“And what tools do you have at your disposal to deal with such a setup?” Angelique probed further.
I could almost see Raina’s thought processes as she thought about how to deal with the obstacle before us. I saw her eyes grow wide as she looked at me.”
“Annie,” she said, using a name that only she was allowed to use, “You use your OG push spell while I pull. The combined stress should be enough to pop the closing mechanisms and open the gate.”
“Sounds like a plan!” I grinned. Using what Jack called my ‘Jedi powers’, because of the pushing and pulling similarities between my powers and George Lucas’ ‘force’, only supercharged by over a year’s experience of being the Sorceress appealed to me in a nostalgic way.
Focusing on the door poised to swing inward, I connected to my full power. The four elemental powers of air, fire, water, and earth… sealed with the fifth element of spirit, conjured by love… resonating in my body, I felt myself connect with the heartbeat of the living Earth. I looked to Raina, who’s eye glowed with green Fae energy, and nodded.
A perfectly synchronized internal three-count later, Raina and I released our energy towards the steel door. I pushed with all of my might, and Raina pulled.
The sound of breaking metal echoed like a gunshot in the humid jungle, sending a flock of birds not bothered by the initial battle fluttering to get away as quickly as possible. With a groan that signaled just how long it had been since the doors were opened, they slid far enough for us all to enter walking side by side.
The vibrations in my body ebbed away, and Raina’s eyes returned to normal. “We are some bad-ass Witches!” Raina said with a grin.
“So, nobody coming to rush out at us?” Gaia said, her eyebrows raised. “After the dirty dozens welcomed us by trying to bash our heads in, there’s nothing to stop, or even slow down, anyone who gets by the perimeter defenses?”
“I hear no movement inside.” Angelique said, her vampire senses finely honed after sixteen hundred years.
“They’re all dead.”
Everyone froze, and we turned to see where the voice had come from. Tiffany was staring blankly, her voice sounding not entirely her own.
“What did you say?” Angelique asked, looking more serene than confused like the rest of us.
“Everyone inside… " Tiffany said, her face becoming distressed. "… they were ordered to not be taken alive, so they… they killed themselves once the door failed." She screamed and then collapsed.
Vincent was there in an instant, catching her before she could hit the ground. I arrived not long after, taking her hand. I felt a strong pulse in her wrist, and I relaxed a little.
“Tiffany? Honey?” I said, rubbing her hand. After a moment of this, her eyes fluttered and opened. Her eyes locked with mine, and I could see what she was thinking.
It was bad.
Ever the soldier, Tiffany stood after a few minutes, assuring us that she was ready to move on. We took our positions, with Angelique in the lead and Vincent bringing up the rear, lines of defense in case of any traps, and entered the mountain stronghold.
We soon found evidence of Tiffany’s grisly vision not far inside. A glass booth, probably some kind of control center for the warehouse inside, contained two fresh bodies. The uniformed men looked more military than malicious magickal lodge, and the foam around their mouths spoke of cyanide capsules… something that we had seen when trying to take our human attackers prisoner before.
“I get the feeling,” I said, looking at more bodies as we went deeper into the fortress, “that this was more than just a violent, abusive magickal sect.”
“You’re right.” agreed Raina. “This feels connected to our mystery attacker. In a big way.”
We walked through warehouse after warehouse, each filled to the ceiling with all manner of weapons, both mystical and mundane. I whistled low as we passed a palette filled with surface-to-air missiles.
“What in the hell does a magickal order need with that kind of firepower?” I wondered out loud. “Is this normal?”
“Nothing about this day has been normal.” Angelique responded. “But come… let us focus on our objective.”
We walked through a succession of smaller rooms, each with a growing level of electronic security. Nothing that the designers of the facility had cooked up could compete with our Jack-Ace-in-the-hole.
“Standard touch screen security,” Jack said remotely, “probably still set to factory defaults. Start by taking off the control panel… “
As Jack walked Gaia and Tiffany through the electronic lock picking protocols, I looked around the room that we found ourselves in. I saw all manner of magickal replacement alphabets written on the sides of wooden crates, some I recognized, others still a mystery to me.
Oh, this one’s in Theban! I thought, seeing the twisted letters favored by British Traditional Wiccans. I know this! Okay, let’s see… I studied the letters closely. T… d… d. I read. Non-original name. Origin unknown.
My interest piqued, I opened the wooden box. Inside was a golden medallion, a triple-spiraled triskle imprinted on each side.
Ooooh, pretty! I took it out of the box, memorized the inscription, and put the golden disc in a pocket in my dress.
Okay, I got my souvenir I thought, now let’s get the crystal thingy and go home.
Almost on que, the next room had only a few crates surrounding a pedestal with a green crystal behind glass. Tiffany and Gaia set about to follow Jack’s instructions as I turned to Vincent.
“So what do we do with the stuff in here?” I asked.
“We have a contract with the Wood Fae," he replied, "they transport the bulk of the items here to our various holdings all over the world, and in return, they get to keep a few select items for themselves. They usually pick things that I wouldn't want to have the responsibility of watching over anyway, so it all works out."
The glass case lifted, and the crystal we had come seeking was ours!
It was time to go home.
* * *
“That was almost too easy.”
Tiffany plopped down on the sofa across from me as I took a hit of post-mission relaxation-time weed.
“Easy?" Raina said, hitting her bong beside her. "You call that easy? Next, you're going to say that they tracked us to our rebel base."
“Cool your jets, Han.” Tiffany replied, pulling out her own joint. “It’s just that, well… nothing we found in there warrants a suicide order for base employees. We wouldn’t have needed to torture information out of them if they’d been captured… a palette of surface to air missiles says a lot on it’s own, thank you very much.”
“What an ethically challenged magickal order is doing with a shipment of SAM’s is another question entirely.” Gaia kissed me and curled up next to me on my own sofa as I held my joint for her to hit. “Which is what Jack and Katsu are trying to figure out now, thanks to the lack of a kill switch on their server.” she exhaled.
“See?” Tiffany said, exhaling. “They have a kill protocol on people, but not equipment? It just goes against every security protocol used by… well, anyone who knew how to fire a surface-to-air missile!”
“That really doesn’t feel right.” Raina agreed. “I mean, what could they have known about or have been involved with there that humans would know about but wouldn’t be picked up on any computer… which includes the security camera server… that would make them dangerous for anyone else to capture them?”
A thought popped into my head, and I said it without much thought. “Unless the people were what was valuable.”
That stopped all other chatter in the room. “What?” finally asked Raina.
“I mean, what if these people had been involved with something secret somewhere else?” I shrugged. “After it was over, their bosses needed to send them somewhere secure, someplace where they wouldn’t be noticed, to wait for… whatever they were going to do next.”
“You're right." Tiffany said slowly.
"If it was the people… some kind of team... that they wanted to keep secure, the stronghold we just hit would be a great place to do so. It's defended by the golems, who can blend into the surrounding jungle and thus not look like a heavily defended compound, it has great perimeter defenses… really, few groups short of a Sorceress and her crack tactical court members could have gotten inside.”
“For someone flying beneath the radar,” Gaia added, “it’s pretty perfect.”
“But we checked the Percisos et Elephantus," Raina insisted, "they're not a part of any known mass occult movements that would fit these precautions. The only reason we hit their place was that they had the crystal, and were unethical enough to not want to help the Sorceress willingly."
“You just said it,” Tiffany replied, “known occult movements. They’re obviously a part of something we haven’t heard of yet.”
“Unless we’re the subjects of whatever they’re doing.” Gaia said.
That stopped all conversation again. I feel a group briefing coming on!
* * *
“So you can see our thought process.” Tiffany said to the assembled group. “We may have stumbled onto one of the groups allied against us.”
Almost everyone… Raina, Jack, Katsu, her older sister Hatsu, Vincent, Angelique, and Gaia… sat as Tiffany recounted our earlier conversation. The only people missing were the blue Fae sisters Darla, Cordelia, and Drucilla… who were back in their Twilight Fae homeland, researching the Fae records… and Trevor and Evelyn Hawkins, who were off on an intelligence-gathering mission of their own.
Looking at Angelique’s reaction, it looks like we’ll be filling all of them in on our luck!
“This kind of seeming ‘coincidence’ is actually quite common with Sorceresses.” Angelique said. “Even outside of my own experiences, the lore all agrees on this.” She looked at me with a kind smile. “We should grow to expect this, I suppose.”
Her smile made me melt like it often did. I can’t believe that I wasted a year, being neurotic about my feelings for her! I thought. I mean, okay… I need to give myself a break because of the whole ‘paradigm-changing’ turn of events that my life has taken. But there is such respite, such joy in her embrace… it makes this sci-fi geek into a bloody awful poet!
“So,” Vincent said next, “we know that Percisos et Elephantus is involved in something hinkey, most likely having to do with our mysterious attacker. Jack, Katsu, this means you’re up.”
“We already have a list of Percisos holdings and locations,” Jack said, “What we’ll do next is to figure out which locations are records areas, so we can hit there next.”
“I’ll send an official request to them as an LPC… “ Katsu said, using our new abbreviation for ‘Legendary Paranormal Creature’, “… formally, just to cover our asses in the larger Occult community in case we have to go in by extra-legal means.”
One thing that most fantasy writers got wrong about supernatural beings and creatures was the idea that they were organized into some kind of social structure or hierarchy. The truth was more mixed, with some groups being highly organized while others were scattered, chaotically, in a mixture of feral loners and independent groups all over the globe. While there was no single law or ‘code’ that they lived by, the supernatural inhabitants of the planet had certain… customs that were more common than not, one of which being asking for something before taking it. Ancient magickal beings tended to carry weight with some, thus our classifying some of us as ‘LPC’s’.
I guess that includes me as well I thought. I’m not ancient, but my title… the Sorceress… is.
“I wish we could question some of the people in the last stronghold we were at.” I said, sighing. “I’d even take one of the golems!”
“Except that golems can’t talk.” Vincent said, shaking his head.
Wait… what?!?
“Wait… what?!?” I said out loud. “What do you mean, golems can’t talk?”
“That’s part and parcel to golems.” Gaia said. “They fight like hell, and can’t spill your secrets if captured, since they can’t speak.”
“These spoke.” I knew that they did, because I had heard them! In fact… “That reminds me,” I said, turning to Angelique, “there’s something that the one said before I blasted him, something that I wanted to ask you about.”
“You had me at ‘talking golem’.” she said, smiling.
I thought for a moment, then it returned to my memory. “It said something about notifying ‘Queen Aleena’… does that name ring any bells?”
The smile faded from her face so seamlessly, the change was almost subtle. “And you’re sure that they said… “Queen Aleena.”
“I can almost see it in my head,” I said, eyes closed, “It said ‘Notify Queen Aleena… ‘, and then unfortunately exploded into dirt from the bolt that I shot at it.”
“What’s the story?” Vincent asked.
This means that her memory connected to this name is old, I thought, if it’s before Vincent.
“I shall look into this.” she said, starting to glide towards the exit. “I will reveal all, soon… if it’s needed.” she added, catching my eye before leaving.
Ever mysterious…
* * *
“Hey, kid!”
I seriously did not want to open my eyes. I had finally taken a nap… missions in different time zones played with my sleep schedule… and felt like I had just closed my eyes when someone decided to wake me up in the most annoying way possible.
“I swear,” I said groggily, “whoever is poking me in the head had better get a good head start, because I sense a bone shard in a very uncomfortable place in your future… “
I reluctantly opened my eyes, only to see a face that I hadn’t seen in almost a year.
It’s the cave dweller I thought, the Mediterranian-looking woman from some of my earliest visions not named Penelope.
“I’d be fascinated to see you try that one on me.” she said, her long black hair swaying as she gave a mirthless chuckle. “Come on, kid… we’ve gotta talk.”
We walked down the hallway that we had walked down before, with the self-lighting torches illuminating our way. It had been several seasons since we’d spoken, but it felt like no time had passed.
“Long time no see, huh?” I said finally.
“Sorry for the ghosting, kid,” she replied, “but I just couldn’t take the inner dialog… ‘does Angelique love me, do I love her, yadda yadda’. It made me want to slap you, tell the truth.”
That was, I felt, completely unfair. “Well, give me a break, this shit’s new to me!”
“What, you think I knew everything when I was chosen?” she retorted. “Fuck no. I had to feel my way… and I came from an illiterate society, to boot, so… bucking convention, all that shit? Ten thousand times more difficult!”
“So,” I said, cutting her off, “why did you make contact? It certainly wasn’t just to critique my relationship skills, right?”
“I should have, but no.” she said, pointing at me. “No, I’m just wanting to talk to you about prophecy.”
“Oh, fucking great!” I exclaimed. “So, on top of being the Sorceress, and having someone trying to kill me, and having a relationship status that resembles biblical genealogy charts in complexity, now I'm the subject of some lame-ass prophecy?”
“Actually, I’m talking about your powers of prophecy.” the woman replied.
“Oh.” I said, chastened.
“Yeah, psychic levels of prophecy are part and parcel of the powers of the Sorceress.” she continued. “Not just you, either, but people around you.”
“People around me?” I repeated, feeling a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Yeah, the soldier chick is psychic as all hell.” she said, confirming my suspicions.
“Trust your gut, kid.” she continued, almost reading my thoughts. “It could save everyone’s lives.”
* * *
“So, I just had a t
alk with Tiffany, before you guys called me back here.” I said, leaning naked against Vincent’s bare chest. “I’ll be starting work with her tomorrow, to develop her psychic abilities.”
“She really had us going, that vision she had of the dead people inside the stronghold.” he replied, stroking my hair.
“I wasn’t expecting that from her, honestly.” Gaia added, laying face down across my lap and stroking my calf. “I didn’t get any ‘latent psychic’ vibes from her.”
“Well, it seems that just being around me can awaken abilities in people who have never had them before.” I said, waving my hands around like a movie wizard casting CGI spells. I rolled my eyes and grinned. Sometimes, you just have to laugh… to keep from curling up into a ball until retirement age!
"Any idea of who this cavewoman even is?" Vincent asked. "She's given you good info thus far, but it's always good to know where the advice is coming from."
“No clue.” I replied. “I just know that A… “ I continued, counting on my fingers, “… she’s incredibly old, B, she’s insanely powerful, and C, the only reasons I can say that I ‘know’ these things is because she told me that I should trust my gut. I can’t help it if it just feels right.”
“If you were anyone else, I’d warn you against confusing wishful thinking with intuition.” Vincent said. “But I know that the Sorceress is supposed to have an almost preternaturally accurate gut, so I’ll go along.”
“I know that you have a supernatural ability to know what I like.” Gaia said with a lusty grin. She slowly started to trace a path up my thigh with her soft, thin fingers. “I think it’s my turn to test my psychic sexuality.”
“I have a year's advantage… " Vincent said, looking down into my heavy-lidded eyes, "… of knowing what you like. But I doubt that you'll mind if I rest on my laurels." He kissed me as Gaia found her mark, and I surrendered to their loving.
* * *
The Witch: Book Two of The Sorceress Saga Page 42
