Renegade mage paranoid m.., p.28
Renegade Mage (Paranoid Mage Book 2), page 28
Archmage Fane might have been more helpful, but she hadn’t talked with him. Or seen him. She wouldn’t, either, until and unless she learned the dialect that he spoke. Which she probably could, if she put her mind to it, but there hadn’t been much incentive. Instead, she was waiting for the political struggle to end and she could go back to House Hargrave.
Gayle was pretty sure the only reason BSE was so insistent on keeping her was because Professor Brown was still at large. Or rather, Callum Wells, who bore the juvenile nickname of the Ghost. She still didn’t know what to think of that, since she couldn’t imagine the elderly man going out on a massacre. The thing she wanted to know was why he’d sent her on the path of destructive healing.
She refused to call it by Fane’s name in her own mind.
If it weren’t for the fact that he was wanted by everyone, she would have thought he was one of Fane’s agents, meant to force her into the archmage’s care with forbidden knowledge. In fact, she still wasn’t completely convinced that wasn’t the case. She’d done a little bit of snooping on her own and the fact that he was there at one of Fane’s stupid attacks on a dragonblooded was very suspicious.
Inter-House warfare was subdued under GAR, but by no means was it gone. Callum’s strange aptitude test could well be the result of one of Fane’s experiments. She’d only heard rumors, but Fane had not hidden the fact that he thought he could change and improve magical talent by proper application of healing vis.
Gayle walked down the stone steps into the inner courtyard. The BSE facility had a thick stone outer wall, with a dome composed of interlaced metal and glass above it to keep out the flying monsters. Despite the medieval look, the interior buildings were properly insulated, furnished, heated, and cooled. The entire thing sprawled over two or three square miles of real estate, a crowded grouping of buildings that reminded her more of the campus she’d learned magic at than a top secret facility.
She stopped to let several shifters in war-form past, the party carrying in a somewhat smaller beast than the one she’d just dropped. It looked like some twisted offspring of a boar and a bird, though it did make for a very good barbeque. It wasn’t exactly haute cuisine, but it had a certain rustic charm. Supplies did come in through the teleports, but the facility was at least partly self-sufficient.
Technically speaking, she outranked the shifters here, who were mostly support staff. At the same time, this was their portal world and they were due some deference. Besides, they were more powerful here than on Earth, more in tune with the dangers and the ebb and flow of magic. She could just see the local mana; they could actually interpret it like the weather.
“Shouldn’t you be training?” Gayle jumped as Grand Magus Taisen appeared from nowhere. The head of the BSE possessed a vanishingly rare triple aspect, though for some reason he’d never advanced to Archmage. Gravity, Light, and Force meant that Taisen could appear practically anywhere at speeds that nobody would believe, and was an utter monster in a fight. Unlike Fane’s lackeys, she actually respected Taisen.
Taisen’s abilities were not in doubt, and he’d built the Society for Portal Defense from the ground up before GAR folded it into the BSE. He was polite and respectful, even though he outranked practically everybody. Plus, he'd been her mother’s rival back when they were still in the academy, and that said a lot.
“Just having me shoot the same thing and then yelling at me is not training,” Gayle said bluntly. Then she relented a bit; he was still her superior. “Grand Magus,” she added. “I know that only Fane’s apprentices can teach me how to properly use negative healing, but I don’t believe they are actually trying. House Fane and House Hargrave do not get along.”
“There is a reason I insisted that the members of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement swear their allegiance to no House,” Taisen said. There wasn’t any particular bite to his tone, but she understood what he was saying anyway.
“I understand, Grand Magus, but this is not what I chose.”
“Yes, indeed. That is certainly not common.” Taisen didn’t actually apologize or offer to change things. She understood why, but it was still hard not to resent him. Just like she resented House Fane, and Professor Brown, and all the other people who had gotten her stuck here.
“I’ve seen your transcript,” Taisen said instead. “I suspect you’ll have no trouble understanding the scope of what negative healing can do if you acquire more mundane medical literature. There is far more to the body’s capabilities than most healing mages realize.”
“That’s what got me into this mess.” Gayle gave Taisen a sideways look. He looked older, distinguished, with a hard face and greying hair, but moved like he was built from coiled springs. The rumors were that he fought in mundane wars, using their weapons, just to see what it was like, and he certainly spent more time killing things in the portal worlds than running BSE. “But even if that’s true, where would I get such things?”
“You’ll find some in your quarters tomorrow,” Taisen said neutrally. “I’m sure you’ll find that the knowledge contained therein can be used in many ways, and not just in combat.”
“Thank you, Grand Magus,” Gayle said, not missing the hint he’d tossed her way. While she didn’t really have any interest in learning more harmful healing, studying on her own was one way to discharge her obligations, and if Taisen thought she might find healing applications he was probably right. So it wouldn’t be a complete slog.
“It is my responsibility to make sure all my people have what they need,” Taisen returned. “Be it material or information.”
“Speaking of information,” Gayle ventured. “Is there any news on Pro- I mean, Mister Wells?”
“Of late? He removed two mundanes from GAR custody and somehow convinced a Fae King to shield their identities.” Taisen responded promptly. “He remains as elusive as ever, but eventually he’ll slip up. Or someone will.”
“I hope so,” Gayle said glumly. “I just want to know why.”
Chapter 17 – Blame
“Second verse, same as the first,” Callum muttered to himself as he drove through a small town in Nebraska. It was a bit of a haul from Texas but he didn’t really mind, since he was there to pick up almost a million dollars worth of gold bullion. It was hard to be grumpy about the drive when that was the reward at the end.
Especially since he could use his new gut portal to store the truck and teleport back home.
This time the padded case was located in the open belltower of a church, and Callum wondered why Chester had gone for high roofs. At this point he was certain that Chester knew Callum was a spatial mage, but then again, it wasn’t likely that his subordinates knew that it was Callum who was doing the work. Sky access might be a plausible excuse for how the gold vanished without anybody seeing anything.
He stopped at a light while he located the case and the dense gold in the sphere of his senses, and pulled it into the pickup. So far as he could sense none of the few shifters hanging about the small town had line of sight to the case, and none of them made any particular reaction to him driving off with it when the light changed.
Callum waited until he’d driven out into the country for an hour or so before calling Lucy to tell her he’d picked up the package. It seemed she was still on vacation, and it sounded like she was going a little stir-crazy being stuck at home.
He sympathized. At least when he’d gone into his self-imposed exile he had a lot of projects to keep him busy, but all of Lucy’s stuff was over at GAR. Which was a good argument for why she shouldn’t let other people take care of her stuff, as it meant that it wasn’t really, properly hers. Not that he’d point it out at the moment, since it’d just be adding insult to injury.
“I tell you what, big man,” Lucy complained. “I can’t even pet dogs around here ‘cause I’m not sure when it’s going to be someone’s kid instead.” Callum barked a laugh.
“Nothing you want to order off the Internet? I’m sure there are some toys you’ve been wanting to get for a while.”
“Kinky,” Lucy said, reflexively. “Nah, though. I mean, I’ve got everything back in my office. 3-D printers and stuff take a while to ship and what would I do with two anyway?”
“I guess that’s a point,” Callum admitted. “When do you start back, anyway?”
“Still a couple days,” Lucy replied. “This break thing runs into Thanksgiving. I like vacations, but I’d rather plan for ‘em, you know? At least let me bring my coffeemaker home with me.”
When they wrapped up their conversation, Callum opened his gut portal and teleported the case of gold onto a table set up for the purpose. So far as he could tell there were no electronics in it, but even if there were, there was no way any signal would make it out of the enclosed cave. The truck got teleported to the concrete pad as well, and he tossed a rusty hinge with his cleanup enchantment down to cover his tracks. Then he invoked his homebond and made his way to the trailer via telepad.
Callum actually felt rather smug as he pulled the pickup back out of the cave and put it in his driveway. At least, until he noticed how low it was on gas, but he could make a run for that later. The trip back had given him a few more ideas that he felt really dumb for not having explored before.
Obviously he could nest portals. There was no problem running vis through his gut portal, which meant there was no problem running it through any other portal he made. So one between his current position and the edge of his perceptions gave him two sensory spheres, and let him chain out to double his normal distance. Then he could make another portal set, and triple it.
Actually trying that ran into some issues, though. Not so much with the magic, which worked just fine, but with his perceptions. Even if he didn’t pay full attention to that six-hundred-yard perceptual sphere, it was still there. Doubling that input was something he could handle, even if it was somewhat of a strain. Tripling it was not something he could sustain for long, like staring into a bright light, and quadrupling made all his threads collapse as his brain overloaded in a sort of white-out moment and he lost track of his magic.
A little bit of experimentation showed his proper limits were something closer to two and a half times his current volume. He could probably work his way up to three, but if his base perception got larger, that multiplier might actually go down a bit. There had to be some upper limit. The human brain, however magical, was not infinite.
That didn’t mean he could only nest three portals. He could pull back his magical perceptions, and what mattered was the total space he was looking at, not how many ways he could see it. That was why his other experiments with using portals hadn’t really bothered him; they’d all overlapped the same space. If he put five portals within ten feet of each other, six hundred yards away, he only got ten feet more radius on a bubble that half overlapped his original one. Or whatever complicated math described that intersection.
Still, being able to double his range if he needed to was not something to sneeze at. Especially since he only needed to use teeny tiny portals to do so, and those had to be harder to detect than something large. Obviously not impossible, but it might give him an edge. Considering what he was up against, he needed every edge he could get.
Callum took a break from his work simply by driving into town and getting a burger and a milkshake from the local greasy spoon, then pulling up some videos on his laptop to distract himself with. Thanksgiving hadn’t been much for the past few years, but at least he’d had a proper house. It was all he could do to not be maudlin.
On the other hand, despite what he’d given up to be on the wrong side of GAR and supernaturals in general, it wasn’t like he hadn’t accomplished anything. He’d seen other worlds and dealt with dragons, and most importantly he’d actually saved some people. Not everyone, but at least the Connors and Clara.
A few good deeds were better than none.
***
Getting a teleport pad smuggled into Lavigne’s penthouse was not easy. Vampires tended to use thralls for their gruntwork, so there was nobody to suborn, coerce, or bribe. On the other hand, they still had to take deliveries and Chester’s work with Lucy had prompted him to get in contact with other unsavory mundane elements.
The team he had hired gave the go-ahead when the crate was unpacked and the pad free and open. It was afternoon, but considering how many vampires Lavigne had lost, it probably wouldn’t matter if it was midnight. Once other nests caught wind of how weak Lavigne had become, they’d likely start making moves, but Chester was making one first.
He owed Lavigne for both what had been done, and what had been attempted.
To avoid suspicion, he’d had members of his pack bring their mana charges to the compound. They’d have to forego some of the benefits of commercial enchantments for a week or so, but some judiciously arranged family reunions and vacations ameliorated most of that. There were plenty of people at Chester’s compound, enough to gather a number of watchers who would be absolutely certain Chester never left.
It wasn’t like GAR was even being particularly subtle about it. Some poor bastard from the Bureau of Shifter Relations was sitting in one of the guest houses to be available to Chester in was tritely referred to as trying times. Although Chester, certainly, wasn’t really being tried by GAR’s issues with Wells. At least Chester had long had the interior of his compound warded from prying eyes, with Jasper certifying it properly worked.
“Team One, ready?” The Wolfpack made noises of agreement.
“Team Two, ready?” The secondary team, including a few of his subordinate Alphas, nodded.
In the next room, others were stocking janitorial carts with chemicals, mops, brooms, vacuums, and a few fae charms. Even Chester couldn’t evade the consequences of eradicating one of the Masters of the Midwest, if GAR knew about it. But only if they knew about it.
It wasn’t like he could hide Lavigne’s disappearance, but he could deflect the blame. After all, he was at his pack compound the entire time and there was someone else who could infiltrate a protected building and clean it out. It didn’t matter whether or not the Ghost had done it, just that he could have done it.
Jasper sat next to the new, double-size teleport pad as it energized. The other end had some mana charges to reduce the cycle time, so it didn’t take more than a minute after the surveillance team had given the go-ahead before it was ready for them. Chester stepped onto the plate, both teams crowding on with him, and pricked his finger with the token.
The moment their surroundings shifted Chester pushed the go-ahead through the pack bonds. Now that they were inside Lavigne’s building, they wanted to keep things quick and quiet. They spread out from the storage room the pallet was being kept in, all of them in war form and with claws out. They’d bypassed the outer wards, but there were still internal alarms that could make life difficult for them.
Unfortunately, a lot of the thralls would have to die. While Mister Summers, or Wells, or whatever he was calling himself had spared them, it was a wasted effort. Thralls had once been mundanes who had somehow survived feeding, but something essential had still been taken from them. They were slavishly obedient, unable to consider doing anything other than carrying out the orders of whatever vampire they had latched onto.
That didn’t mean they were stupid, though, and they wouldn’t ignore the invasion of a bunch of powerful shifters. Not that they would be expecting said invasion to come from the core of the building. Chester’s team headed upward, while Alpha Vernon’s team went for the security center. Arthur Langley would have wanted to come, but Chester thought it was better if he was nowhere near the operation. Or even knew about it.
They tore through three rooms before there was any hint of resistance, snapping necks and tearing out throats, as the thralls were only slightly faster than an ordinary mundane. The danger was in their silverite weaponry and ammunition, because all it really took was one good hit. The petrified tree sap silverite was made from was poisonous to the symbiote, disrupting their intrinsic magic if it even pierced the skin. It wasn’t simply a risk of wounds that didn’t heal with their usual alacrity; a shifter could be rendered temporarily mundane. Or permanently, with enough of the stuff.
The thralls were equipped both with all kinds of bane types, as shifters were not the only threat Lavigne had to worry about. He was quarrelsome even for a vampire, and got into occasional spats with other Masters or even fae, which could easily result in at least moderate amounts of violence. The first pops of gunfire came as Chester entered a large lounge area, punching holes in the wall behind him as he dropped to all fours and rushed the shooter.
Sheer impact sent the thrall flying backward, organs ruptured and bones shattered before he even hit the wall, and the first actual vampire appeared through the far door. While they didn’t exactly burst into flames in sunlight, they were very nocturnal and their raw power waned with the sun. They relied on blades and guns more than shifters did, so the one that came through the door had a silverite dagger in each hand.
It was more difficult to deal with a vampire that was aware of the threat, even a sun-weary one, than one surprised by ambush. There was a reason that shifters moved in packs, though, and Chester feinted forward, drawing out attacks from the daggers as they ripped through the air while Roy maneuvered to flank their attacker. Chester and Roy danced with the vampire for a few moments, feinting and swiping, until he overextended and Roy’s claws lashed out and severed his spine.
Chester’s earpiece clicked twice to let him know that Alpha Vernon’s team had secured their objective, and if the mundanes he’d hired were doing their job right, any attempt to call out should be jammed. That actually made things easier; the vampire’s own glamours would silence the sounds of battle, so none of them needed to worry about being quiet.
Climbing upward was the most dangerous part of taking the building, because whether they used elevator shafts or stairwells, there was an angle for someone to shoot at them. Even so, silverite bullets were still only bullets, which was why Chester had given Craig a big steel shield, and why the burly shifter took point as they went upward. The Wolfpack practically sprinted up, but nonetheless making sure to check and verify each room and kill. According to public record, Lavigne was supposed to only have a dozen vampires with him, but that same record said that Chester was still in his compound so he knew how little to trust it.
