“So we get to sit here with our thumbs up our asses?”
“You and your team will stand by as observers.”
Observers. Unbelievable. Still, I could tell there wasn’t much point in arguing, so I uncharacteristically bit my lip. Dread would’ve been proud of me.
And so, we got stuck sitting in a van with Michael down the street from Kel’s safe house, watching the action on the helmet cams of the guys who were going to get to actually kick the door down on that psychotic bitch.
There were twelve of them going in, a mix of shooters and mages, much like the Wreck Squads I used to lead, and they were geared to the hilt. All the same, being stuck watching the action on a bunch of computer screens made me fidget around like I had ants in my pants.
Dread spotted it right away, of course. “Be cool, Cass.”
Like it was that easy. Maybe for him. He’s always the calm and reasonable one, and it always makes me crazy, because he’s always right. Big jerk. He was lucky I was so stupid in love with him.
We watched on the screens as the strike team moved into the building. Everything was quiet; we were going in at two in the morning to minimize the risk of running into civilians, and so the strike team and their helmet cams didn’t see a soul as they entered the apartment building and immediately filed into the closest stairwell.
I had to keep clenching and unclenching my hands as I watched. When you’re stuck outside the action, watching helplessly, every second seems to stretch out into eternity. I knew from experience that the strike team would have to take their time, be methodical, clear every corner and landing as they went up the stairs of the apartment building that Kel was hiding in, but still… I wanted the waiting to be over already.
Their low voices came to me over the headset I was wearing. “Landing clear. Moving to second floor…. clear.”
Kel’s safe house was on the fifth floor. It was torture listening to them count down the floors and landings as they cleared them, sweeping steadily up the stairwell towards the master death mage that we’d been hunting for three months now.
They’d reached the landing for the fifth floor when it happened. The point man crept forward, reaching forward with one hand toward the door handle, when the lights cut out.
We all blinked in surprise as the screens we were watching suddenly went black. Before any of us could react, shouts and screams erupted into our ears over the headsets we wore.
It wasn’t only the strike team we heard. Snarls and growls could be heard over the pained screams of the strike team, sounds I recognized from the prison.
Ghouls.
“Lights! Lights!” one of the voices shouted.
We started to get flashes and glimpses from the helmet cams, lit from the flashlights mounted under the strike team’s weapons. It was actually pretty impressive, how quickly the strike team were able to react and get their lights on after getting ambushed in the dark, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference in the end.
The flashlight beams waved around wildly, giving us quick glimpses of the ghouls as they tore through the strike team. Black eyes, gnashing teeth, long black claws, seeming to come from every direction at once, flashed across the computer screens that our eyes were glued to helplessly.
The feed from several helmet cams swayed and rocked as the shooters who wore them were dragged down by the ghouls. On one of the screens, we saw a brief burst of gunfire, but with the ghouls all around and amongst them in the dark, the strike team were more likely to kill each other than the ghouls if they opened fire.
I hammered my fists helplessly against the wall of the van. So stupid of me! How did I not see this coming? I knew what Kel was capable of; how could I think that taking her would be this easy?
“Strike team! Fall back! Fall back!” Michael said into his microphone.
“She’s got them trapped,” I said. “Above and below… she’s turned that stairwell into a kill zone.”
“Michael,” Dread said. “Open the weapons locker. Fast. We have to go in.”
“I…” Michael began to say, but I cut him off.
“Where… where’s Lysette?” I asked, but the open door at the back of the van answered me before I’d even finished the question.
“She just, like, shot out of the van,” Shifty said. “She’s insanely fast. Gone before I knew what she was doing.”
“We have to go get her!” Jolly said, moving for the door, but Dread stopped him.
“We can’t rush in unarmed,” Dread said. “We’ll only get ourselves killed.”
Jolly began to struggle against him and protest, but then the radio crackled and Lysette’s voice came to us.
“I’m in,” she said. “Approaching the fourth floor landing.”
There already? I thought, but I really should’ve known better. Countless times, I’d witnessed the extraordinary feats that Lysette could perform with her magic as a Physical Adept, but still, she kept surprising me.
“Lys, wait for us, we’re coming…” I began to say into my mike, but she interrupted me.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “It’s over.”
It was Dread’s turn to get on the mike. “The ghouls?”
“They’ve all gone inert. Hang on,” Lysette said. “The lights are back on.”
The feed from one of the helmet cams began to move. Lysette had picked it up and pointed it around the stairwell so we could see what was happening. Or, more accurately, to show us what had already happened.
In a word, slaughter. Bodies filled the stairwell; a dozen bodies in black tactical gear, and even more in civilian clothing… former residents of the apartment building that Kel had killed and transformed into ghouls for her ambush.
Lysette was right; none of them were moving. I guess Kel felt she had proved her point with wiping out the strike team, or maybe she didn’t want to take any chances with sticking around to find out what we had in the way of backup.
“Pretty sure they’re all dead,” Lysette said, “but you should get Jolly up here just in case… hold it.”
“What is it?” I said.
“There’s still one ghoul standing.”
“We’re coming,” Dread said, moving for the back of the van.
“No, no, it’s not moving,” Lysette said. “It’s… standing there, staring at me.”
The skin on the back of my neck began to crawl. Something wasn’t right.
“Show me,” I said.
I had to fight the urge to rush out of the van with Dread and the others and charge up that slaughterhouse of a stairwell to back up Lysette. There was only one ghoul, she had said, but that could change quickly if the winds of Kel’s whims shifted and she decided to make a pitched fight of it. We knew from experience that Kel could see and hear through her ghouls; she may have figured out that we didn’t have much of a force left to fight her.
Somehow, I managed to keep a lid on all that and instead, I watched the computer screen showing me the feed from Lysette’s camera. It waved a bit and then settled on a ghoul standing at the top of the stairs on the fifth floor landing.
She was middle-aged, or had been. Her eyes were completely black, and even over the camera feed, I could see the long, black talons tipping her fingers. I don’t know how Kel had killed her; probably the Death Trick that we’d seen her and Fly use before at the prison.
The ghoul seemed oblivious to anything until the image settled on her. Then, her face slowly turned to face the camera; she seemed to stare right at us in the van through the monitor. I noticed then that the ghoul was holding something; something shiny and golden. The ghoul lifted her hand to show it to us; a gold Rolex… the gold Rolex, the one we’d tricked Fly into buying earlier that day.
We could hear a deep, garbled, guttural voice coming out of the ghoul over Lysette’s mike. It sounded almost like fluid was filling the lungs of the ghoul who spoke to us.
“Does your little Mentalist know that her charm transmits both ways?” the inhuman voice said
, and the ghoul’s face twisted into a cruel facsimile of a smile. “Careless.”
With that, the ghoul’s body went slack and dropped, leaving us to stare in shocked silence. Jolly was the first to cut through the quiet.
“What did it mean? The charm transmits both ways?” he said.
“Cass,” Dread said, looking at me in alarm.
My throat was suddenly dry. “Mickey.”
***
Fly took a deep breath and listened at the doorway one last time. His revenge waited for him on the other side of that door, and finally, finally he was going to be able to take it.
The hallway was empty; it was late at night, and his prey’s apartment building was as quiet as the grave. This was going to be easy.
He set his hand on the door directly over the lock and closed his eyes. After he focused for a second, there was a satisfying series of snicks as the tumblers on the door lock and deadbolt fell into place and turned, leaving the door unlocked.
Fly had to smile. Such a simple Trick, unlocking a door. One of the first he’d learned. And soon, he’d be able to use one of the more recent additions to his magical array, his Death Trick, to stop the heart of the little Mentalist who’d been such a thorn in his side.
He started to get the old tinge of excitement, that thrill he used to feel back in his days as a street thug, when he would creep his way into his latest victim’s apartment. They never saw it coming; everyone, even criminals, seemed to live in a deep delusional haze of apparent safety.
They all knew that people like him existed; dangerous men who could open locks and do other, more terrible deeds with their magic. They knew, and still, they locked their useless locks and slept like babies, fooled into thinking that they were somehow safe from him.
They all had the same look on their faces when he came for them. Roused from their sleep, with Fly standing over their bed, their eyes would suddenly get wide and their mouths would start to open to scream, just in time for him to drive his knife into their hearts.
He didn’t have a knife this time. He didn’t need one, not any more. Gone were the days of Fly being a mere street thug; now he was a death mage, and he couldn’t wait to exert his new powers on the little Mentalist who had tormented him at the prison.
He slid quietly into the apartment. Just like old times. His victims had never heard him. Never… until it was too late.
The apartment was dark, and he considered using his Light Trick, but dismissed the idea immediately. There wasn’t much point in taking the chance on waking her up; not that it was going to make any difference at this point. He was in, and this was going to be her last night on Earth.
He picked his way across the living room carefully, slowly, feeling his way with his feet before shifting his weight forward. Everything was perfectly quiet. He could feel his own heartbeat thumping in his chest, and a little smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
He started seeing it in his mind, visualizing and fantasizing how he would do it. She would wake up with him over her, her eyes going wide like all the others, and he would crush the life out of her with his magic.
Maybe that was too fast, he began to think as he crept slowly toward her bedroom. Too easy. Too quick. He should make her hurt. He should make her beg. Kill her slow; yes, he decided, that was the way to do it. Strangle her, beat her, maybe even rape her…
A loud, sudden, screeching yowl yanked him out of his cruel fantasies and poured cold water over his heart. A cat. A goddamn cat, somewhere in the dark, and he’d stepped on it accidentally.
He froze as he heard movement in the bedroom nearby. Momentary panic gripped him, but he shook his head and came back into himself. He was the predator here, and she was the prey. Let her come and see the nightmare that was about to end her.
The bedroom light clicked on, spilling into the hallway. He heard her before he saw her, her voice irritated and sleepy.
“What is going on out there? Jason, that better not be you again….”
She saw Fly and screamed, shrinking back against the wall. One of her hands clutched the front ends of her robe tightly together; the other clutched a necklace hanging around her neck. A crucifix or St. Christopher’s medal or some other such trinket, Fly guessed; plenty of his victims had grabbed at similar objects and prayed to their gods before he was done with them.
“Don’t you try to scream again, witch,” he said, pointing at her. “You make another sound and I will stop your heart where you stand.”
Her face was a mask of fear. Fly drank it in, reveling in her abject terror of him before spitting her name out like a foul word.
“Mickey. Little Mickey the Mentalist.”
There was a buzzing sound from somewhere in her bedroom. Fly let his smile get wide.
“Oh, is that your friends calling to warn you?” Fly said. “Warn you about me coming to get you?”
Recognition mingled in with the shock and terror on her face. “F-Fly? Is that… how did you find me?”
“How did I find you?” he said with a laugh. “You need to be more careful when you’re making those charms of yours, little girl. If you don’t do it right, they can be used to track you right back.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here?” he roared at her, forcing himself to keep his voice down in mid-sentence. “You’re going to fix what you did to me!”
She shook her head, her entire body trembling. “What are you talking about?”
“The prison! When you were in my mind! You… you don’t even know what you did to me, do you?”
She shook her head, still clutching her robes and necklace.
Fly’s shoulders slumped. “You don’t even know. You can’t fix it.”
“Fix what?” Mickey asked in a hoarse whisper. “Did you hurt… did you hurt my cats?”
“Your cats?” Fly said. “Your cats? You need to worry about what I’m going to do to you, you little…”
His face darkened and he shook his head. There was no point in holding back any longer. She didn’t even realize the effect she’d had on him back at the prison; the lingering effect of her interrogation on his mind.
Fine. Fine, then. He could still have his revenge, at least.
“It’s time to end you, witch,” Fly said, a terrible light in his eyes. “I’m going to steal your life, and then I’m going to bring you back as a ghoul. That’s how your friends are going to find you; a rotting corpse, tearing apart those stupid little cats you love so much with your bare hands.”
He reached a hand out toward her, and she shrank away from him, pushing herself up against the wall as if she might be able to push herself through it to escape him. Fly’s teeth bared in a savage smile as he closed his fist, to crush the life out of her with his Death Trick.
Her body shook in terror and her eyes pinched shut. Fly’s smile widened, and then faded when Mickey’s eyes opened back up.
“Hey, wow,” she said, standing up straight and no longer trembling. “This thing really works.”
The smile fled completely from Fly’s face. “What thing? What are you talking about?”
“This,” she said, holding up the necklace she’d been clutching so tightly. “This charm. It works. After the prison, Shifty made these charms for all of us to protect us from the Death Trick that we saw you and Kel using so much. Safety first, you know?”
Fly scowled, and then stuck his hand out again toward Mickey, tightening it once more into a fist. The little Mentalist looked around, as if trying to hear a subtle noise, and then shook her head.
“Nope. Not feeling a thing. I’ll be honest, I was a little worried it might not work…”
Fly snarled and lunged down the hallway toward Mickey. She was a good ten feet away, though, and had plenty of time to take a quick step away from his reaching hands.
“No!” she shouted, and Fly’s legs suddenly seemed to turn into water underneath him.
He fell heavily to his knees in t
he hallway. In a panic, he struggled to regain his feet, but he was unable to move or feel anything at all from the waist down.
“What the… what did you do to me, woman? I can’t feel my legs!”
“Yeah, that’s because I paralyzed them, dummy,” Mickey said, standing well outside of Fly’s reach. “I’ve been working with the FBI ever since the prison, and they let me practice self-defense Tricks in case I ever have to deal with violent dickweeds like you.”
She looked out toward her living room before continuing.
“Did you hurt any of my cats? I swear to God, if you hurt any of them, I will… I will… I will make you addicted to eating cat poo for the rest of your life!”
Now it was Fly’s turn to tremble. His legs simply wouldn’t obey his will; he mentally screamed at them to get up, move, get him out of here before this little Mentalist could make good on her threats, but there was nothing. He was trapped.
“Did you?” Mickey said.
“No, no!” Fly said. “I didn’t hurt any of them, I swear! I… I like cats, I…”
“You better not have,” Mickey said, moving carefully past him to retrieve a pair of mage restraints from a drawer in a nearby bureau. “Put these on.”
“My legs aren’t going to be like this forever, right?”
“What? No. Why would you think… hey, what were you talking about before, fix you?” Mickey said, taking a small pistol out of the same drawer as the mage restraints. “And how come you haven’t said the word ‘motherfucker’ yet? It was like, every other word with you back at the prison.”
“I can’t!” Fly cried. “I can’t say it! I can’t say any of it! That’s what you did to me, you… you… you bad person!”
Mickey’s eyebrows raised. “Bad person? Not ‘bitch’, not ‘ho’, not… wow, you really can’t swear, can you?”
She took a second to savor the moment. Fly the death mage, Fly the bully, come to kill her in her sleep, now cowering on his knees in front of her in mage restraints, powerless.
“Well, well, well, Fly,” she said. “You haven’t been able to curse at all ever since the prison? Why, this must have been very challenging for you.”
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 49
