Amanda turned to Denton Klein, the leader of the Knights of Newark, dressed in a trench coat with jeans and messy brown hair. He had a rugged but not unattractive look, with a fierce personality, and eyes that twinkled with energy. He smiled at Amanda as she walked over. He’d been talking with one of his coven mates, Debra who was dressed similarly.
“What the bleedin’ hell’s going on here?” Amanda asked.
“Just fighting the good fight, Mandy,” he said. She wasn’t sure she knew him well enough for him to be calling her Mandy, but she let it slide.
“I can see that. You took on a group of Inquisitors?”
“Yeah, why, is there a problem?” he asked.
Amanda paused a moment and took a breath. She wasn’t actually sure if there might be a problem or not. These Magi were only doing what she’d done countless times before; fighting those who would have them dead. So far, at least, they seemed to have handled it pretty well. So why did she feel a little affronted by this? She’d said before to several people that this wasn’t her city. She wasn’t the new Queen of New York, other covens could do as they pleased, and yet, something wasn’t right.
“I’m not sure. This just seems strange.”
“What? That we got the tip-off first?”
“Excuse me?” Amanda asked.
“The tip-off. We were given Intel that these guys were here and the information was good. We weren’t the only ones, either,” he finished, indicating the other covens.
“Who gave you this tip?” she asked. Something about this felt wrong.
“I’m not sure, Mike will know.” He put his finger to his ear to listen more closely to the reply from his coven mate in the van outside. “Mike? How did this tip come through?” he asked before listening to the reply. “The Dark Web? You got a message? Ah, yes, I remember now. Thanks, Mike,” he said and looked up. “One of Mike’s informants on the Dark Web told him. I think these guys had the same tip,” he said, indicating the other covens in the room.
“Any idea who these guys were, other than Inquisitors?” she asked.
“Sorry, no. I think the leader is over there somewhere, though,” he indicated.
“Thanks, I’ll check it out,” she said and turned away to see Christina Lewis, one of the other members of the Knights, crouching beside a motionless body on the floor that Amanda recognised right away.
“Ah, shite,” Amanda said. She walked over and stood next to Christina. The body on the floor was Jessie Maynard’s, the same Jessie who’d escaped the Inquisition just a few days ago. She had a large, ragged, oozing wound in her chest and looked very dead.
“How long has she been like this?” Amanda asked Christina.
“I don’t know, a little while. It happened right after we first came in. Jessie was too eager for revenge,” Christina explained and stood up next to Amanda. Christina always looked quite striking in her Goth clothing and makeup. Her backcombed black hair looked pretty wild today. Amanda looked over Jessie with her Aetheric Sight and could see that her Anima Mundi was still inside her, but it had already started to pull away from her body.
“Damn it,” Amanda muttered.
“Yeah, she’s gone. The Council wouldn’t like us bringing her back now.” Christina stated solemnly.
“No, they wouldn’t.”
“I thought it took longer than that. It’s only been a few minutes.”
“A violent end always speeds it up,” Amanda said, feeling somewhat helpless.
“Shame. She was nice, I liked her.”
“I liked her, too. You’ll sort her out, won’t you?” Amanda asked.
“Of course, leave it with us,” Christina said.
Amanda left her side and looked around for Liz. She’d wandered off and Amanda could see her picking her way through the debris.
Continuing on her way, she walked over the broken furniture and found three bodies on the floor in one corner of the room. Two were just Crusader Knights, but the other looked like an old man and had clearly been a Magus or Blessed as the Disciples referred to them. She walked over to his side and moved to get a better look at his face. She had to move one of the Crusader’s legs, but a second later, she got a good look at him and stood there in a daze for a moment.
She recognised him.
She’d done enough research on the Inquisition to know who this was, but she couldn’t quite believe that he would be here. Even harder to believe, was that he’d been killed by the Magi in the room. She stood up and looked over to Denton. He stood talking with Mercy, the leader of Tyranny Effect.
“Denton, Mercy, do you have a moment?” she asked.
They wandered over to Amanda and looked down at the man she stood over.
“What’s up, chica?” Mercy asked. Amanda glanced at the striking woman beside her with her long wavy magenta hair, purple bomber jacket, and black Lycra leggings.
“Do you know this man?” she asked them both.
“Nah,” Mercy replied.
Denton crouched down, flicking his coat out of the way as he went to get a better look. “I don’t think so, should I?”
“His name is Valerio Rossi,” she said, looking to see if either of them knew the name. Mercy frowned in thought, but Denton’s eyes went wide with recognition.
“You mean…?” Denton asked in shock.
“Yes, you’ve just killed the Witch Finder General of the Inquisition,” said Amanda.
Mercy whistled while Denton stood and put his hand on his forehead in shock.
“Shit!” Denton said. “I had no idea. He didn’t go down easy. Took a bunch of us to do it. If there’d been any other Magi here and we hadn’t caught them by surprise, things might have gone a little differently.”
“Was it just you three covens?” Amanda asked.
“No, the Daughters of Shade were here, too, but they left just before you got here,” Mercy said.
“What does this mean? Why did he come here and how come we all got the tip-off about him and you didn’t?”
“I don’t know,” said Amanda, “but I don’t like it one bit. You’ve been used somehow, manipulated into being here at just the right moment.”
Movement out the corner of her eye drew her attention. She looked up to see Liz haul an injured Crusader off the floor by the scruff of his neck and slam him against the wall before punching him in the face.
“What the…” Amanda muttered as Liz hit him again and again. It didn’t look like she’d stop anytime soon, and the others were staring at her.
“At a guess, I’d say she doesn’t like Inquisitors,” Denton said.
“No shit,” Mercy said.
Amanda turned back to them. She’d deal with Liz in a moment. “Look, I don’t like this. You’ve been manipulated somehow. I don’t know how, but someone wanted this man dead, and now they have it. Get out of here, take your dead and wounded with you and forget about this. I’ll look into it and if I have cause for concern, I’ll be in touch.”
“What are you thinking? Should we be worried?” Denton asked.
“I hope not. I suspect it’s a power play in the Vatican, something internal, but I’ll need to check things out to be sure.”
With that, she turned from the two Magi and walked over to Liz. Using her superior strength, Liz held the man up with her left hand while her right fist slowly turned his face into a red mess, one punch at a time. The Inquisitor appeared to still be alive, just.
Amanda could see tears running down Liz’s cheeks and a look of hatred was etched over her face.
On reaching her apprentice, Amanda caught her wrist as she wound up for another punch
“That’s enough,” she said.
Liz whipped her head around and looked at Amanda with fury in her eyes.
“No, it’s not. I’m gonna punch his bloody head off!” she said and struggled to pull her arm free from Amanda’s grasp. “Let go.”
“Liz, you’ve made your point, you’ve just about killed him.”
“Good,
that’s the least he deserves.”
“Maybe, but you don’t want to be the one to make that choice.”
“Bull! You’ve killed people. You look alright to me,” Liz scowled.
“Every day I wish I could have made a different choice. Every day I wish I didn’t have to kill anybody,” Amanda said.
“I’m a Magus, Amanda. I think it’s fairly inevitable that I’ll end up killing someone someday.”
“That’s probably true, but don’t do it like this. Do it in self-defence or in defence of others, not out of revenge. You might be okay, that’s true, but you have no way of knowing that for certain.”
Liz stared at her, weighing up her options, before standing up straight and dropping the Crusader to the floor. Tears beaded in her eyes and fell over her cheeks as she blinked. “I’m sorry,” she said, deflated.
Amanda pulled her in for a hug. “It’s fine. Don’t worry, let’s get out of here.”
- Tonopah, Arizona
Dust worked his Magic and the barbed wire fence split apart, allowing him to walk through unobstructed. He walked over the road with no regard for the car that nearly hit him as he focused on his destination and continued into the scrub bushes that barely reached his waist.
Up ahead, various buildings stood tall over the desert spread out before him. Some were square and blocky, others were domed, and they throbbed with a power that he could see with his Magical sight. He could see the intense radiation they contained and the electrical power they created in those buildings. But he didn’t care about that. All he cared about was the confluence of ley lines that crossed here on the site of this nuclear power plant, and the powerful pooling of Essentia he could see up ahead.
This would be where he would enact his ritual. This is where he would summon the Demon, Horlack back from the Abyss.
He could also sense the hundreds of lifeforms within the buildings up ahead. He smiled. They would make a suitable sacrifice to his Archon master.
New Management
Harlem, New York
The alleyway had seen all kinds of things over the years—from the gross and ugly, to the heart-warming and wondrous. Its location opposite the Pit Club meant that revellers would use it as anything from a toilet to an ambush site, or as a quiet place for a midnight encounter. There had even been a couple of deaths in the shadows.
But most of these were not uncommon occurrences elsewhere in the city.
But the alleyway had also seen its fair share of Magic and Magi over the years as they passed through the area, visiting the previous owner, Lucian.
But for the past six months, no Magi had appeared in the alleyway and the nightclub had lain dormant.
Until tonight.
Magic flared and four people appeared in the alley out of thin air. Two women and two men stood in the darkness. Looking around, they peered into the night, searching for any hidden threats.
When none appeared, the lead woman, Eudoxia, made for the street, her long, straight, dyed-green hair catching the wind. She sported several piercings and tattoos on her light coffee-coloured skin. A pair of tattoos on the outside corners of each eye looked like the flourishes on the Eye of Horus symbol. Elsewhere, two huge tattoos of stylised tribal designs in the shape of snakes ran from the backs of her hands, up her arms, down her back, and along the sides of her legs to her feet. She wore a denim mini-skirt and a couple of layers of punk rock tops, over fishnets with Doc Martin-style boots that looked like they’d seen better days.
She paused at the end of the alleyway and looked over the road at the unlit nightclub sign and the set of stairs that led down to the first layer of the subterranean nightclub. Her coven mates followed and stood behind her, peering at the scene.
“That’s it?” said the other girl, standing to her right. This woman also had long straight hair, but hers was black in colour with a harsh fringe just above her eyes. She wore a clean and pressed pants suit over a white blouse and stiletto heels.
“Yes, Ninette, that’s the place.”
“Looks like a dive to me.”
“Then you’d better get used to it because that’s going to be home for a while.”
“I know, doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Looks like a great fixer-upper to me,” said one of the men. He had short-cropped dark hair, chiselled features with fashionable stubble on his jaw. He wore simple practical clothing of jeans and t-shirt with well-worn sneakers. “What about you, Elba? What do you think?”
“I think if you girls are finished chatting and wasting time, we should get over there and check the place out,” said Elba, a huge muscled man in a hoodie.
“Agreed, let’s get in there,” replied Eudoxia.
Moments later, they appeared inside the club on the top level, a short distance from the balcony that looked down through the various levels to the dancefloor far below.
Without lights or windows, everything was dark, but the Magi could see just fine. It had clearly been visited by some of the local delinquents as crude graffiti had been sprayed on the walls and the whole place had seen better days.
Eudoxia started to walk towards the balcony, curious to look down into the rest of the club.
“Careful,” said the smaller man. “We have no idea how safe that floor is.”
Eudoxia smiled and continued on to the balcony. “You worry too much, Tobias,” she replied as she peered over the railing.
Whoever had been here had clearly had a great time throwing tables, chairs, and anything else not bolted down over the edge to the dance floor below, judging by the shattered furniture down there.
She turned back to Tobias. “Get some power on. Let’s light it up. I’m going to check out the VIP area.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Ninette, and the two Ported further into the club.
Eudoxia soon found the VIP area, and within it, the hidden doorway that led down into the former living quarters of Lucian and his coven.
“Looks like the Magi Council didn’t want anyone coming down here by accident,” Eudoxia said, pointing at the sealed up and invisible doorway which the Council had blocked off using Magic—a Mortal’s eyes couldn’t see it, but Magical eyes could.
Ninette stood a little way off, eyeing up the main VIP area with a critical eye. Eudoxia smiled. “See anything you like?” She knew that Ninette would like running an exclusive VIP lounge.
Ninette looked up. “There’s potential here. I could do something with this, I think,” she said.
“Good, consider this yours. Do with it as you wish.”
Ninette grinned again and returned to giving the space an appraisal. “Excellent.”
“I’ll be back shortly. Just have to check something out,” Eudoxia said and Ported one floor down into the first level of Lucian’s private quarters.
She wandered the corridors and checked out the rooms on the top floor before heading to the next one down. Having been sealed off, these levels had fared much better than the club above, but the signs of the fight that had taken place here were still present, scattered throughout the rooms.
She found blood stains and even the remains of bodies, rotting and smelling like death.
She didn’t find anyone that she thought might be Lucian, but she’d have a better hunt later. For now, they needed to set about cleaning up. They had a lot to do.
- Amarillo, Texas.
“Hey, what ya think about this, Waylon?” Reagan asked, holding up a white mini-dress in front of her body.
“That’s great darlin’,” he said from where he sat in the rocking chair, wearing only his underpants and socks with his guitar in his lap.
“You ain’t even looked, you redneck!” she said, a small amount of outrage in her voice.
“Darlin’, when you’re as goddamn gorgeous as you, I don’t need to look. You will be the best-looking girl at that there ball tonight.”
Reagan nodded. “Ya, darn right,” she said as she held a different dress up in front of herself
and eyed it in the mirror.
“You lookin’ forward to it, then, sugar?”
“You bet yer ass I am. I wanna see this girl that’s come over here and taken over New York. Might give her a piece of my mind, too.”
“That’s my girl,” Waylon said. “Now get that sweet ass over here, will ya? Let’s have some fun.”
Cold News
Paris, France
Amanda opened the door to the current leader of the Legacy Coven, Royston Kendrick standing on her doorstep. The balding man wore a long coat over his tan trousers and smiled warmly at Amanda.
“Royston, it’s lovely to see ye,” she said and welcomed him with a hug.
“And you, Amanda. You look well.”
“Thank you, I’m grand. Come in, come in. Let’s get you out of the cold, hey?”
Royston followed and removed his coat, revealing a garish Hawaiian shirt beneath.
“Another classic shirt, I see,” Amanda commented.
“You like it?”
Amanda eyed him with a slight grin. “Very dapper,” she said and invited him into the living room. He’d contacted her via a Mental Link a short time ago and asked if he could pay her a visit. “What can I do for you?” she asked, curious about what he hadn’t been able to say over the Link.
“Are the others here?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure, you want me to get them?
“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said.
It took a minute or so, but before long, Amanda sat in the living room with Maria, Liz, Gentle Water, Raven, Shaun, Vanessa, and Royston.
“Thanks for coming,” Royston said, addressing the group. “Something has come to our attention and we need to check it out. We’re stretched a bit thin in Paris at the moment, so I thought I’d ask for your help.”
Amanda nodded from where she sat, holding Maria’s hand. “Sure, how can we help?”
“We’ve had a report come in from a coven based in the Antarctic. They detected some strange activity near them and were monitoring it. The other day they chose to finally check it out. They Ported in and found a huge camp. A dig of some sort, outside the front of a temple or something built into the side of a mountain. They detected Magical workings all over the site and were about to look into it further when a team of men, including a Magus, surrounded them and started to attack. Two of the Magi escaped and made their way back to their base on their own. The other two have not been heard from since and we think they’re dead. Whatever they discovered out there, the team have Magical support and seem keen to protect it. We need to know what’s going on and why. So, I’m passing this one on to you, Amanda. You can deal with it however you like, but I need you to follow up on it for me, please.”
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