Slaying demons, p.15
Slaying Demons, page 15
part #2 of Damsel Series
“You do tech things or have someone for that?”
“Yes. I do most of my own work. Why?”
Wisp spoke then, his voice fake sounding now that Hannah noticed it.
“We need a consultation. We have a man coming in as well, but part of this is affecting electronics. All of them. We’re not having a good time working this out from the magical side of things. If we can’t get a break, the current plan seems to be getting help from demons. That isn’t a good idea.”
There was a long, dark look then. The eyes were almost glaring. It was an unbalanced expression. The kind of thing that Hannah wasn’t used to seeing in people, day to day.
“That isn’t. I can help. Can I get transportation there and back?”
Wisp nodded.
“For the next thirty-six hours. Then I’ll be unavailable for a week. Work. You know how it is.”
The man let his head tilt, which could be taken as him saying he did know what that was like. Brian Warthin had probably worked about as much in his life as Hannah de Peyser had. It really wasn’t that difficult to be a spoiled party kid. Then Chiropter wasn’t, strictly speaking, Gerald.
The man looked at his hand and went hard through the face. The parts exposed, anyway.
“This information needs to be looked into. I can’t do both things at one time.”
Wisp looked away, unreadable for the moment, but Hannah let her head tilt to the right then made a sound best described as a half growl.
“I can get a team together for it? At least I can ask. I’m not doing that myself, of course. I don’t have the right skill set for that kind of thing.”
Wisp nodded, slowly, but Flying Fox smiled.
“That works. I don’t care how the slaves are freed or who gets the credit for it. Just as long as they are.”
She could see that as valid, so waved at Wisp.
“We should go back first? I can work from the basement, on this. We’ll probably need transport going in. Or, I mean, the real team might. Are you up for that, Wisp, or are we renting a bus?”
That got a chuckle, at least. It wasn’t fair to use Wisp as a bus or plane, but Hannah knew one whole person who could teleport. She might be able to invite some people who could fly, or run there in time, of course. That would be harder to manage, of course. She didn’t know that many people who could get that kind of thing done really. There were a few though, which was a backup plan if it became needed.
Still, Wisp nodded at her, without seeming to be upset by the extra work.
Even if she should be.
It took almost no time at all for Wisp to get them back to Lash and Debbie’s, and, for once, instead of getting on the phone, she got on the Alistair. A dirty thought that had the boy nodding at her, even before he turned around. When he did, he sighed.
“You know, that’s not fair. If you’re going to refuse to sleep with me, which I get, you shouldn’t keep thinking about it.” She hadn’t been, having imagined a piggy back ride, but smiled anyway.
“I know. That’s pretty evil of me. Still, can we get a message out to people? We have forty-seven women on a cargo vessel, illegally coming into the U.S. in seven hours, across one of the big lakes from Canada. The ladies are going to be sex slaves, when they get here. If they’re lucky. It might be worse than that, for some.” When she said the words, she honestly thought that no one was going to help her. In that case, she was going to have to try something else.
Hiring a mercenary team, or even going to the feds. That kind of thing could backfire on vigilantes, making it a different sort of risk. If Hannah had to go to prison for knowing the wrong things, or however that worked, then she would, though.
Almost as if she were the super psychic, Alistair started speaking to her out loud.
“Guardia is busy. Uh... Cry Diamond is on another case that she can’t leave. There...” He stopped after a moment, and winced. “Everyone you wanted can’t come right now. On the good side, they aren’t just playing sick. They’re just busy, for real.”
She felt like crap, for a moment, but shrugged.
“Okay. Well, then we get Flying Fox out of the basement, and go in with him? We might want the tech help, but those women need not to be slaves. I won’t leave them there like that.”
Wisp was in the other room. Talking to Debbie, from the sound of it. About coffee. A thing that sounded good, but Hannah didn’t let herself be distracted. Not much. The scent of the warm brew was a bit hard to ignore.
Still, she schooled her mind and tried to think about how to fix things and get it all done, without just having their tech team split up. At least she assumed Tyler was there already. That or working the problem from somewhere else. Once he learned that it was an issue, he probably couldn’t help himself. It was part of what made him so good at his job.
Nothing came to her for a moment, until she recalled having met one of the big named people once. The Red Cape. She was pretty certain that wasn’t what he was called, but it didn’t matter. Not to her. What did was the fact that she had a contact number for him.
A thing she dialed, not knowing if he would even answer at all.
“Hello?”
She felt a shock, since the first ring wasn’t even finished when it was picked up.
“This is... Damsel. Are you free for a mission tonight? I don’t want to mention it over the phone, but I’m at Lashondra’s.”
There was a pause, then the sound of a woman, in the background. Laughing at least, then saying he should go on. That it would be good for him to get out of the house. A lot of people were probably feeling that way. It just hadn’t occurred to her that imposed isolation would also impact super freaks. Just like everyone else.
“Incoming, Damsel. ETA, three minutes. I need to change first.”
She went to the front door and opened it, which had Wisp and Debbie moving from the kitchen to see what she was getting up to. Wisp made a choked sound when the man landed, slowing dramatically for the last ten feet of it. Showing off, no doubt. Posing for dramatic effect. He looked hot doing it, so Hannah wasn’t going to complain.
“Damsel. Wisp. How are you doing, Debbie?”
The former man, who was in a blue dress that night, shook her head.
“Things are pretty off right now. Tri-D? Come in and we’ll get you up on things.”
Hannah closed the door behind all of them, and spoke first. It was her job, for the moment, after all.
“We have news of a group of women who were kidnapped from Asia who are being smuggled into the country tonight, to be sex slaves. Um, Flying Fox got that for us?”
The man furrowed his brow.
“I’m willing to help, but I don’t know that name?”
She waved that away.
“He dresses like a bat? Chiropter? That’s not a great name, so I’m pushing for him to change it. Anyway, Red Cape, we have about four hours left to get to these women and rescue them. It looks like this is our team.” She waved at them, including Debbie, who, interestingly, didn’t run away. Instead, there was a simple nod at the idea.
“If we’re doing this, some of us need to change. I’m not doing this in heels.”
Chapter ten
Out of all of them, Debbie, or Nevernever as she called herself when she was playing dress up with the other super kids, had the cutest uniform. Hannah smiled at it, when the woman came out, dressed in an outfit that had rust colored tights, a little skirt that seemed to be wrapped around the front and a jacket that had metal hooks and buckles all over it.
There was also a cute red mask that covered the eyes, without doing much at all to keep her identity a secret from the world.
Hannah grinned.
“Nice! I have this.” That, her disguise for the day, was a plain blue surgical mask. Not that she was going to go in, herself.
At first, she didn’t know how to explain that to everyone there, but then she sighed and shrugged.
“Okay... I’m not going to be able to do much here. I have a gun, a knife and immunity to the Tri-D magical contagion. That doesn’t make me a great strike team member. Can we do this at all? There are going to be seven men with weapons.”
Wisp nodded, and Red Cape tightened his face.
“It’s magical? Are you certain?”
Hannah shrugged.
“Yes? It seems pretty certain. You haven’t had that spell put on you for protection and I don’t know if we can get that done in time.”
Nevernever shook her head.
“Not right now. We have three and a half hours to get into place. So, three of us are immune to the contagion, and there are four people on board who have it. I can, possibly, take on four armed men at one time. That’s not certain though. This outfit is good against small arms fire, but they have rifles.” There was no sense of fear in the words.
Hannah looked down.
“I... Right. I don’t have body armor. I won’t let these women be turned into sex slaves, either.” She felt hard for a moment, but still had to shake her head. Running in and being shot wouldn’t help the ladies out, either.
“Red Cape... Can you handle this, if we can clear the sick people first? It should be safe enough to touch things, if it’s not an infected person. As far as we can tell this doesn’t infect animals or objects, so it’s better than a virus that way.”
The man, his face bare to the world, nodded. He seemed determined, even if the plague might get him like it would anyone else.
“That should work. How are you doing that though?”
She didn’t know for a moment, then called out. Yelling a bit.
“Alistair! Meet in the living room!” She didn’t have to scream more than once to get the kid to run into the place. He stopped when he saw who was there, but focused on her, almost instantly.
She didn’t let him speak.
“I need several sick people to go to the deck of a specific ship, in an isolated spot, so that Wisp, Nevernever and I can get them away from a group of bad guys. Is that something you can do?” She turned to Red Cape and shrugged. “He’s an incredibly powerful telepath. I’m not asking if he can make them do it, I’m asking if he will. Alistair is pretty much the most ethical person I know. It’s annoying, but also reassuring, you know?”
The boy’s face tightened, and he didn’t speak, otherwise. Not for a long time.
“I need to know more than that? Why are they being moved? To hurt them or have them arrested? I won’t make anyone do anything against their own self-interest.”
Hannah simply accepted that fact, and tried to come up with a good reason to do it. Wisp wasn’t going to be able to move four people in different places on a ship. Not without a fire fight starting. She didn’t bother being slick though. The reasons had to be legitimately good, or at least good enough, or Al would know about it.
“This will allow them to get help, immediately, and remove them from the danger of arrest, even if they’re guilty, which is in their own best interest. Doing that will also help women who have been kidnapped and who are going to be used as sex slaves. Plus, it’s a point of contagion that we might be able to shut down, if we can act right now. That’s useful, as well. Is that enough?”
The trick of the moment was that Al honestly seemed to be thinking that it might not be. No one pressured him, or tried to cajole him into taking action, which Hannah thought was wise of them. Not because Al might not go down to that kind of pressure, but due to the fact that she’d have to argue against them, if they tried it. That wouldn’t be a great way for her to win her point in the conversation. If she could at all.
The kid actually let out a pained groan.
“Crud... Okay. This is so borderline for me, just so you all get where my limits are. I can suggest, suggest, that they go up on deck, to get some fresh air, and head to a specific location. I won’t strip them of free will. It... Will probably still work. I mean, if you hear a voice in your head, going on about how nice a fresh breeze would be and how you feel uncomfortable being inside, you’re eventually going out. That won’t be very specific in time, though. I don’t know how to handle that. I can tell you what they’re doing? So you’ll know if they’re in place or not.”
That was all spoken to Wisp, but at the very end, there was a glare, aimed at Hannah.
As if she didn’t get what he was saying. Or, she realized, more like she was the one who might try to argue with him over not doing enough to save those women.
Like she’d needed to be saved, once. That situation had been different though. Hannah understood the difference between dying in a box, with no air, in five hours and women being put in the back of a truck to be taken to massage parlors, across the country. If they missed that day, they had time to take another swing, or even several if that was what it took to get the ladies back home. She still wasn’t going to just give up, even if things were hard at the moment.
She had to drop into a trance, to not to start panicking over the whole thing. Not out of personal fear, either.
“Set that up, Al? As soon as we remove the sick people, um, where are we taking them?”
That was for Wisp, who tilted his head.
“I can get them to the hospital. That won’t have the men arrested, but it will get them the best care we can give them, so far.”
Everyone seemed fine with that, at least. It took half an hour, but the operation came into being then, with some rather grim ideas being put out. For instance, if they couldn’t get the sick people out, it was going to be dangerous for Cape to go in. Hannah nearly told him not to do it, but the man simply refused to consider that.
“It’s a risk, being exposed to this contagion. I won’t let fear of being ill stop me from doing the right thing. If we can’t remove them for my safety, then I’ll still handle this.” He was a bit dark in that moment. As if considering his own death wasn’t a thing he did most days.
She nodded, since she understood the man, after a fashion. He was, in many ways, her exact opposite. She was small, weak, and used to being a victim, who had to stand on her own, part of the time, to not be those things any longer. The large, rather muscular and super powerful man in front of her, was immune to things such as harm or pain. He could rip tanks apart with his bare hands and fly so rapidly that no one knew just how fast he could go. It had been in the news. Not that she followed that kind of thing, normally, but she’d gotten that much.
There was something about power beams from his chest and other tricks as well.
Making it hard for him to ask anyone else for help at all, even if it was needed. Even if he might die from the lack of it. Since, of course, that almost never happened in his world. She grinned then, and slapped the man on the arm.
“I agree. Still, we have a plan for the rest of it. If that doesn’t work... Then I’ll find the sick people and we’ll try to see if we can isolate them that way and go in directly. If we can. That probably won’t work either and...”
She scrambled, trying to work out another way, a better one, to get things done. Nothing came to her, in the moment. Not until she had a very weird thought.
“Um... What about robots?”
Everyone looked at her then, as if she were stupid. Which she was, since she didn’t have that kind of thing just lying around. Except, she kind of knew a man who did.
“Or Golems? Tinner?”
Everyone was still staring at her, as if she were an idiot, except Alistair.
~Tinner? This is Al, from earlier? We have a mission, possibly. We need several of your creations to go onto a boat, and remove some people. Something that won’t kill them?~
There was a sense of confusion, in Hannah’s head, but a few moments later, the magical guy thought back. Alistair let her hear him doing it.
~I have some friends for that. How do we get them there?~
That, interestingly, was simple enough to put together. The Red Cape knew where to go, having been there before, and could carry the golems, even if they were animated by magic. They could also have harmed him, in a fight, but as long as they were all on the same side, it would work, pretty well.
It took the rest of their time to set that up, and, of course, Alistair came through and had all four sick people on the deck of the boat, away from any prying eyes, and looking in different directions, as Wisp came in and stole them away. It went smoothly, even as the metal creations were dropped on the deck, as well. Tinner even waited, letting Cape do the heavy lifting, simply grabbing the bad guys with his dangerous, and fantastical metal beasts, and holding them in place.
There was no rending at all.
The rest was done by the big guy, who took about three minutes to do that part, and managed to get with Al, who checked out the crew, to see if the sailors were in on the whole thing. Some of them were, but only in that they knew what was going on and didn’t want to be killed or have their families murdered in China.
That meant they could control the barge, to get it into the docking slip, where it was met by authorities. Hannah got to do that part, finding the correct number for the local police and making the call. It was done using her phone, not psychic powers, along with a Google search or six. Then they had to fly the large metal works out, and get them back home, but by the time the cops were on the ship, and the women safe, there was no sign of them ever having been there, at all.
Which meant that Hannah got to sit down on the sofa and just breathe for a bit, as everyone came back. Nevernever had been on the shore, ready to fight, if she had to. It hadn’t come up, but it was good to have backup like that. Interestingly, Debbie didn’t have to be taken into place by Wisp. She muttered some words, over the course of ten minutes, but then walked through a warped smear in the air of the living room. There were things behind her as she came through. A large ship. Not the barge, but something that would have seemed right in a pirate movie. There were also some flying kids that could be seen.
Hannah would have figured it as Neverland, not being too spoiled to have seen Peter Pan as a kid, except that, behind all of that, in the distance she could make out both the Emerald city, and she was pretty certain, a space ship. It was disconcerting, but when the smear went away, she smiled.
