The woman walked towards Lucian, a blank slate in his Aetheric Sight. She didn’t even show up as alive.
Her boots crunched on the ground as she walked towards Lucian, and stopped a few meters short of him.
Black Lotus stood in her stealth suit, covered from head to toe in pure black, but as they watched, some of the black on the catsuit she wore faded away to white, leaving behind a black and white pattern that looked like stylised Japanese lotus flowers.
The suit even covered her head, only a ponytail of long black hair gave any hint as to her actual appearance.
Strapped to her stealth suit, tactical webbing held pouches and holsters of all kinds, each filled with weapons or other implements of death. Black Lotus was an assassin, an Initiated Riven who worked for a secretive organisation from Japan who took out contract killings that straddled the divide between the mortal world and the Magi world.
Lucian also knew that Black Lotus would not be able to resist the lure of finding Yoh.
“You’ve found him, Lucian-san,” she asked, her voice carrying a strong Japanese accent, even though she spoke excellent English.
“I have. He’s here in New York. Shaun can show you where.”
She looked over at Shaun, before glancing back at Lucian to offer a brief bow of thanks. “Hai,” she said, before turning back to Shaun and stepping closer to him.
Shaun stepped forward and offered her a slip of paper.
“Meet me in an hour at this address.”
She took it and looked at it before she bowed briefly to Shaun and turned away from the two men. Moments later, she jumped off the roof.
Satisfied, Lucian turned to Shaun and nodded before Porting off the roof and appearing instantaneously in a corridor of The Pit Club, his Magic allowing him to pass through the backdoor built into the club’s Aegis.
Lucian started to make his way through the corridors, looking for Raal, Lex, and Aneurin to update them on the latest developments. Instead, he found himself running into Ekua as he rounded the corner and looked into one of the communal rooms.
“Lucian. Wha gwaan. I’ve hardly seen you, mon. Hey, how dem latest Arcadians die?”
Lucian kept his face neutral. He didn’t want his thoughts and feelings betraying him. They were coven mates, but their rivalry had been simmering for a long time. Lucian knew that Ekua had progressed in his Magical ability in recent years, to the point where he could potentially best him if he weren’t careful. Lucian also knew that Ekua’s comment had been designed to bait him. Lucian and his allies had agreed on a story that they had so far failed to find the new Arcadians, in an attempt to stall Ekua for as long as he could.
The moment that Ekua knew the truth though, he would almost certainly go to straight to Nymira, and then Lucian would have some explaining to do. At the very least, he suspected that Ekua would be promoted to Coven leader, and his life would be made much harder, and probably more painful.
And then there was Yasmin, who would likely kill him if Nymira didn’t.
“Ekua, mon, these fucks will be crushed. I have my crew on it. They can’t hide forever.”
“You ain’t found dem yet? What da fuck you doin’? If Nymira…”
“She knows.” That much wasn’t a lie. He had sent word to his master that Arcadians had entered the city and he’d been hunting them down. Better it come from him than Ekua.
“Chill, mon. I know you on it,” he said eyeing Lucian carefully.
Lucian left the room, his face a picture of calm, but inside he felt in turmoil. He had to get these Arcadians out of his city soon, without angering Yasmin. They could ruin everything.
He hoped that Black Lotus might be able to kill two birds with one stone. Maybe killing Yoh, who Lucian knew had befriended Amanda, would force them out, or scare them away from New York. Removing that particular thorn in his side would also give him some leeway with Ekua and Nymira again. Letting Lotus do the dirty work also meant that if things got messy, and Amanda was hurt, he wasn’t technically disobeying Yasmin’s orders. He could blame the assassin.
It was a long shot, and he felt fairly sure that Yasmin would kill him anyway, but what else could he do? He needed Amanda out of New York before his empire came crashing down around him.
He shook his head as he walked away from the encounter with Ekua. The mental gymnastics he had to go through to keep things straight with Ekua and his master, while at the same time dealing with Amanda, took a toll on him.
He headed back towards his quarters and dropped himself into his couch with a grunt born of frustration and exhaustion, silently cursing Yasmin for putting him in this position.
Soon, he thought, soon Black Lotus would confront Yoh, and with a bit of luck, his problems would sort themselves out.
- Online Chat between Chronos and Edge dated April 8th
Chronos: You’re close. So close to the truth.
Edge: Excuse me? Who is this?
Chronos: You can call me Chronos. I have read your blog, and the conclusions you have drawn are close. How do you know all this?
Edge: Investigation. I follow the rabbit hole wherever it takes me.
Chronos: Matrix reference.
Edge: Well spotted.
Chronos: You’re in the UK, right?
Edge: Correct, how did you know?
Chronos: You’re good, but you have a lot to learn.
- Online Chat between Chronos and Edge, dated April 16th
Edge: What’s this?
Chronos: An address.
Edge: What’s there?
Chronos: If you’re careful, your first steps to learning the truth.
Edge: Is it dangerous?
Chronos: Of course. Watch at a safe distance and don’t get caught. Got it?
Edge: Got it.
Surveillance
The Bronx, New York
With a whipcrack of air, Lucian disappeared from the rooftop, leaving Shaun standing on the warehouse roof alone.
Shaun frowned and then looked over to where the assassin, Black Lotus had jumped off the roof. Lucian was finally going after Yoh and using an assassin to get the job done, it seemed. Shrugging, Shaun walked to the edge of the rooftop and looked down.
A short way up the road he saw the car that had brought him here tonight. It idled beside the warehouse with Ben still inside. Shaun glanced around briefly to make sure no one happened to be watching, then he stepped off the roof and dropped three stories to the ground, landing easily.
Everything seemed quiet as he walked to the car and climbed into the passenger seat, pulling his hood up to hide his face.
“Back to the stakeout,” he said to his assistant, Ben who waited for Shaun to close the door before pulling away.
The roads were quiet, and they made good time driving back to Greenwich Village. For most of the drive they rode in silence, Ben concentrating on driving while Shaun watched the world go by through the tinted windows from the depths of his hoodie. Shaun didn’t like being in a car, out in the open, but it was the only way to move quickly around the city while retaining a certain amount of privacy. After all, he couldn’t just step onto the next subway train with a face like his.
Eventually, Ben pulled into the back alley of the tenement building they were set up in and came to a stop. Before opening the door Shaun glanced up and down the street. The coast looked clear, so he got out and followed Ben to the service entrance. Ben locked the car and pulled out a set of keys, opening the service door with a squeak of metal on metal and waited for Shaun to step through into the relative warmth of the building. Shaun had been here a few times, but usually left this kind of work to his two apprentices as he preferred to stay underground. But Ben had figured out a way for Shaun to get to the apartment on the fifth floor with almost no chance of him being spotted by using the service elevator, which exited only a few doors down from their stakeout location. The building might as well have been abandoned for all the upkeep that had been done to it. The service areas were nearly al
ways deserted, apart from the occasional bum who broke in to sleep inside. Tonight, the small complex of rooms that made up the service area were empty, so they made their way through without trouble.
The doors to the elevator car stood open, waiting to be used. They stepped inside, and Ben used a key to activate the mechanism that would take them up to the fifth floor. With a bing the doors closed and they started to rise.
After a few moments, the elevator stopped, and the doors juddered open most of the way. Beyond, a dank corridor led into the building, lined with apartments on either side. A short way up, through the flickering light, a stairway led to the other floors.
The place looked empty, but they could hear sounds coming from other parts of the building—music, movement, raised voices, the usual sounds of life.
Ben stepped out and looked both ways, before nodding to Shaun. “It’s clear, let’s go.”
Shaun followed Ben out of the elevator car and down the corridor a short distance to the last door before the stairwell. With his key ready, they were inside the apartment before the elevator doors had closed behind them.
The apartment consisted of a combined living room and kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It smelled like rotten food, dirty socks, and mould and the air felt a little clammy to Shaun, but then, his two apprentices had been living here in relative squalor for the past few days and the whole place was a mess. Food packaging laid about the room, blankets and clothes littered the furniture, but it wasn’t unexpected. This would be a temporary living space while they conducted the surveillance that Lucian wanted.
Along the exterior wall directly in front of him, a table had been set up with several flat-screen monitors hooked up to a couple of computer systems. The monitors displayed live feed from the various cameras they’d set up in here and out on the street. DSLR cameras on tripods stood in front of the windows, their telephoto lenses trained on the house they could clearly see a little over a block away. The tenement they were in fronted a street down the road and around a corner from Amanda’s house. The other buildings between the tenement and the house were all one or two-story structures. That meant they could look over the top of them to where Amanda’s house sat on the other side of the intersection on the far side of their own block. They had a clear view of two sides of the house affording them a view of the front door, and the side door and garage respectively. An alley ran around the back of the house, where another door had three hidden cameras trained on it, recording any movement they picked up.
A couple of other cameras on nearby rooftops made up the rest of the video feeds on the monitors that Vanessa had been watching.
She sat on a chair in front of the table, her legs propped up on the table top, ankles crossed. With a nail file in one hand, she absentmindedly shaved down her fingernails.
As Ben and Shaun entered, she turned to look, and on seeing Shaun, she removed her feet from the table and tried to look a bit more attentive.
Shaun saw it all, but didn’t comment, he just stepped forward, looking at the bank of screens.
“Vanessa,” he said in greeting. “Anything to report?”
“Just the usual movement. Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said handing Shaun a clipboard upon which was a sheet of paper where they recorded who had been seen and when, who they suspected to be inside the house, and who might be elsewhere. They were quite aware that this was all guesswork when any one of the Arcadians could just Port elsewhere from within the house. They had already seen examples of this, like Amanda walking out the front door, only for her to walk out the same door again a short time later, while never having seen her walk back into the brownstone first.
There had been fears that Amanda had discovered she was under surveillance and did these confusing things to throw them off, but after a while, they concluded it was just normal Magus behaviour.
Shaun scanned the paper on the clipboard and felt happy with the evening’s work. The only movement had been the three usual residents; Yoh had not been seen today.
Shaun checked his watch. They were back in good time. Black Lotus wasn’t due yet, but he needed to inform his apprentices that she would be coming.
Vanessa and Ben had been with him a while now, Ben the longest of the pair, and after getting to know them, he held some genuine affection for them.
Ben had been just a dumb kid who got himself into trouble with his formidable hacking skills. As the modern world had progressed and the digital age dawned, some in the Magi and Scion communities were early adopters of the new technology. They were able to take basic computer systems, and with the aid of their Magical ability, modify them, making them more and more powerful. While many Magi stayed away from this frightening and powerful technology, those who embraced it tended to be those with a younger outlook on life, and it became a way for these Magi to become lords of their own domains.
As they created faster and more powerful machines a small community grew online, hidden within a private encrypted forum they built what they called The Dark Web, or DWeb for short.
Today, the pioneers of this digital Magic were creating lifelike virtual reality worlds that you could plug into with the VR rigs they were developing.
The Dark Web was one of the most secure sites on the internet, but there was no full-proof way to stop breaches in security, and Ben had been one of the hackers who’d made it inside.
Punishment came swiftly for those who broke through DWeb’s security, but Shaun thought he saw something he liked in Ben and managed to reach him just before the others did. Shaun had saved him, but he could not protect his family, who were killed without mercy. Ben had been forever grateful to Shaun for saving his life but carried the scars of his family’s demise around with him.
Vanessa had been a street kid for a while. She’d run away from home and from her abusive family, and had lived on the streets, getting into drugs and prostitution, before ending up in a bedsit where she saw another resident on a computer system. It turned out there were a few of them and they were part of a community of digital rights activists who used the internet to cheat the system and make a living. They worked with the hacker group, Anonymous, and provided various digital services to those who needed them. They actually earned good money, doing everything from hacking the social media accounts of a cheating partner, to hunting down kidnapped children, or facilitating business deals that would not have been possible otherwise.
Fascinated, Vanessa watched and learned before quickly joining the group and becoming a trusted worker.
Ben happened across her online and the pair struck up a friendship, even though they’d never met. Then one day, Ben got a frantic text. Vanessa’s group had landed themselves in trouble and their building had been raided by men with guns. She’d run like others of her group. They’d already been tracked down twice with more of her group being killed. She ended up separated from them and knowing no one else she even vaguely trusted, she contacted Ben.
After speaking with Shaun, Ben agreed to meet her and bring her in. Ben met her for the first time in an out of the way diner and fancied her right away.
Ben warned her that he and his associate would be able to save her, hide her from those who wanted to kill her, but that there would be no going back, this would be a one way trip into the shadows. Desperate, she’d agreed and followed Ben into the tunnels beneath Manhattan and into their hidden sanctuary. There, Ben sat with her and started to tell her some of the truth of the world, about the Scions and the Magi, and with some warning about Shaun’s appearance, introduced her to him.
She’d handled it well, and soon settled into life beneath the streets. Shaun’s work and contacts kept the three of them living in comfort. Money was never a problem, and they wanted for nothing, really. It wasn’t an uptown penthouse with views over Central Park, but when you lived on the fringes of society and, in Shaun’s case, looked like Bram Stoker’s nightmares, your choices were few.
Shaun walked over to the window and looked out
over the buildings towards Amanda’s house. Everything looked quiet, so he turned to his two apprentices. He couldn’t think of another word that seemed suitable for them, really; they were learning from him, after all.
Scions could pass on their gift to others by pouring their blood into a cut on a human or by allowing them to drink of their blood. Either worked just as well, but the transformation could not be guaranteed. The blood of a Scion, in well over ninety percent of cases, killed the subject. Their blood was toxic, and only a few humans ever survived the process. When it came to passing the gift onto a Magus, the chances of it working were even less, and in either case, there was no way of telling who would survive and who wouldn’t. There didn’t seem to be a pattern.
Shaun knew this, as did most Scions, so passing his gift on to Ben or Vanessa would be his very last resort.
“Guys, you need to know that we will have a visitor here shortly.”
Vanessa raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Ben raised his head in surprise.
“What?” Ben said.
“The meeting with Lucian tonight. Turns out he was introducing me to someone who is interested in finding Yoh. My guess is that she’s an assassin, and this won’t end well for Yoh.”
“Oh, right,” said Ben, frowning.
“She?” said Vanessa. “Cool. She must be pretty badass to be able to take on Yoh.”
Shaun smiled, which was something that scared most mortals when they saw his mouth full of sharp teeth, not unlike a shark. Vanessa had become used to it, though. “Indeed,” he said.
“I thank you for your compliment,” said a voice from the other room, its tone creamy with a far eastern accent.
All three of them looked round in time to see a figure step from the bedroom. She wore the same outfit from the rooftop meeting
“Apologies for the interruption, I did not mean to startle you,” she said, her movements silent.
“But, how... what…?” Vanessa started.
Magi Legend Page 29