Defilers curse, p.31
Defiler's Curse, page 31
part #8 of The Magician's Brother Series
“Agreed.”
“I love doing business with the dying; they’re so free with their money.”
“Shut up, Namia.”
“Make me.”
“Burglar, go get her, boy. Sic!”
Didn’t even wake up. Worst attack dog ever.
Chapter 40
I frowned as we emerged from the Portal and into the night near the address Namia had given me.
I hadn’t recognised it on paper, but I sure as hell did on sight.
It was the warehouse where a group of fanatics called the Sons of the Dark Moon had been keeping and twisting young Shadowborn into Shaadres (horrific shadow monsters). They’d tried to do it to me, not realising I was an Archon. It hadn’t ended well for them.
Even so, it hadn’t been a pleasant experience, one of my very first exposures to the darker aspects of life.
Was the choice of location deliberate? A ploy to throw me off? Or was it coincidence?
Like I believed in those anymore...
The building had decayed considerably since the last time I’d seen it. The chain link fence had been pulled open, the state of the art security systems were gone, the windows were boarded or bricked up and the glass door had been replaced with a metal slab covered with bars and padlocks.
“What a hole,” Lexi commented as she stepped through the Portal after Rodger.
The latter grunted in the affirmative, pulling his Enchanted pistol and holding it at the ready.
Rodger was with us because Orpheus and Clarke were guarding Clarion Hall in case the trap Namia had warned me about came with some sort of assault on the house. I wasn’t supposed to be at the address for another ten hours, but I was expecting misdirection and subterfuge. Perhaps I was being overcautious, but the Snakes had proven themselves dangerous. I was taking no chances.
I cast Mage Sight and looked around. Nothing leapt out at me. The buildings around us had a few squatters in them, but little else.
The Warehouse wasn’t quite as empty.
Deep below, and I was fairly certain I knew where, too, was an energy signature. Tiny, flickering, but definitely Magical.
If it was in the same chamber I thought it was... then someone was definitely messing with me. Someone who knew far too much about me.
That was a miniscule list, and there was nobody on it who would betray me. Something was terribly wrong.
“Rodger, would you check the door?” I asked. “I don’t see anything Magical, but this whole situation stinks.”
“Yes sir,” he replied, his tone clipped, professional.
He slid forward, his movements graceful and even, his weapon covering the space around him flawlessly. He’d been a Conclave-sanctioned soldier, once upon a time; he knew his weapons and how to use them. He’d cut his teeth hunting Demons through the Alps at the height of the Second World War. That was a very dark time in the Supernatural community, with monsters crawling out of the woodwork to take advantage of the carnage. The Magicians of Europe had banded together to keep the bloodshed to a minimum, but there was only so much they could do with armies wondering around the place and the need to maintain secrecy. A lot of people had died.
Rodger moved up to the door like a wraith, his dark skin and darker suit allowing him to blend with the shadows, his movements utterly silent even without a Spell. He cast a Mage Sight of his own, but this one was modified, letting him look at matter, rather than energy.
He froze three steps from the door and knelt down before creeping forward slowly. He stopped again and traced a line above the step to the door.
“Tripwire,” he whispered. “Plastique.”
I grimaced; I’d been on the receiving end of plastic explosives before. Not pleasant. Would Orpheus have spotted that? Clarke probably would have; he had paramilitary training. I made a mental note not to go anywhere without one of them again.
Rodger compressed his Will into two shearing planes and cut the wire carefully.
He looked again.
“Clear,” he said before using a Lockpick Spell on the padlocks.
They fell to the ground one by one, but Rodger’s Will caught them and set them gently to one side.
He pulled the slab off the same way and stepped inside, his weapon tracing left and right.
“Which way, Boss?” he asked.
“Left and then straight to a ramp leading downwards.”
He nodded and started walking.
There was no power in the building and every step I took seemed to be either on or over some piece of debris. The walls bore scorch marks or long-faded stains that may have at one time been blood-red; the remains of the raid that had taken the place.
The ramp leading into the lower levels came into view and I had to repress a shudder as Rodger led the way down. It was an effort to follow him; I didn’t want to be there.
The only thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other was the slim hope that we might capture a Snake alive and that he might then lead us to crafting materials or at least someone higher up in their organisation who could.
I was pinning a lot of hope on the idea that coming early would make the difference, but I wasn’t counting on it. Something really stank about this. I didn’t know what, but there was a knot of tension in my chest that was only getting worse as we made our way deeper and deeper into the Earth and towards that strange energy signature.
Rodger put his fist up and I froze. We probably needed to have a chat about communication in a crisis; if it weren’t for my penchant for modern cinema, I wouldn’t have had the first clue what he meant me to do.
“Ward,” he whispered. “Right in our path. Looks like a simple alarm, but there’s a Telepathic component. If we disable it, the caster will receive an alert.”
I looked around with Mage Sight.
“Through the wall?” I suggested. “There’s a set of rooms either side, we can go through there and come back out into a connecting corridor?”
He nodded and backed away.
“I’ll cast,” I said.
“Keep the emissions below a Grade Two Spell, if you can. Where there’s one Ward, there will be others and they might be set up to detect Magic,” he said.
“That’ll take a while,” I said as I started creating the Spell. “It’s not a thin wall.”
“It’s not a load-bearing wall, is it?” Lexi hissed.
I put my hand on the concrete, letting my senses seep in, feeling for the delicate interactions of energy, matter and mass.
“Not here,” I replied after a moment, “but a good thought to keep in mind, Lexi, thanks.”
She ignored the compliment and continued to glare down the corridor while I worked.
Yes, we were still not getting along. I’d tried to bridge the gap between us in the last couple of weeks, but I hadn’t made progress. Truth be told, I was just too damned tired of bullshit in general, and hers in particular, to do the necessary grovelling.
After a few minutes work playing with atomic structure, a chunk of wall slid to the ground, suspended in a field of low gravity so it wouldn’t make too much noise.
I stuck my head through the resultant hole (much to the aggravation of the man who was there to keep said head attached to its neck) and led the way in.
“That should be far enough,” Rodger said after reclaiming the point-position and leading us through two small, adjoining offices.
I repeated my work and we were back in the corridor.
We had to pull that trick twice more before we got to the lowest level.
Just as we were descending the last flight of steps, Lexi had us stop.
She concentrated for a moment before scowling. “We just passed into a Portal Jammer,” she whispered.
I scowled, but waved Rodger on. We’d just have to deal with it. The complete lack of opposition was worrying me, though. We hadn’t seen or heard any trace.
We finally arrived on the lowest floor.
The knot in my chest only increased as we made our way through a barracks where, once upon a time, I’d stolen some clothes (the perverts had taken my own in a further attempt at dehumanisation).
We halted a handful of steps from a familiar (though mangled) steel door.
A dim glow was coming from the chamber where they’d tried to indoctrinate me; to turn me into an obedient monster.
Definitely not a coincidence.
Mage Sight showed... nothing. Just that same energy signature, pulsing gently, like a beacon. No sign of life, no Wells...
“Do you hear that?” Lexi whispered.
I cast a Sound Enhancement Spell and listened.
Moans. Desperate, lonely, pained.
But how? I hadn’t detected anything living.
“Shields,” I said.
We’d been trying to maintain a low profile, but if there was anyone to find, it would be in that room. The time for stealth was over. And if this was a trap, then going in undefended was a recipe for disaster.
Defences snapped into place and I led the way into the room at a run, staff up and ready for anything.
Or so I thought.
I’m not sure there was a way to be ready for what I saw.
Where once there had been a glass cube surrounded by Enchanted lights, there was now a throne-like chair, bolted to the concrete floor. It was made of metal; huge and solid.
A man was strapped to that chair, metal bands at his neck, chest, arms, legs, feet, wrists and forehead holding him tightly in place. He couldn’t so much as twitch anything larger than a finger.
Which was fair enough. After all, when you’ve removed the top of someone’s skull and are doing things to their brain, you don’t want them to move.
There was a device above the poor soul’s head, an assembly of metal and crystal that protruded from the back of the chair and ended with more than a dozen carefully positioned needles driven into the exposed brain.
The mutilated man was the source of the moaning we’d heard on the way in, and I recognised him from pictures Walder had provided.
It was the missing Time Mage: Quinn.
There was no missing that beak of a nose, which curled down a little at the tip, nor those pointed eyebrows and receding hairline that favoured his left side (what was left of it, anyway...). It was him, alright.
I was suddenly, awfully, reminded of what Umaira had said about forcing a Time Mage to See through whatever was blocking Magical Foresight. She hadn’t mentioned anything like this, though.
Rodger, perhaps the most well-adjusted person left in the room, threw up on the spot.
Lexi, in what can only be described as a fit of idiotic altruism, darted forward.
“Stop!” I snapped.
“He needs help, God damn it!” she snarled back.
Something in my mind was screaming at me to be careful, to stay back. And it wasn’t just all those traps we’d had to evade to get down there.
“I said stop!” I barked, trying to intercept her.
I was too late.
She put a foot over the hidden Ward surrounding the chair.
The energy signature we’d been following vanished along with the Illusion that had somehow fooled the Mage Sight of three trained Magicians.
Several things happened at once.
The device hooked up to Quinn’s head withdrew its needles and folded neatly into the back of the chair while every strap and manacle snapped open.
The last of the Illusions fell away, finally revealing how Quinn had been able to survive that sort of mutilation.
Well, survived was a poor choice of words. He’d been dead when he went into the chair, or soon after, anyway.
He was a Host.
To the Black Hunger.
I had an awful moment of clarity. If there was one way to make a Time Magician’s brain and mind last long enough to See the future under the strain Umaira had described... well, this was probably it. The Black Hunger sustained tissue and supplemented nerve cells with their own network. They’d be able to take strain that would have destroyed Quinn on his own.
And all it had cost was one of only a handful of living Time Magicians.
The instant he was free, the moans vanished, replaced by the terrible, hungry laugh of the Black Hosts. He leapt right at Lexi, his power flaring to speed up Time within the boundary of his Aura.
It made him horrifyingly fast.
Lexi was busy recoiling, but she was nowhere near quick enough. I shoved her out of the way with a blast of kinetic energy that popped her shields like a bubble and sent her barrelling into a wall. Quinn’s strike flew through the spot Lexi head had just vacated and slammed into my own shields instead.
He’d sped up his own Time so much that he’d been able to coat his hands in Dispel; he carved off half my shield layers before I noticed what he’d done.
Lexi’s shields weren’t a quarter as strong or complex as my own. She’d have died right then and there. Of course, seeing as how I’d slightly knocked her out, she was unlikely appreciate it as much as she otherwise would.
Whoops. Oh well, it was that or let her get eaten.
Quinn’s next hit demolished what was left of my defences and I only avoided getting my face chewed off by blasting out a wave of fire that made the Host blur out of the way... and into Rodger’s line of fire.
My Warden’s gun made hardly a sound as its rounds carved out huge holes from Quinn’s decaying flesh. Each bullet was Enchanted to open a spherical Portal about six inches across. Perfectly shaped spheres of flesh appeared out of thin air in little flashes of muted light before dropping to the ground with wet slaps.
I felt my gorge rise, but I shoved it back down again and hurled a lightning bolt (instead of my dinner).
Unfortunately, Rodger’s fire had inspired Quinn to raise a shield... which my bolt missed anyway.
He was just so fast.
Rodger’s shields went down next and it was only through a truly impressive roll that he avoided getting his head knocked off his shoulders.
I cast a wave of Dispel that clipped Rodger on his way past, eradicating a Spell he was casting, but wreaking absolute havoc when it hit Quinn. His shields and his Temporal Manipulation Spell imploded, hurling him away from us and slamming him into the ground.
I followed up with fire and lightning, coiled into a whip of energy that blew off his left leg and set his hips on fire.
Quinn barely seemed to notice, using his remaining limbs to flip into the air and right back at me. Not once had he stopped laughing. If anything the damage made him laugh harder, as if it were all one wonderful joke.
My shields were back in place and took his charge. He bounced off and hit the ground hard. I cast at him again, this time with kinetic energy.
Time Magic flared and he was once again on the move, faster than the eye could follow. That was getting really old.
His speed meant that the Spell which should have smashed his skull instead crushed the right side of his chest, which flung him slightly off course, but did nothing to end the fight.
Quinn easily dodged Rodger’s fire, flying through the air and right at me.
I reached into my Suppression Cuff and filled the air between us with plasma, which he flew into. He didn’t even bother to try evading it.
When he came out the other side, he was unrecognisable. Every inch of exposed flesh was black and smoking, his eyes, mouth and nose a fused, charred mess... until he ripped his own mouth open with brute strength so he could start laughing again, the sound now wet and gravelly through his damaged throat. His exposed brain was also smoking and charred, making his movements a little sluggish but clearly not doing enough to put him down.
What the hell was it going to take?!
Time Magic flared again as he smashed into my shields. A tiny, tiny piece of his power slipped though my defences to strike me in the side, just under my left arm. It wasn’t a large hit, maybe two or three inches across and half that deep, but within that tiny area, time went mad.
Again, not too much, but enough that the cells in that tiny clump of me aged about two weeks in a second.
Essentially, they had fourteen days cut off from the rest of my body.
When the Spell lapsed, the cells were dead mush; black and rotten, packed with anaerobic bacteria, oozing puss and leaving my ribs exposed.
Blood shot from the suddenly exposed edges of the rotten area and I fell over with a scream. Quinn tore at my shields, ploughing his way through one layer after another, his laugh giving way to moans of anticipatory delight.
Rodger saved my life. He darted in from the side just as Quinn was laying into my last shield layer.
He took an extra half a second to aim and squeezed the trigger.
The top of Quinn’s head vanished and the rest of the former Time Mage slid to the ground.
Rodger, an imminently practical man, wasted exactly no time slamming his boot into the rather large chunk of brain and skull, taking absolutely no chances.
It rather horrified me that it was only after Rodger was finished that the last of Quinn’s energy signature faded. Would that chunk of brain have been able to cast?
“Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth, my hands over my newest wound.
“I did it for me, Boss. The captain made it very clear what would happen if I came back without you.”
I laughed, which made my side explode with pain.
He turned and started disposing of the body, burning everything that looked vaguely squishy, just to be safe. He didn’t even need to be asked. Damned good work. I’d have a word with Cassandra about him; he’d impressed the hell out of me. Plus, bonuses for saving my life were a good way of encouraging the rest of the staff to do the same.
While Rodger was busy, I took the opportunity to cast a Triage Spell to keep me from losing too much blood. There was too much damage to deal with in the moment, so I simply killed the bacteria, made sure I wasn’t bleeding, and got up to check on Lexi.
She was just stirring when I got to her, a rather large bump on her head.
The look she gave me when she laid eyes on me was pure hatred.
“Sorry,” I said.
She swore at me.
I ignored her and turned to check the rest of the room.
