new one on top of everything else wasn’t going to help get the job at hand done.
Then, he had to help her heal. His first plan was just to push the flesh around with his mind, but even if it worked, that wasn’t really healing. It was just movement. Like he’d done with the air before. Sitting there, not able to figure it out in time, a sense of desperation flowed into him.
The woman he was cradling, her flower print dress singed in several places, spoke a single word. It was pained and barely discernable, but he kind of got the idea.
“Whole.”
“Whole… I don’t… What do you mean?”
Interestingly, Denise, who was standing there, spread her hands. One of them had a cell phone in it, which she was making a call with. To get help.
“I think she means you need to make the magical pattern whole? Hold what she was before the attack? I don’t know.” It was insightful, but after a moment, the woman started speaking to dispatch, trying to get an ambulance.
So, he did that. Recalling what her field had been like when the woman was healthy, then, once he had that, held it in place over her injured body. Breathing in energy, he pushed all of it he could toward the change he wanted. At first, he didn’t think it was working at all, but after a while there was a sigh from the lady.
“Good. Keep… Going.” Nevi seemed to be healing. Her face looked raw but not bare to the bone any longer. The white stuff in the center was even reforming.
By the time the ambulance was there, she was able to stand, with help.
“Thank you. I can take it from here. They took Leslie and the boy. It was Rhoda and the blonde woman. An ambush. I’d heard something, but when I turned, I was hit. If you hadn’t come for us… They can’t have gotten a big lead on you. I don’t know where they went. I didn’t see.” She paused, looked at Troy, then took a deep, very real, breath.
Nevi stared at him.
“We need to locate them. They were hidden from view and magical sensing but it will take time to hide Forest. Focus on him. Leslie… Her sister is too close that way. She was hidden, so when they came into contact… You won’t find her now.” There was a bit of coughing. It was strained and congested sounding. The older woman still looked like crap, as the EMTs came over. They guided her away, glaring at Troy a little bit, as if he were trying to question her illegally.
Tran waved him over, as she got into the car.
“I heard that. You can find that kid? We need to call this in. I don’t know who… Well, Roy. I’ll do that. Find them. I’ll handle the rest of it.” She didn't growl at him but there was a hint that he’d better get his butt in gear and do it.
It was both easier and harder than he would have thought. The hard part was recalling the needed things about Forest and making a map in the air. That took a lot of focus but was a bit more certain feeling than just pointing was. If it bugged Denise that he was making things appear out of thin air, she didn’t show it, holding her phone to her ear as she spoke.
“We need back up. One of the mages, one of ours, Nevi Hampton, is down. Off to the hospital, after an attack. Some kind of burns. Lopez is trying to locate the kid… Right. We’re headed… North-west right now. On the highway…” She glanced at the map floating over his right hand.
The red dot there, indicating Forest Hampton, or whatever his real name was, moved as they followed it. Showing that there was some kind of transport happening. Probably a car, instead of something magical. That would take too much power to be worthwhile.
The trip was tense and strange. Troy had to keep his brain and will focused, while doing all he could to keep gathering enough power. It was nearly not enough. A few times the map flickered, not being able to hold to existence. That was… Honestly, due to him being tired. Two of his seven links were down, he noticed. Possibly dead, from the strain of trying to heal Nevi.
If he wasn’t careful he was going to burn through the rest of them as well. He hadn’t even noticed that pulling on them. Worse, they might have dropped the night before, as he fought for his life. Trying harder, he pulled from the universe. It took effort, a constant thing that nearly wasn’t working. Not for what he needed. Tracking the kid and making it visible was right at the edge of what he could do at one time, mentally. Even adding the things together.
It wasn’t that he was all that limited. Focus and concentration was pretty much his thing, after all. It was not having time to practice first. That would have really been nice. Still, the monsters had killed his Clem. A boy that he was supposed to protect.
They weren’t doing that to Leslie or Forest, if he could help it.
He nearly urged Detective Tran to speed a little more, when he realized she was moving at over a hundred and twenty miles per hour. The phone had been dropped, landing on the seat next to her. No voice came from it, but he could hear things happening on the far side.
So, his face blank and eyes dead, Troy spoke.
“They’re moving along the seven right now, traveling at about a hundred miles per hour. I don’t…” It was hard, but he brought up the car. It took the place of the map and was fuzzy at the edges as he backed off. It wasn’t anything he’d seen before, being a tan colored Jeep with a hard top.
Next to him, Tran glanced at the picture, then snapped at him.
“Hold it steady… Late model Jeep. Tan. I have the plate… They’re about… I think they’re about ten minutes outside Tellis.”
That sounded right to Troy but he couldn’t make out any landmarks in what he was doing. It was an impressive bit of adaptation on his partner’s part.
They kept moving, the voice that came at them from the phone being Miller, the desk sergeant.
“We have the road blocked off. Can you get there in time? We might not be able to stop them. That hasn’t been working too well so far.”
Troy nodded, then dropped the vison of the car.
“Yes. Where is the block going to be? I’ll be there.”
That was, it turned out, about six miles away. Where the mages would be in about thirty seconds. They had sight of them.
“I’m leaving now. See you in a few, Tran.”
Then he opened the car door, and leaped from the vehicle. In the air, he slowed time around him, then ran into white hot pain. Fueled by rage. To him it felt like he ran for hours, actually doing more than walking, even though it wouldn’t help much. That meant he was standing there for nearly twenty-nine seconds before the Jeep hit the road spikes.
Not waiting, he moved in and rather carefully, ripped the thing apart. It was still moving when he reached in the thing and grabbed the boy. It took a lot of effort to slow down safely, before going back for Leslie. She’d been beaten pretty well and had a broken arm for some reason. That was tied behind her. She gasped when he set her on the ground, moving into real time as the car spun out. Ten cars from two cities were there, ready to stop them.
Troy kept moving energy around, trying to kill off the pain of the sun and make himself feel peaceful.
They needed the three left in the vehicle left alive, if possible. Regardless of what he felt like doing to them. They needed answers. Real ones about why they’d been killing people and going after his friends.
Then they could die.
Chapter eightee
n
It was funny, since to Troy he was the center of the story being told. The other cops there thought that they were the important ones, for some reason. At least they didn’t let him take over, even if he were the supernatural expert there. Even when Tran got there, they called in a negotiator. As if that was going to work out.
The mages refused to get out of the car and were clearly summoning power, collecting it for something. Odds were that wasn’t going to be a good thing for the good guys side. Walking over to the man in charge, a Sergeant Lewet, Troy explained that part of thing. Holding himself to calm, while not feeling any pain. It was useful, really.
“They’re getting ready to escape. Using magic. You can see that silver light, right?”
The man shook his head.
“No. I don’t see anything. Recommendations?”
That was the hard part, since he really didn’t know what to do either. It suddenly hit him that putting him in charge wouldn’t have worked any better than some random guy. Short of rushing them and killing them all before they could do anything, nothing much came to mind.
When it did, it was Denise who brought the idea up.
“I don’t suppose that the other mages could do something? I don’t think we have a lot of time left here. That’s getting pretty bright. I mean, I can see it and that means something.”
Pulling his cell, or trying to, got him to remember that he’d left it at the office. Charging. Like he was a sophomore in high school, instead of a person with an actual job that needed to keep on top of things like that. There was no good reason for it either. He’d let himself get distracted and now was going to have to pay for it.
“Can I borrow a phone?” He felt stupid having to ask, but one of the men in uniform pulled one from his pocket and gently tossed it over. It wasn’t the world’s best throw, being ten feet too short but Troy moved quickly enough to catch it anyway. Then he had to force his mind to bring back the last number he’d dialed.
Troy Ounce (Lopez Time Book 1) Page 26
