Power Game

by Brad Magnarella

  “It happens,” I said.

  “Can the police even do anything to them?” he asked.

  “I guess it depends on the fall-out from their stunt and if anyone decides to press charges.” I saw what he was getting at, though. Something like this would be hard to prove in court, especially if the fae hired attorneys. While the NYPD had come around to the supernatural reality in the last couple years, the court system had been much slower to adapt, which was to say they hadn’t.

  Vega ended her call and joined us. “No deaths, which is a small miracle,” she said, looking pointedly at the culprits. “Most of the attendees were at the parade when the enchantment started, and they fled the scene. The rest hid in conference rooms. It looks like we have a few sprains and bruises, some faintings, and one case of heart palpitations. Recovering from the psychological shock will take longer,” she said, her face darkening. “I have an officer getting the iron cuffs from my car.”

  In addition to her arsenal, Vega and I had been complementing her forms of restraint to better handle any supernaturals she might encounter. I had even helped her modify a couple of retaining cells back at One Police Plaza to hold them. And it looked like that was exactly what Vega intended to do.

  She tilted her phone toward me, showing an article she’d brought up regarding Epic Con ’05. The first paragraph confirmed Stan’s account. There was a photo below. Even though it was covered with black boxes to disguise the participants and their personal effects, it left little to the imagination.

  I nodded and showed her a hand to say I’d seen enough.

  When my eyes fell back to the fae, Lialla was giving me that meaningful look again.

  We were working for him, the look insisted.

  A last-ditch attempt to save herself? Or was there actually something to her claim? I repeated her words in my mind. How many ways were there to interpret that besides how it sounded on the surface? But that was the thing about the fae. You couldn’t know what they were working at. Besides, Stan’s story was credible. Lialla’s? I couldn’t come up with any reason for why Stan would sabotage his own conference.

  “Let them go,” Stan said.

  We all looked over at him in surprise. “Come again?” I said.

  “They carried out their threat. They ruined the con.” He directed his voice to them. “That’s how it works, isn’t it? We did you an ‘injustice,’” he said, air-quoting the word, “so you do us one back. But now we’re even. You can’t do anything more without cause. It’s part of their code or something,” he said, turning back to us.

  “So you don’t want me to hold them?” Vega asked.

  “I’m afraid that will just give them a reason to come at us again.”

  Vega gave a reluctant nod. I think she was seeing the same difficulty as me in making any charges stick.

  “Can I get a promise that the fae will never interfere again if we release you?” Stan asked them.

  Lialla and the fae with the broken jaw nodded. The other fae just continued to moan on the floor.

  “I’m going to have our lawyers write up something they won’t be able to squirm their way out of,” Stan muttered.

  Once more, it all sounded sensible on the surface, but suspicion squirmed inside me. If Stan had hired them, he would want to get rid of them before they said something they shouldn’t—such as “We were working for him.”

  “Hey, Stan?” I said.

  “What’s up?”

  “How did you know we were in the women’s bathroom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You came in here at a full-on run. I was just wondering how you knew we were in here.”

  “Well, I didn’t know you were in here. I just knew something was going on. I heard a commotion.”

  Vega caught on. “You heard a commotion above the one out there?”

  “Well, all that stopped—you said it was an enchantment, right?—and then I heard, I don’t know, a scream or something.” He looked around at us, a slight wildness in his eyes. “What’s this about? Why am I being interrogated all of a sudden?”

  “Where did you go when you thought the con was under attack?” Vega followed up.

  “I was in the suite we’re using as an office.”

  “Fifth floor, right?” Vega asked. “And you’re claiming you heard this commotion in the second-floor women’s bathroom from three levels up?”

  “Well, I came down to see what was going on.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said. “As far as you knew, the hotel was overrun with monsters. People were getting ripped apart left and right. The best I could do was secure a conference room, and I’m a trained officer. But you’re going to tell me you navigated that scene all the way down to the second floor?”

  “I found a back stairwell,” he stammered.

  Like his voice, his story was getting more and more rickety.

  “Or maybe you weren’t under the influence of the enchantment,” I said.

  “Man, I don’t have to listen to this bullshit at my own con.” He turned to leave.

  Bree-Yark cut in front of him and jabbed his M16 into the center of his goblin T-shirt. “You’re not going anywhere, funny man,” he snarled.

  “Hey, whoa!” Stan threw up his hands. “Police!” he called.

  Vega came up behind him. She drew his left arm down, cuffed the wrist, then did the same to the right.

  “You’re detaining me?” Stan asked in disbelief as she patted him down.

  Vega perp-walked him over to the wall where the fae were and sat him beside them. “No one’s leaving until we get to the bottom of this,” she said.

  Two officers arrived with the cuffs Vega had requested. The fae shifted uncomfortably as, under Vega’s direction, the officers snapped the cuffs around their wrists. In my wizard’s senses, the cold iron cast a metallic blue aura around them, preventing them from casting. Vega ordered the officers to return outside the bathroom and watch the door.

  She strode back toward Stan and the fae, arms crossed while Bree-Yark covered them. This was going to be good. But before Vega could begin her questioning, her phone rang. She drew it from her jacket, brow furrowed in irritation.

  “Vega,” she answered.

  As she listened, her lines let out slowly before contracting sharply again. “Where again? Okay, stay clear.” She hung up and put her phone away. “Ready for this one?” she said to me. “There are reports of a large creature flying down Forty-sixth Street.”

  I turned on the fae. “How many of you are there?”

  “Just us,” Lialla said.

  “That’s not an answer,” I growled. “I want a number.”

  “Three.”

  “Do you have someone else casting enchantments. A backup team?”

  Lialla shook her head. “We’re the only fae here.”

  “Who’s responsible for the flying creature, then?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Dammit. I didn’t have time to dissect her responses.

  “It’s Brian Lutz,” Stan blurted out. “He’s behind it.”

  I looked at him closely. “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

  “Well…” Stan’s eyes shifted around. “I lied.”

  I moved up beside Vega and lowered my voice. “I don’t know whether this is another illusion or what, but I need to check it out. Think you can get some answers out of them while I’m gone?”

  “Oh, they’ll talk.”

  “Good. I’ll have Bree-Yark stay with you.”

  At the same time, Vega said, “Take Bree-Yark with you.”

  Bree-Yark, who had overheard, asked, “How did I get so popular suddenly?”

  “No, I want him here,” I said to Vega. “I’ll radio if I need him.”

  Before Vega could argue, I turned and ran from the bathroom.

  27

  The hotel was in chaos as I made my way to the front doors. I looked for Mae among those pouring from the conference rooms, everyone stil
l trying to figure out what had happened. NYPD officers were shouting for the conference attendees to go to their hotel rooms, but it was a futile effort. A thousand frantic conversations collided in the lobby: Were they attacked? Were they not attacked? Had that all been a part of Epic Con?

  As I pushed my way through the throng, I tried the radio. “Mae, can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you, baby,” she answered. “Whew. I thought for sure the good Lord was coming to spirit this old soul away.” When I told her about the fae enchantment, she said, “Well, that explains it.”

  “But you’re all right?” I asked.

  “Probably lost a year or two off the end of my life. Otherwise, Buster and I are fine.”

  “Good, can you make it down to our meeting room?” It was the safest place I could think of.

  “Don’t see why not, but is there something I can help with? You have that sound like you’re on a mission.”

  I didn’t know what I was about to walk out into, but if the reported creature proved to be the actual thing and not another illusion, it was probably going to be beyond Mae’s abilities to tame.

  “I’m just going to check something out,” I told her. “If you can get yourself and Buster to the meeting room, great. Whatever you do, stay inside the hotel.”

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But call if you need us.”

  I was almost to the doors when screams rang out. Beyond the glass, a winged creature the size of a school bus swept low down Forty-sixth Street, passing right in front of the hotel. Those in front of me who had seen it began pushing their way back into the hotel, while those behind me who had only caught a glimpse tried to shove forward for a better look. The result was a mosh pit with me right in the middle.

  Using a shield invocation, I created a wedge to act as a lead blocker and ran in the wake of parting bodies until I was bursting through the doors. By the time I reached the sidewalk, the creature was nearly a block away.

  I squinted at it. Another enchantment?

  No, I could still feel the neutralizing spell humming inside me. And a glance around showed that, except for the pieces of costume littering the closed-off parade route, the destruction I’d believed I’d seen earlier was nonexistent.

  The creature flapping its giant bat-like wings down the street was an actual wyvern.

  Smaller than dragons, wyverns were distinguished by having wings in the place of front legs, versus the four legs of their draconic cousins. They were also less intelligent, and only a rare few could cast magic.

  The thing was, pure wyverns, like dragons, hadn’t lived on Earth for hundreds of years. They’d been hunted and wiped out. Meaning the wyvern was either a shifter, or someone had summoned it from another plane. Going by the day to this point, I was betting on the second.

  The solution, then, was to overcome the forces holding it together. Hit it with everything I had. The problem was my magic had barely been effective against the frog-beast, and we were dealing with something on an order considerably larger and more complex. The assault would need to be physical, then. I eyed the material on hand, from the parked police cruisers to the construction material on the hotel’s rooftop.

  It would have to do.

  Pulling my cane into sword and staff, I summoned a ball of light and slung it at the creature. The light zipped down Forty-sixth like a small comet and exploded into the creature’s backside, just above its tail. With an angry cry, the creature reared up and craned its serpentine neck around until a pair of reptilian eyes glared into mine.

  Yup, called it right. Wyvern.

  The wyvern rose and made a tight turn. With three powerful flaps, it was speeding toward me. The last time I’d seen something in the same family was when I’d helped the Blue Wolf battle a dragon shifter out on Long Island. Like that creature, there was a certain majesty to the wyvern’s elaborate scales and the spiny crest that adorned its head. I got why some people worshipped these things.

  But they were also deadly as fuck.

  The wyvern opened its mouth of oversized teeth. Though every instinct was telling me to flee, I held my ground, forced myself to wait another second…

  Now!

  With a bellowed Word, I aimed my sword at the police cruiser parked across the street and pulled the sword back in front of me. The force invocation grabbed the car and heaved it into the wyvern’s path.

  Fixated on me, the creature only saw the two-ton missile at the last moment. It arced its neck and tried to rear from its path, but it was a second too slow. The cruiser plowed into the wyvern’s side, driving the creature against the Centre Hotel between the first and second floors. The impact crushed its right wing, and wyvern and cruiser crashed to the street, glass and pieces of siren light raining over them.

  That’s what the police chief gets for siding with Stan, I thought.

  As the wyvern thrashed to its feet, I spoke a second invocation, this one directed at the rooftop. With a hop, the wyvern tried to take to the air, where most dragons preferred to attack from, but its right wing looked like a balled-up piece of wax paper. With a hiss, the wyvern shook out the wing, which was already repairing.

  The cruiser stunt had required a sizeable quotient of my power, but the point had been to position the wyvern where I wanted it. I made a subtle adjustment to my just-cast invocation as I moved back. A second later, the loaded construction dumpster on the rooftop completed its twenty-story plunge and landed on the creature with a boom. The wyvern’s legs splayed into a split as its head slammed into asphalt. Discarded roofing material flew everywhere.

  When cheers sounded, I realized I had an audience. Every available foot of glass at the front of the conference hotel seemed to have a face pressed to it. I waved them back, but no one budged. Even NYPD officers were engrossed in the action.

  The wyvern might have been down, but it wasn’t out. And I wasn’t sure how many more invocations on that scale I could channel. I attempted a shield around the wyvern, but like with the frog-beast, it barely held. I then directed an attack through my iron amulet. The blue cone broke apart when it reached the wyvern, seeming to confirm this wasn’t a fae creation. I considered a sword attack, but even if I could penetrate the creature’s armor, I wasn’t confident I could summon the power to blast it apart.

  That left my spell implements.

  I reached into a coat pocket and palmed a vial of dragon sand briefly. While fire had the power to destroy, it could also rejuvenate a creature in whom the fire essence was strong. Though this one wasn’t spouting flames, wyverns belonged to the draconic class, and many of their lines originated from fire.

  I released the vial of dragon sand and dug until my fingers encountered the cool breath of ice crystals against glass. Thumbing the lid from the vial, I drew it from my pocket and aimed it at the wyvern. The creature was rising to its legs with ungainly flaps.

  “Ghioccio!” I shouted.

  A blast of cold shot from the vial and enveloped the wyvern in a hoary white cone. Through it, I could see icicles growing from the creature’s spines and off the ends of its wings. Its strength already depleted from the bashing, the wyvern staggered. Unable to flap itself upright, it fell to its chest. But its legs continued to move. The wyvern gave a shove, inching itself toward me. Then another.

  Just need to keep this up, I thought. Weaken the forces holding the damned thing together, then shatter it with a blow from my sword.

  Who had created the forces in the first place? Not the fae punks who’d been responsible for the enchantment. Stan? He was playing at something, but this? And what about him claiming Brian Lutz was the perp? The guy did have an unhealthy fascination with dragons, but summoning a wyvern?

  All the time I was thinking, I was pushing more power into the invocation. With each shove of its legs, the wyvern was having to overcome additional cold and ice. Its progress slowed until its fiery essence began to gutter.

  “Stand aside!” someone shouted.

  What the—?


  I turned to find Brian hustling from the hotel, one hand clutching his pathetic wand, the other balling up the lap of his robe so he wouldn’t trip over the hem.

  Oh, you’re frigging kidding me.

  “Stand aside, Croft!” he repeated. “Let me handle this!”

  “This isn’t a goddamned game!” I roared. “Go back inside!”

  Even though I used my wizard’s voice, he ignored me and kept coming. I held the frost blast on the wyvern for as long as I dared, but Brian was getting too damned close. In another few steps he’d be a popsicle.

  I broke off the blast long enough to hit Brian with a force invocation. In my frustration, I nailed him harder than I’d meant to. The invocation threw him from his feet and into the plexiglass siding of a bus shelter. He rebounded and fell onto hands and knees. With a second invocation, I shoved him back toward the front of the hotel, where I hoped the officers would have the sense to pull him back inside.

  I wheeled back toward the wyvern—in time to see its tail incoming. The thick appendage broke through my shield and slammed into my side. I went tumbling, coming to a bruising rest at the end of a trail of potion vials. The wyvern had shaken off the ice, and now it reared up with a furious scream, wings batting.

  Had the sonofabitch reeling, I thought as I staggered up and grabbed my fallen sword. How in the hell did it recover so quickly?

  I dug into my pockets for another vial of ice crystals, but I’d lost them in the tumble. With a scream, the wyvern thrust its open mouth toward me. I threw up a shield invocation. It shattered on contact as I suspected it would, but the bright shower of sparks gave me the second of cover I needed to dive from the wyvern’s path. The creature’s teeth scraped sidewalk as they snapped closed around empty air.

  I made a dash for a fallen vial of ice crystals, throwing it up with a minor force invocation. I snatched the vial from the air, popped off the lid, and wheeled on the wyvern only to find that Brian had lumbered between us again.

  “Dude!” I shouted.

  Facing the wyvern, he threw his robed arms out to the side. “You are a being of the Drago,” he announced, “and for that we honor you. But you have entered this world unbidden.”