Brad Hartley.
Interestingly, the man answered almost instantly.
“Hartley.” That was all he said. Which was nearly perfect.
“Lopez here. We have the three fugitive mages trapped in a car. Can we possibly get some magical assist here? They’re about to do something. Big. I can see the energies being used. The regular peeps here are starting to be able to see what’s happening that way. It would be a great time for them to not be able to do any magic, don’t you think?”
“Ehhh. No. That would be a very bad time, if it’s a weapon or explosion of some kind. It will go off as soon as they lose the ability to power it any longer. If we had a master mage there, we could have them try to assume control over it. We don’t. The best in that area is Mark Javman. He’s… Well, medium level as far as talent goes. I doubt he could grab a spell like that. Not in process.”
Troy just stared at the Jeep for a moment. A cold feeling came over him, instead of the burning of the sun. If a master mage was needed, he couldn’t really do anything about it himself.
“This feels big. What are we talking about. Should we evacuate the area?”
“It depends, Troy. You might need to evacuate Las Vegas, if it’s large enough.”
“We’re in Arizona, that’s Nevada.” He growled a bit, since it wasn’t time for jokes.
Brad inhaled before speaking. His voice shook.
“I know that, Troy. It could be smaller than that, but there are three desperate mages there, readying themselves to die, most likely. It has to be stopped, before they can do that. Hopefully I’m wrong, but…”
He swallowed. An old reflex from when he was just a regular guy. A human that hadn’t been particularly special or talented. Just an ordinary man, who’d searched for love and never really found it. Now he was… Still just him. Not what they needed at all.
The phone made a soft noise.
“You can run. Zack told me that you’re fast. You might make it.”
He might.
“These are my people, Brad. I’m sworn to protect them. Even if I have to die to do it.” That wasn’t part of the actual oath. It was still truth.
“Fine. I understand. I’ll start the binding. We need half an hour. Buy us that time. Then… You’ll need to shunt the power. That, or repurpose it. Half an hour… From now.” The man sounded sad. As if Troy had just told him he was planning to die fighting in a useless battle.
The line went dead then.
He handed the phone back to the man that had lent it to him. Stevens, according to the name badge. He was from the next town over. The uniforms were different, so it was easy enough to tell.
“Thanks.” Then he raised his voice. “The mages are going to shut these people down. When they do, their spell will probably go wild and might kill us all. We need to try and clear the area. I’m going to try and buy time. I’m not a mage, so… Think of it like the world’s lamest bomb squad? All the wires are red, you know what I mean?”
The man in charge, Lewet, nodded.
“You heard the man. Clear the area! If you don’t have super powers, run. Go!”
The man, lean and hard looking, didn’t bother to get into his car and speed off, even when the others did it. Then, neither did Denise. What they did was interesting, since both of them pulled their side arms.
The officer, who wore a funny hat with a wide brim, nodded then.
“Wolf shifter.”
That made sense, not that it was going to help him live if the world exploded like it might. Then running might not be any better, so it didn’t really matter. The man looked at Denise, who grinned. She looked insane.
“If they kill my partner and are going to escape, I’m going to shoot them all. I’ve been practicing.”
That got a choked laugh from Lewet.
“Let’s make this happen then. How do we stop them? Even for a while?”
Troy took a breath, cycling energy. Pulling in more than he ever had. Then he dropped into the inner depths of his mind and kept going, building the flow each time, not doing anything else for what felt like a long time. Then, before the matching glow inside the car could do anything, he sent all of it at the forces being used. The trick was, as he’d done before, to wipe away the portion of the spell that told it to do anything.
He was good with tricks. He always had been. They were what held the universe together, after all. Well, that and duct tape. That reminded him to pick some up, the next time he went to the store.
There was a battle then. Three trained mages, who were willing to die and were probably religious zealots on top of it all, against one kind of lame vampire who desperately needed more time to practice. It was the job though, so ready or not, he put his will against theirs. Thankfully, while he might not be all that, as far as magic went, he was kind of good at the concentration part of things. Living in a state of near total focus for centuries paid off then.
He was standing about a football field away from the tan Jeep. The metal of the car started to buzz, which was about the energy over there. Also, what he was doing. Possibly. At least he hoped he was having some kind of effect.
Troy’s meager power was pushing against that of the spell. Infiltrating it. Snapping and crackling as he made mistakes, not meshing with it correctly. That got louder as he worked, until small shock waves started to come from the air.
He might have been making a field of energy as physically large as what the others were doing, but they’d dumped their entire beings into their work. Trying to make it move outward, in an unstoppable way. It would be a vastly large explosion, if he let it take place. All he could do for the moment was soften the sense of doing that. Wiping it away, when he could.
Erasing their work, as they continued to write on the blackboard of reality, over and over again.
The three evil mages, the two women and the heavy-set man, were clearly planning to die. That meant they didn’t stop, just because he was being annoying and altering their spell work a bit. It was barely enough to make a dent in what they were doing. Slowly, one at a time, not trying to do it at all, he drained his links. They died. Standing innocently in their pastures. Of the six he had left, he felt all but one of them go down. Clinging to what he was doing, unable to stop, he spoke, softly.
“I can only hold this for another minute. Then… I’ll probably die. My links are going down.”
He didn’t stop. Instead of dying though, a single stream of silver moved past him, from the right. Troy couldn’t let it distract him. It didn’t try to help him directly. Instead it struck at one of the women in the car. After a moment, her ability to add to the explosive spell vanished, for some reason. Bound up solidly.
That worked well, actually. The whole thing started to shake. The silver feeling of the energy warping the air, with a roar like thunder. Just as the last of his links went down. Fading first, then dying away for the final time. He tried to hold anyway. To drink from the world, taking what he needed that way. It was a bit surprising, he had to admit. If it had been all he was doing, it would have worked. Almost everything was being put into calming and wiping out the instructions of the spell. That meant he started to die himself.
“I can’t… Let… go.” Part of him wanted to scream for the others to run, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good.
Las Vegas would be safe. Lincoln… Probably not. Hundreds of thousands were about to die, because he was too weak. He knelt down, fading. The world going dark, even as he struggled to keep going for another second. The mages, the good ones, hadn’t had nearly enough time.
Troy smiled. Then put everything he was into one last push. Death wasn’t unfamiliar to him after all. The void was, in a way, a proving ground for that kind of thing. Plus… He wasn’t just a vampire. Or simply a police officer. Those were both fine things, but even dying for the final time, he realized something…
He was Troy Lopez. The vampire line walker. Sworn to protect the people of Lincoln Arizona. Even if it cost him ever
ything. A god, if only to women he’d never met, inside his own head.
There was no time to open a rift into the void. Except that there wasn’t time not to.
“I need… A rift. A node, or…”
He doubted that anyone there could help him. If they even understood what he was going on about. From behind him, there was a cry.
It was the kid. Forest.
“To open a node, you need lives. Many of them… I…” The voice was high pitched, young and rushed. “I am a sacrifice. It was always my place in the world. I don’t want to die. Oh, gods…”
Nothing happened, for a second, then Leslie screamed something. It wasn’t coherent.
“It is my will. Mine! My will. I command the world to listen. To bend and open. Open. Open. Now!” Then there was a bang. A single gunshot.
Barely able to turn, Troy saw the boy, Forest, falling to the ground. A nine-millimeter in his hand. The back of his head flying away from him. The weapon was probably Sergeant Lewet’s from the empty holster. At first there was nothing, then, inside the corpse on the ground, a very tiny, poorly formed, rift tried to open. It wasn’t a real thing at all. Just the hint of it. The life of the boy pouring into it.
The thing was, Troy didn’t need much to make it work. If it had been a thing to throw mages through, it wouldn’t have been enough at all. Even a gram of weight would be more than it could handle. It was a mere bump in space, really. He smiled, as the world went black.
“Got it. That was fucking amazing, kid.” It was also what had to happen. Otherwise they would have lost everything.
Troy used his will, split between two things, to drive the world open at that point. Shoving the fabric of reality out of the way like it was his bitch. Then, in an instant, he grabbed at the power from the Jeep and slammed it in a huge silver stream at the hole that Forest had given his life to create. Trying to drain the power from the spell. Troy was still going down, for good, until he realized that he could use a bit of the energy, concentrated as it was, for himself. It was hard, and felt like riding a bronco, or so he imagined. He’d never done that, feeling that it was cruel to the animals. It was that or trying to sip from a fire hose. Either way, it was interesting.
It kept him going. The two mages in the Jeep that were still doing anything useful on their project didn’t stop. His nifty trick wasn’t preventing them from making their bomb, either. It was a fight then. Him struggling to stay alive and dump their power away from them. The mages trying to kill them all.
In the end, it wasn’t anyone there on the scene that made the difference.
It was a sense of silence that did the trick.
All around them, the world stood still. Only the movement of the power kept going on, being bled into the void, where it would harm nothing. There was no more building from the car though and instead of blowing up, the force rushed him, following the path of least resistance. After a few moments, that was done. He stood up, making himself drink in the power that he’d been using to control the flow of magic. Powering himself, since it was do that perfectly, or die.
Links to living things were easier to manage.
Lewet and Tran did the real work, as he stood there, shaking. Only part of it was in rage. The actions of the mages had killed another boy. One who was freaking brave. Strong on a level that very few were. Over his body, stood Leslie, who was crying.
He managed to walk over.
“We need… Backup for the others. We don’t have another mage here. I’m sorry.” He touched her shoulder. It felt warm to him. Alive.
Crying still, she nodded, a nimbus of silver white starting to form around her.
“Nevi, then Carlos. Forest. That was his real name. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go on. It was all my fault. It should have been me.”
“Carlos… He was incredibly brave. He saved us. Thousands of lives, I think.”
Troy didn't have any real answers for her. Rather than try, he turned, then pulled his side arm. He wasn’t up to running at the moment. His hands shook, but if it came to it, he was going down fighting. Tran and Lewet didn’t handle the people inside the Jeep gently. Two of them were still alive. Rhoda was gone though.
Her sister had killed her, using magic. Obviously. That was pretty tough as well. He didn’t bother to mention it, even though it was clear that the link was there, still. It had been needed. If she’d had a gun and shot, it would have been considered a righteous kill, in any American court. Still, there was no need to make trouble for her, he decided. Keeping his mouth shut was easier and made more sense.
Then he shook his head and realized that not being an asshole was a great plan in life.
“Nevi is alive. Tran and I got to her in time. I tried some healing. It worked enough for her to take over, so she should be all right. I’m sorry about Carlos. He saved us all. Without his sacrifice, I couldn’t have opened a rift like that. It was close, as it was.” That was true. All of it was.
The woman held her own arms. Seeming scared or nervous at first. Until he realized she was just holding her broken right arm in place. The emotional things would come but he’d rather brutally told her that she was the only mage they had, so she was casting spells. One at least. He couldn’t track it but she was weaving a rather complicated set of ideas.
All of his focus had to go toward staying alive, at the moment. Part of him wondered if the other two were just going to catch on fire but when the other cops came back, it was kind of clear what had happened. Leslie had managed to put a truth spell on Heidi.
Not the other man, who wasn’t all that helpful.
“No. Shut up. Don’t speak. They have a spell on you. Fight it!”
Lewet kicked the man, who was sitting on the ground, in the face. It got groaning but no more chatting about resistance.
Tran looked slightly bemused at the police brutality. Troy probably did as well. His partner spoke for them, being in better shape at the moment.
“No. Talk to us. Tell us what you were doing. Killing all those people. Why?”
There was obvious struggling. The pretty face worked, the blonde still looking a lot like a television actress. Finally, she relaxed, Leslie making hand signs at her until there was speaking.
“What did we want? Death, to feed our ancient one. Baphomet. He is returning. He will come and you shall all die in your millions, if it is his will.”
Denise moved in then, and glared at the woman directly.
“Why target The Technician, or The Snowflake, or Troy?”
There was a soft laugh then.
“Orders. The demoness made sense. As did the greater vampires. They’re of the mighty. The gods of this world and the old. If we could have killed one of them, then the return would be assured. Now, it will just be me.”
The man struggled up, his face half mush.
“Us. Sister. It shall be us. It is my will.”
“And mine.”
There was no gunshot sound this time, or yelling. They just started to choke and bleed from their mouths. Then they died. Sitting there, on the ground. With video being taken, thankfully. Five minutes later, they were gone.
Troy didn’t know what to do, really.
“We should get back to the station. I need to stop at my apartment first.” Hopefully Clem’s body would be gone. It would, he knew. Even if it was marked as a crime scene. He needed blood, before he lost focus and died from lack of energy.
What he was doing was working for the time being but it wasn’t natural for him at all.
His partner, Tran, helped him to the car. They were going to be needed but no one really cared if they went to the station to give their reports. They didn’t even have to explain why he needed to stop first. His partner didn’t ask but walked to the place with him. There was dried blood all over his front stoop. The flat concrete of it turning brown and red. Probably forever. Blood stained, after all. Every vampire knew that one, first hand.
It always stained. If not your hands, then your
soul.
Going in, he went to the fridge, and took out one of his two bottles of cow’s blood. They were about to expire.
“Poor cows. No one will ever know it, but seven of them helped us live today. Seven cows, one heroic boy. To Forest. Carlos. Rest now.” Troy just drank, not sipping, or looking for control. There were ten links in the bottle, and he had all of them, after half a minute. Normally he ran with eight, but it was clear that he had more than that now. It was probably a response to nearly dying. His body was grabbing on to everything it could in order to survive, at the moment.
Rinsing out the bottle in the sink, really well so that it wouldn’t stink up the place, even though the blood out front was going to do that anyway, he shook his head.
Denise stood there, watching him closely.
So, he explained, as best he could. Everything.
“Leslie killed her sister. It was murder, but… I figure that we might want to keep that to ourselves. We can claim that it happened in the fight over the spell. It’s true enough. Carlos… That was insane. He sacrificed himself, to open a rift. That isn’t even a thing, you know that? Death to open a node, sure. Kill enough people with enough intent and you can pry one open. He made one, Denise. It wasn’t good. Tiny and weak. Barely a ripple in the air. It was enough. That… I think we would have lost part of the state otherwise. Then… The mages came through with their national binding. Just in time. It was freaking close.”
The Detective took a deep breath.
“This isn’t the job. You know that, right? We aren’t here to save the world or even real lives. Our job is glad handing and smoothing feathers. Not that you didn’t kick some ass today. That… I could see it. So could Lewet and Leslie. This kind of thing. It doesn’t really happen. I’ve worked this job for longer than I care to say, Lopez. Long enough to know that we don’t want the credit for this, if we can help it. We need to talk up Leslie and Sergeant Lewet. The brave mage and human guy who stayed to save us all. The kid who took his own life to prevent the nuke from going off.”
Troy Ounce (Lopez Time Book 1) Page 27
