Covert Ops

by T. R. Cameron

  “Not yet. The doctors say his body is healing and the brain scans show no issues, so they’re not sure why he’s still out of it.”

  “Magic?”

  “I went so far as to escort Kienka to the hospital so she could examine him in case the ARES and government magical medicals missed anything. But there’s nothing there.”

  Diana laughed. “Magic medic. I want one.”

  He chuckled in response, and it warmed her to hear it. “I know you do, honey.”

  She raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Raising Arizona. Rath would be proud of you.”

  “I do have a smattering of pop culture knowledge, you know. It’s not like I grew up under a rock.”

  “Okay, then, answer me this. In what movie is George Carlin a priest and Alanis Morissette God?”

  “Please. Dogma. Give me something difficult next time. However, as much as I’d like this to be a social call, it isn’t one.”

  She sighed. “It never is. This wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I invited you up to my hotel room, you know. The ‘I have to work in the morning’ excuse is one thing, but this ‘I have to work all the time’ is something else entirely.”

  He laughed again, as she had intended. “Well, this might make your day a little brighter. We have a lead on someone who’s apparently tried to suborn several Senators. Our person in the NSA passed it along since it’s far from public knowledge.”

  “So she’s still there, huh?”

  “Yep, received another promotion and everything.”

  Diana shook her head. ARES had many impressive contacts but getting one of their people hired by the NSA was a coup. The fact that she climbed the ladder to get deeper and deeper access was a testimony to her abilities and served both organizations involved very well. “I hope you’ve set up a good landing for her if something goes wrong.”

  “Pre-written pardon, arranged by the vice president and renewed by each new resident of the Oval Office.”

  “Dang. Nice. Can I get one of those?”

  He chuckled. “No, you’ll simply have to behave. If that’s even possible for you.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Tempting.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Did you call for a reason other than simply to annoy me?”

  “Only to share the information, because two of those senators being targeted are acquaintances of ours. Janet and Winston.”

  “Wow, big surprise.”

  He laughed. “I know, right? If it would be anyone, it’s logical that those two jerks would be involved. The person who’s pursuing the senators has ties to Chinese intelligence, but they were reasonably easy to find so must be taken as clearly suspect.”

  “This, right here, is why I never wanted to be a spy. It’s so much easier to be a federal agent. Get told where criminal is, investigate criminal, confirm criminal status, kick criminal ass.”

  “Yeah, that describes you pretty well, Sheen.”

  “So, now that you’ve given me this information, what do you want me to do with it?”

  The line crackled and inspired a worry that someone might listen in on their calls. It’s something to ask Kayleigh about, anyway. “Merely grist for the mill. Add it to your collective brains and see if any connections emerge. The usual stuff.”

  She smiled. “You could have done this via email. You wanted to talk to me. Admit it.”

  He laughed. “I always want to talk to you. But now, I must run. Duty calls.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Will you make it to Pittsburgh soon?”

  “You know it.” He hung up and left her with a grin on her face. She looked around at the mostly empty conference room and the completely empty coffee pot. It’s time to get out of my head and back into the action.

  She swept into the lab where Kayleigh and Deacon worked busily as she’d expected, and crossed to where her housemate sat on the opposite side of her raised work surface. “Okay, people, new information for you. Someone from China is apparently trying to run a scam on Cyphret and Tomassi.”

  Deacon swiveled in his chair with an odd look on his face. “Cyphret and Tomassi, you say?”

  She nodded, and the tech looked at his partner. Kayleigh sighed. “We didn’t want to add this to your plate until we knew more, but we’ve found trails that suggest China is involved with Zachariah Greene, one of the other members of the oversight committee.”

  “I haven’t met him yet.” The words were faster than her brain, but once it caught up, she continued. “It’s weird that China would set its sights on those three in particular. Maybe they’re part of a bigger operation?”

  The blonde tech shrugged. “Anything’s possible. But it doesn’t feel that way. I think—we think—it’s probably someone high up in the Remembrance using the Chinese connection as a cover. That doesn’t preclude a legit non-magical thing going on with some of them, but my guess is that these three come with a little added bonus.”

  “And the rest of the committee?”

  Deacon slid into a seat across the worktable from Kayleigh. “They haven’t been targeted, as far as we know. Have you heard anything?”

  Diana raised her hands in a gesture that communicated, “Who knows?” much more effectively than words ever could. “What can we do to eliminate some of this impressive lack of knowledge we have going on here?”

  The two techs exchanged a look which told her they’d already started. I love having good people. Kayleigh said, “We’ve dug into Greene fairly hard and tried to trace his network back. This will give us a little more to go on. We thought we might insert some stuff into the communications to see if we could get him on our hook as well. Ideally, we want to do the same with the Chinese connection.”

  “And the magical side, too,” he added. “If they’re smart, they have protective layers in there, but I should be able to find my way through them. Hopefully.”

  Diana tapped her nail against a tooth while she considered this. “What if we had Bryant share misinformation with the committee? Not in person but in a report so they’d all receive it? If it was spicy enough, they might feel they had something to bring to the table. That would at least tell us who’s already taken the deal from our earthly foes.”

  The techs both nodded. “It sounds like it could be worth trying. We might want to wait until we have a little deeper penetration on the people talking to Greene, though.”

  She stood and stretched. “I’ll leave this in your capable hands. I’m more an investigator than a spy.” She waved as she left the room. Okay, now we’re starting to turn the tables on these bastards. Once we have the next level up in our sights, we can sweep the scumbags up in this town, get Sloan back, and go after bigger fish. She smiled and pressed a button on her phone. Rath picked up immediately, his greeting happy.

  “Hey, buddy, what do you think of a fish sandwich at Wholey’s?” His reply was as enthusiastic as she could have hoped for. Yep, it’s all coming together.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dreven materialized at the edge of the property his master had claimed as his own. In former days, it had been a castle, part of the distant past of Oriceran’s ever-brewing battle between those who possessed real power and those whose might was purely symbolic. To wed the two—to put one who knew how to rule properly onto a throne rather than trust in the vagaries of heredity—was truly a goal worth fighting for.

  Here, or on Earth. Either way. Once accomplished in one place, the other would follow that much more easily.

  The castle was not all it had once been. There were fallen stones where pillars had once stood, and an entire wing had been lost as the hillside beneath it eroded. Nonetheless, the main part of the structure still remained and overlooked the flatlands for miles around. Blocks that started out white were grey and black with age, and what would have been well-trimmed lawns were overgrown with plant life of all kinds. Yet a clear road ran between them and twisted its way up the hill to the front door. That path was his goal.

  Unfortunately, it was cur
rently blocked by the cold iron fence that demarcated the perimeter of the property. The gate that opened onto the proper route was closed, and none of his entreaties thus far had convinced it to open. Dreven considered simply launching himself over it with a burst of power, but he held the owner in high regard and would not want to risk disappointing him. Plus, he knew there would be guards against such things, very likely quick to react and lethal in nature.

  No, he would wait, if waiting was what his master desired. He positioned himself squarely perpendicular to the crease that separated the two halves of the gate, slid his hands into the opposite sleeves, and bowed his head. The cowl of his robe fell forward to keep the wind and sun from his face. His thoughts spiraled inward as he used the opportunity to meditate and refresh his energies.

  He had stood for an unknown time when the gates parted slightly. He dashed through them as soon as they were open wide enough to fit his body, and it slammed shut immediately after, so quickly that it snagged his robe. He spent several moments in an attempt to free the trapped cloth, but it refused to budge. A wave of his wand and a murmured word summoned a shadow blade that sliced the offending fabric away.

  He swung toward the castle, took a moment to recapture his full awareness, and marched forward at a steady pace. This wasn’t his first walk along this path and he knew that its twists and turns made the transit take significantly longer than the eye would expect. On his first visit, buoyed by excitement and high hopes, he had traveled only halfway before his energy had begun to flag. This time, he husbanded his strength and expended it only when essential to ease his progress. Otherwise, he relied on his body’s resources to propel him. He needed as much magic as possible to face—or to serve—his master, whichever the case might turn out to be.

  After almost an hour, he arrived at the entrance to the building itself. Two-story-high wooden doors stood before him and one side glided open silently at his approach. He slipped through the gap, and it closed behind him with a whisper and a click. Dreven paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the interior gloom before he proceeded. The last time he had been there, one of his master’s underlings had been present to escort him down the wide red carpet that marked the path from the door to his superior’s working room. Now, it appeared he was on his own.

  He walked on, careful to confine his steps to only the crimson fabric as he had during the previous visit at the behest of his host. On that occasion, he hadn’t known why. This time, he still didn’t know why, but it didn’t matter. There was a very real sense of a threat that stepping off the path would result in a death too horrible to imagine. In this large, empty, echoing space filled with the remembrances of battles past, those imagined demises held great power indeed. He shuddered involuntarily. From the cold, only from the cold. My mind is too strong to be influenced by these minor things.

  He walked through corridors with tapestries on both walls depicting scenes of violence and lighting fixtures dangling above with flameless candles fueled by magic. It was one of the petty vanities of his master that he possessed the power to spare to spend it on such mundane purposes. Of course, once you see behind the image he projects and realize that energy has been stolen from others, it’s even more terrifying.

  He crossed the threshold into his superior’s office and stood at the end of the carpet, not daring to approach closer. The room was deep but not particularly wide, with the working desk at the far end surrounded on three sides by bookshelves packed with tomes. Closer to the entrance was a comfortable discussion nook with two formal couches arranged in an L and several large chairs. In the middle ground were matching cabinets facing one another across the room, one loaded with liquors and other vices, and the other a display case for magical items that would make any visitor envious.

  The deep rasp of his master’s voice filled his ears as if the man stood beside him. “Dreven, come forward.” If a snake were able to speak, it would likely use the same long pronunciations of words as did the other wizard, that single choice alone enough to create tension in the listener.

  He obeyed and concentrated on keeping his stride steady despite the concern—not fear, no, surely not—that accompanied each step. His master had bent his head to his work, apparently uninterested in charting his progress across the room. He stopped two feet before the edge of the desk and clasped his hands behind his back where they couldn’t be seen twitching toward his wand.

  Lechnas set his pen down and aligned it carefully alongside the heavy paper he’d been writing on. He was not a big man, nor a thin one. Neither tall nor short. If not for his aura of power, he would have been unremarkable in a crowd, at least until one saw his face. Two scars traced from each temple to the opposite jaw. The story he told was that they were the reminders of what trusting anyone other than one’s own kind brought. As if to further embed that reminder, he had arranged to have the raised lines tattooed in deep scarlet on his pale skin. The color matched his strange eyes, which seemed to burn with the might coiled within him. Long, straight black hair was swept to one side of his head to keep it out of the way of his work.

  He wore black or red exclusively, and today had chosen a combination of the two. A red shirt drew the eye away from the black waistcoat and trousers. Dreven had never failed to feel underdressed around him. He held his tongue as the wizard rose and those eyes drilled into his own. He tried to read something in them—any clue as to the reason for this summons—but found nothing he could comprehend.

  When his master smiled at him, Dreven knew he was in trouble. “Please, sit.” A chair scraped from the side wall to slide gently into the back of his knees, and he obeyed. Lechnas brushed his hair back and tucked it behind his ears as he sat in his own chair. “I must say, I am disappointed in the results you have provided so far.”

  The dryness in Dreven’s throat made it difficult to swallow, and it took a few attempts to find his voice. No particular menace radiated from the other wizard, but the room still felt thick with danger. “I am, as well. Most particularly the loss of several of our minions during the prison break.” His superior stared at him without speaking. “So…uh, yeah. That’s the bad news. However, there is good news.”

  Lechnas raised his index finger and moved it from side to side in negation. “You have not finished with the negatives. Allow me to list them. We have lost an artifact, last seen bonded with your human associate. Your personal power base has been damaged by the death of Nehlan, who also failed in his task. Finally, all the people you claimed you would kill to cut the head from our human enemies are still alive.”

  Dreven nodded. “And yet, master, we have retrieved Rhazdon’s Defense, which is a more than equal trade.” He cringed and hoped the other wizard shared his opinion of the value of that accomplishment.

  “And I permitted you to use it at the prison and still, the humans live.”

  He sighed. “You are correct, as always, master. But there is good news as well. Our message resonates with groups across the humans’ planet, and each day, more and more turn to what they believe our cause to be. If we remain visible and continue to take action against those in power, those numbers will increase all the more.”

  “I agree.”

  He blinked, shocked by the simple affirmation.

  The wizard waved his hands and a bowl of sand on his desk surrendered its contents. The grains swirled in a gentle arc to the center of the surface and formed themselves into an image of a sword and a pair of daggers. “We must work on two fronts. First, you must find Rhazdon’s Vengeance. If the humans should discover the blades first, or if one of our other enemies should, it could lead to disaster.”

  Dreven bowed his head. “I am already pursuing this, master. We will find them.”

  “See that you do.” He slammed his palms down on the desk and dispatched the sand to its container. “And we must initiate more actions against the humans and bigger ones. They must learn to fear us. Every day they believe they can resist, their will grows stronger. We must cause the
m to lose that belief. It is my place to do this on Oriceran, and I am accomplishing it. You only have to do it on Earth, where it should be far easier.”

  He stood and his subordinate bolted to his feet. Lechnas pointed a long finger at him. His master’s face was as pale as ever, but both the scars and his eyes seemed to have filled with blood and blazed at him. “Fail me again, and it is the end of you. Mark my words as I swear this shall be so.”

  Dreven opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a syllable, he was thrown from his feet and into a portal that deposited him in the grass outside the iron fence surrounding the castle. He stood and brushed his clothes off, then sighed and let the fear the other wizard instilled in him fall away. It is time to make the rest aware that any failures will be met with death, at my hands or at Lechnas’.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Cara and Anik were at the range, one of her favorite ways to relax. She’d already fired a box of rounds and now started on her second. His pace was slower as he worked on quick-firing from a hip draw. They didn’t converse much as the giant ear protectors were an impediment to that, and they’d chosen not to bring ARES comms along to make it feel more like they were on an off-duty day.

  She shot a smiley face into the target ahead of her, swapped the magazine, and added hair. One more round provided the finishing touch—a final hole in the center of the forehead—and she left her lane. Anik finished shortly after, and they returned their ear protectors to the owner. He was an older man, overweight and with a biker’s vest and a long grizzled grey beard. As near as she could tell, he was always happy and continued to be so as he waved them out and told them to have a fantastic day.

  Anik joked, “Any day you get to shoot things is a fantastic day, right?”

  She nodded in agreement and climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV they’d borrowed for the afternoon. He drove toward the city and they spent the first few miles in silence. Finally, with the air of someone who’d wanted to ask for a while but had been afraid to, he said, “So, what the hell is up with you, anyway?”