Then the program moved to interviews with ‘experts’ on magic and the paranormal, interviews with religious and governmental leaders, and interviews with magicians of one sort or another. I judged that at least two of the witches were the real deal, and a quick check using my phone showed that one of them was even using his real name. Brave lad. I wondered if he would regret that decision.
By the time the show ended with an interview with the chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, the mood in Rosie’s was pretty somber. Obviously, a large number of people, including those in power, took the existence of magic seriously. And if the only thing a person knew about the subject was that presentation on TV, it would be difficult to deny it.
As she was leaving, Shawna said, “Did you notice that they glossed over the shifters in Dallas and didn’t mention vampires or the Fae at all? I think someone is easing people into the idea that the paranormal world exists. This thing is just getting started, and it’s going to get a whole lot crazier.”
Two days later, the top blew off when the German army attempted to move in and stop the mage battle at an estate forty kilometers outside of Munich. Both sides attacked the army, completely decimating a mechanized infantry battalion. The Universal Church issued a statement saying that a ‘black magic coven’ was responsible and calling for further efforts to suppress demons and ‘Godless witches.’
Reporters, photographers, and videographers from more than a dozen news organizations covered the final battle. About half of them survived. I had never been involved in a large-scale magical battle, so the pictures and movies fascinated me. The destruction was indescribable. The slaughter was sickening.
The paranormal combatants evidently realized that they had done something stupid, because by the time German reinforcements arrived with air cover, no sign of the original fighters remained. The center of the battle, a large old estate, was completely abandoned. Although the place was in ruins, I recognized it. I had been there several times.
On the following Tuesday, the U.S. Senate convened its first public hearing on paranormal activities. Jolene, Michaela, and I met for lunch in Rosie’s TV room to watch.
“Why are they doing this publicly?” Jolene asked. I wondered the same thing.
“Someone wants to be on TV,” Michaela answered. “Normally, they do this sort of thing when they already know all the answers and they think those answers will hurt their opponents.”
The week after the council meeting, I came into work to find the backroom TV once again the center of interest. Since I didn’t have a TV or read the newspaper, I had been blissfully and purposefully ignorant of world events.
“What’s going on?” I asked one of the waitresses.
“Evening news,” she said. “Some congressman in Washington is calling for hearings on the witchcraft crisis. It’s getting to be a weekly thing.”
I rolled my eyes and started getting ready for my shift. A few minutes later, Sam worked his way out of the crowd watching the TV and came over to the bar.
“A shot of Midleton,” he said.
I felt my eyebrows shoot up to my hairline, but I went and got the little ladder I used to reach the very-top-shelf booze. In all the months I’d worked there, Sam had never asked me to pour him a drink.
“Make it a double,” he told me as I reached for a glass. “And pour yourself one, too.”
I hadn’t planned on getting drunk that night, but I wasn’t going to turn down a free shot of the best Irish whiskey we had. I poured myself a single, though.
Sam held his glass up and said, “To insanity.” We clinked our glasses together, and each drank about half of what was in them. It was only the fourth time I’d had that whiskey, and by all the gods, it was smooth.
“That’s a toast I can relate to,” I said. “Congressional hearings?”
“That’s the least of it,” he said. “More investigators from Washington showed up at Frankie’s office today. We now have attention from a dozen different government agencies. Some of them are even witches, but most of them are simply idiots who like to see their faces on TV. And the Church is in the middle of the whole thing, strutting around with Knights Magica security details.”
I drank the rest of my shot. Sam nodded and did the same. Slamming his glass down on the bar, he said, “Fill them up again.”
“My boss will be angry if I get drunk on the job,” I said as I refilled his glass.
“I’ll beat the bastard up,” he replied. “I don’t like drinking alone.”
I dutifully refilled my glass, but refrained from taking a sip. “Okay,” I said, “now tell me the bad news.”
Sam snorted out a laugh.
Chapter 21
Me and my big mouth.
I had shown up for work one afternoon to find Langermann and Trevor sitting at the bar talking to Sam. I hung up my coat, and Sam motioned me over.
“Let’s go in my office,” he said. I followed him, and the other two followed me.
“You told us that you have some experience breaking and entering,” Langermann said.
I cautiously nodded. “Only in the interest of a good cause, or what I thought was a good cause at the time. I’m not a thief.”
Trevor smiled. “Like rescuing children kidnapped by vampires. Erin, the Knights have their own computer and communications networks,” he said. “Military grade, and I haven’t had any luck cracking them. Everything is encrypted, and without a key, I’m just banging my head against the wall. But if I could lay hands on some of their devices, I’m sure I could hack them.”
“And that would allow us to listen in and get advance knowledge of their plans,” Langermann finished.
The three of them grinned at me expectantly.
And so, a week later, I stood with six other mages in a dark alley across the street from the largest Universal Church in Westport. They were along as my support team and backup, but I was the one tabbed to go into the church alone. I had to admit, it was a pretty good team. Josh, Trevor, Ian McGregor, Shawna, Oriel, and the head aeromancy instructor from the Academy, as well as Langermann.
Although I had studied the building’s plans, I had never been inside. A mage—a spy who had recently joined the Knights and had been in the church—had gone over the plans with me. It was a damned big building, and full of people who didn’t want me in there. People who didn’t want me to steal their equipment. People who were mages and witches, and who probably didn’t care whether I made it back out alive. No big deal, right?
Trevor had briefed me on the equipment I planned to steal. A laptop computer and one of the Knights’ secure communications devices. Find them, tuck them into the empty backpack I carried, and get out. Preferably without anyone seeing me or knowing I was ever there. Preferably, devices that no one would miss immediately when the sun came up in the morning.
High above the ground, a window was open about a foot. The plans told us the window was in an office that our spy had said wasn’t being used.
McGregor moved up beside me and leaned over to whisper in my ear.
“Be careful, lassie. Get in, complete the mission, and get out. Don’t try to get fancy, you hear me?”
“Got it,” I said.
His admonition was the standard last words a Hunter heard when going out on a dangerous mission, and although I had heard the words a hundred times before, it felt comforting to hear them again. I reached out in the darkness, found his hand, and squeezed it.
“You’re the only person in the whole world that I trust,” he continued, “and if I have to, I’ll pull the whole building down to get you out. Count on it.” I choked up, my vision blurring a little. I remembered how alone I felt when I arrived in Westport, and realized that he felt the same way.
Oriel shouldered him aside and pulled me into a hug. “Come back to me,” he said, then let me go.
The aeromancer on our team and I used the shadows to cross the street and move toward the church. We sidled along the wall un
til we were under the open window, and then I turned to look up. She put her arms around me and hugged me to her chest, then we rose into the air. Below us, Shawna began her climb up the wall. She would be my backup if I had to come out above ground level.
Past the huge stained glass windows across the ground floor, then the smaller stained glass windows on the next level, we approached out target. I had never been so high without the comfort of an airplane or a helicopter wrapped around me. We floated toward the open window and slowed to a stop. The window wasn’t open quite as far as I had estimated, only about six or maybe eight inches.
I had been told that I could reach inside and uncrank the window to open it further, but a screen covered the opening. I drew my dagger and slashed at the screen, then reached through and felt for the handle. Although I found the mechanism, the handle was missing.
Taking the dagger again, I sliced the screen out of its frame.
“Hold on tight,” I whispered. Grabbing the metal holding the glass, I fed magical energy to my hand and jerked. The metal bent and the glass shattered. We hung there as the broken glass showered down to the roof a few feet below us. I held my breath, and I was sure the aeromancer held hers. The breaking glass on the roof tiles sounded so loud.
“Inside,” my pilot said, pushing me toward the jagged glass that was still in the frame.
I couldn’t shield myself while she held me, so I simply prayed that the Kevlar in my coat and my gloves would protect me. I grabbed the frame, and pulled my head and upper body through, and felt her let go of me.
“Good luck,” I heard her say as she drifted away.
As the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound. I was hanging halfway out of the window, and the woman who took me there had bugged out. I pulled the rest of me over the sill and landed on my head inside the room.
Casting my shield, I lay there listening, straining to hear any sounds.
“I’m in, and no alarm,” I said in a voice quieter than a whisper. I was wearing a charm Jolene had cast that contained a tracker as well as a transmitter. The team on the ground would be able to hear anything I said.
The magical night goggles McGregor had given me worked flawlessly. I crawled to the door and listened again, then stood up and listened some more. When I first trained, I was always in a hurry to accomplish the mission. Repeated failures and beatings had taught me patience. On a real mission, such as burgling the Knights Magica, failure would probably get me dead.
It was three o’clock in the morning, and sunrise was around six-thirty. So, I had about three hours to find the equipment I was looking for and make my way out of the building.
Piece of cake, I told myself. If only my heart would stop pounding so loudly so I could hear if anyone was on the other side of the door.
Our spy hadn’t actually been on the third level, so he didn’t know if there might be an issue opening that door—such as a padlock, armed guard, or a pack of Rottweilers. No light shone under the door. I took hold of the knob and turned it, then pulled gently. The door opened toward me, and no one shouted or barked.
I slipped out into a hallway, which had one dim light at each end, and no other doors were open on either side. I checked the door, and it wasn’t locked from the outside, so I eased it closed and drifted down the hall to the door at the far end.
I was on the third floor, and with any luck, the only people awake would be in the basement. If my luck was only half-bad, my objective would also be in the basement. But we were hoping that I might find a laptop and one of the Knights’ communicators in one of the offices on the ground floor.
I cracked the door and saw a stairwell, just as the plans had promised.
“Ready for the blackout,” I said.
On cue, the lights went out, both in the hallway behind me and in the stairwell. Thank you, Trevor. I didn’t hear any screaming or shouting, so I headed down the stairs. The emergency lights came on when I was on the landing between the second and third stories.
“Emergency lights are on,” I said. They promptly went out, and I knew the people inside the church would have a jolly good time trying to restore them. When Trevor said he would short out their whole system, I believed him.
Not for the first time, I wished that I had fancy magic instead of a magical sledge hammer, but wishing hadn’t bestowed fancy magic on me before, and I didn’t feel any different after wishing again. With a sigh, I continued down the stairs.
The only things on the second floor were windows and the choir lofts, so I didn’t bother to even open the door on that level. The door on the ground floor had a window in it, but it was pitch black on the other side.
I drew my dagger and pushed the door open. Light coming through the windows above me provided more visibility than I’d had in the stairwell, but about the only thing I could see was that no one was waiting there to kill me. According to the plans I had studied, I was in a narrow hallway behind the nave, and the two doors I could barely make out on the left in front of me were where the priests made their entrances.
The doors on the right—three of them—were far more interesting. Our spy said I might find the equipment I was looking for in at least one of those rooms.
For the first time, I encountered a locked door. I tsk-tsked at the lack of faith the priests had in their fellow men, fed ley energy to my hand, and twisted the knob a little harder than it had been designed to resist. In the dead silence, the noise of the breaking lock sounded to me like a car crash, but I knew it wasn’t loud enough to be heard twenty feet away.
Slipping into the room, I kindled a magelight and quickly looked around. I didn’t find either of the items I sought.
I repeated that exercise in the next two rooms with the same result.
“Nothing on the ground floor,” I said. “Going to the basement.”
Out of curiosity, I cracked one of the doors leading into the nave. Three people were running around with magelights, and they were making quite a bit of noise. Considering the time, I assumed they comprised a large percentage of the people in the church who were awake.
According to our information, the command center in the basement should have had at least half a dozen people on duty. As I watched, I saw one of the small doors at the front of the church open and close. Deciding that I couldn’t depend on anyone being where they were supposed to be, I closed the door and proceeded to the nearest stairwell.
The influx of Knights had put a strain on the local Universal community. While the monastery was being renovated to hold the bulk of them, the officers and their staffs demanded better accommodations. The church I was burgling had nine priests, and the rectory had twelve bedrooms. Bonato and Scarlatti had moved in there, but they had also erected a temporary building on the grounds to hold twenty more Knights. I had to assume that the power outage had probably roused everyone on the premises.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I pushed open the door and peered out. A Knight holding a magelight stood with his back to me about five feet away. He was just standing there, and he didn’t look like he was going anywhere.
I didn’t see anyone else in the hallway, so I leaped on his back, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck in a choke hold. He struggled, staggering around a bit, then backed into the wall, slamming me against it. I held on, and he finally slumped to the floor. Reversing my dagger, I clubbed him on the head to make sure he stayed unconscious, then dragged him through the doorway I had come through. Anyone who came down the stairs would find him, but I figured it was better than leaving him lying in the hallway.
With a feeling of urgency, I started checking the doors off the hall and found storage rooms with nothing of interest. One of them held shelves of cheap box wine, another had cleaning supplies.
The plans had shown the basement was a maze of corridors. Checking a hallway that led back under the main part of the church, I heard sounds of people ahead of me, so I retreated. The next hall led to the command center, so I bypas
sed it.
I had been in the church for almost an hour before I hit pay dirt. I entered a room and kindled a magelight. It looked like an electronics workshop. Work benches held laptops, two-way radios, and smart phones that had been taken apart for repairs. Shelves on the walls held more of the devices.
I picked up a phone from the shelf and turned it on. When it lit up, I stuffed it in my pocket and proceeded to a shelf with the radios. The first one I tried didn’t work, but the second one turned on. It took three tries to find a laptop that worked. I stuffed it and the radio in my backpack, snuffed my light, and exited the room.
My luck had been extraordinary, and I didn’t expect it to hold. I unsheathed my sword and headed toward the nearest set of stairs.
“I have the devices. Coming out the west side,” I said. “A distraction outside would be nice.”
Holding my breath, I opened the door to the stairwell. No one there, so I ascended the stairs to the ground floor. Recalling the plans I had studied, I realized that the door I faced opened into the nave near the restrooms. My luck was still holding. I was only about twenty-five feet away from one of the side doors to the outside. Of course, I was also about fifty feet away from the main front doors, and I could hear people moving around in the nave.
Then I heard an explosion.
That was followed by a lot of shouting and the sounds of people running around. Then a second explosion. I knew Josh was lighting the Knights’ SUVs in the parking lot on fire and the gas tanks were exploding.
I pushed the door open and hurried to the side door. I arrived there at the same time as two Knights, each carrying a magelight in one hand and a sword in the other. They didn’t even glance at me, and I stopped to let them go through the door ahead of me. Since I was dressed in black like they were, they probably assumed I was one of them.
Well of Magic: An Urban Fantasy (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill Book 4) Page 16