The Dossiers of Asset 108 Collection

by J M Guillen

  “There!” Baxter pointed through a patchy hedge. “That’s a street lamp. I know that’s a street lamp!”

  “Bax might actually be right.” I stepped forward and peered through the mist. It didn’t seem quite as cool here, and some of the grass beneath my feet looked a little more autumnal than it had a few moments before.

  “Looks like we just made our way out of Faerie.” Rehl grinned. “Immortal memory wins the day!”

  “Twilight.” Alicia corrected him. “We don’t know if the place we just left had any true connection to the land under the hill.”

  “I’m just happy to be back in a place that has tacos,” Baxter jibed. He glanced at his watch and stopped in place, his eyes wide.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Thirty minutes.” He stared at me with disbelief. “There’s no way we were only gone for thirty minutes.”

  For a moment, we all just gaped at each other.

  “Man, I don’t even ask questions anymore.” I shook my head. “If we just saved ourselves the three hours it felt like we tromped around in the Twilight, then I suppose that’s all for the good.”

  My friends nodded and we trudged on.

  “So…” Bax fidgeted in his seat once we reached the car. “What’s the play, Liz?”

  “I’m not the party leader,” I jibed. “That’s, what, based on intelligence, wisdom, and charisma? So not me.”

  “In this case, I think it’s based on the person with the magical powers.” Bax poked my side.

  I squealed and batted at his hand before thinking for long moment. At last I spoke. “I want to go get Simon as soon as possible.”

  “That makes sense,” Alicia agreed.

  “I think late tomorrow night, so the streets will be as deserted as possible.”

  “This is New York.” Baxter turned to me. “City never sleeps.”

  “I know.” I sighed a bit. “It’s the best I can do.”

  “So what time do we meet at Knucklebones?” Rehl kept his hands on the wheel and gazed out into the evening drizzle. “Gotta gear up and get ready.”

  “Jax did say your stalwart allies would go with you no matter what you did,” Baxter reasoned. “I suppose it’s impossible to fight fate.”

  “I don’t think you should come.” I glanced at Rehl, then turned in my seat to take in the other two. “I’m the only one Lorne cares about. He’ll slaughter you like sheep just because.”

  “We’ve been present twice when he sent his errand boys to fetch you.” Rehl still didn’t take his eyes off the road. “He sent something after Alicia to terrify her into running for you. He might come for us anyway.”

  “You can’t assume we’ll be safe just because we don’t come with you.” Baxter pulled himself forward in the seat.

  “Besides,” Alicia added.

  I glanced up to see her freckled face grin.

  “Abriel knows where you’ll be. We’d just follow you.”

  “I know.” I gave my friends a slight scowl. “I knew it before Jax said it. There’s no way you guys would actually stay behind.”

  “Then why even talk about it?” Baxter leaned back in the seat, satisfied.

  “In case one of you dies, obviously.” I gave him a sharp look. “Now I can always tell myself I tried to keep you safe and your own stupidity got you killed.”

  “That would be my bravery.” Rehl nodded. “But Bax, yeah, it would probably be his stupidity.”

  “You say this to the guy who solved the riddle?”

  “Liz.” Alicia spoke softly and leaned forward so I would hear her over the boys’ bickering. “Without the Aegis, you won’t be able to channel as much power as you have been.”

  “I know.” I chewed on my lip. “I’ve thought about that.”

  “There are other enchanted items within Simon’s cabinet we should consider taking with us. But until we head over to Fallen Leaves, Knucklebones is the only place you remain unseen.”

  “Dammit.” I had forgotten it acted as my personal cloaking device. My only thought had been how hard the thing let me punch.

  “Watch your language.” Alicia pushed at my shoulder playfully. “It’s more difficult to learn Empyrean if you indulge in coarse thoughts.”

  “Let’s just survive tomorrow night—then we can talk about my education.”

  “We have a good amount of preparation to do,” Alicia said with a tilt of her head.

  “Yeah.” Baxter sounded too dire for agreement. “Assuming we have time to do it. What if that goon and his wolf-spiders somehow told Mister Lorne about Knucklebones?”

  “If Lorne knows where the store is, one would assume the place would already be under siege.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Baxter nodded.

  “Not to mention the fact that you shot me in the leg!” Rehl waved one hand emphatically to make his point.

  “I only shot you a little bit. You showed me your leg, and you only had a graze on your calf. It turned red; the shot didn’t even break the skin much!”

  “I asked you not to shoot me!”

  “Boys, boys. You both get to go to the dance.” I glanced at Rehl. “What you think about early afternoon? We all go home, get some rest, then you pick up the crew and get them over to Knucklebones sometime around one or two?”

  “That’s feasible.” He glanced to his mirror. “Is that cool with you two?”

  “I can make it work,” Baxter agreed.

  “I’d like to stay at Knucklebones, if that’s all right.” Alicia still leaned forward, close to me. “Abriel would like to tally what Simon may have taken with him and what we have available.”

  “Fine with me, as long as you don’t mind my snoring. There’s only the one bed, after all.”

  “Nice.” Baxter glanced up at Rehl, who chuckled like every boy ever.

  “They’ve caught us out, Alicia.” I rolled my eyes. “Because we’re going on a dangerous mission tomorrow, this is the night we’ve decided to consummate our secret passion.”

  “It’s time they knew, Liz.” She put one hand on my shoulder. “It isn’t our first slumber party.”

  The guys laughed, and we drove on through autumn’s rain. It took another twenty-five minutes for us to get back to Knucklebones, and we bantered the entire way.

  Sometimes, in the wild and uncanny life I have chosen to lead, I would forget exactly how much I missed these guys.

  Ability Modifier

  Sometime far too early, I awoke.

  I had fallen asleep long before Alicia did and still felt exhausted from the past few days. I had no idea how long she had stayed up to catalog our inventory; I only knew I’d fallen asleep while she still worked.

  Now she lay snuggled against me, and her red hair ran riot across her pillow. She snored softly, her limbs akimbo.

  To look at her, one would never know my curvy friend housed an angelic Watcher from antediluvian times.

  Once out of bed, I pulled on my jeans and padded softly over to the cabinet with Simon’s odd gear. I crouched in front of the case and peered at the myriad things stacked inside. A small hourglass, tie pin, and a deck of cards. A ninja star had been placed next to the cards, and I noted it looked more than a little charred.

  “There’s the hat Rehl wore,” I muttered as I spotted it, and opened the glass.

  Next to the hat lay the Baxter’s bracer, though it looked even more burnt than the throwing star. Two chess pieces had fallen over on their sides, and an old silver lighter had been pushed to the back.

  Peering further, I saw something that resembled a dog collar and a small set of candles leaning against a Mardi Gras mask. A gold ring, an old fork, and a small oil lantern lay shoved together on the third shelf.

  I kept poking until I finally spotted what I was looking for.

  “There we are.” My voice hummed with satisfaction as I pulled out the first magical item I had ever seen in my life: the old, battered, blue baseball cap.

  I turned it in my hands and felt for
the thin strip of metal sewn within. Simon had once told me over a thousand Empyrean sigils had been inscribed on this one piece of metal. Those Seals gave the hat power, magic I’d never truly understood.

  The thing was, in all the years Simon had trained me, this ball cap had been the only toy he had really ever let me use. Oh, he had given me the blue jay feather that day in the diner, but that had been more of a one-shot kind of thing.

  Then he gave me the Aegis bracelet, and I went and destroyed it in my own personal fractured fairytale.

  “So, Simon, I think maybe you should’ve taught me how to use some of your toys,” I spoke to the darkness. “Alicia had to try and wrangle both the boys during the battle in the store. If she has to direct the three of us on how to speak Empyrean in the middle of a fight, she might be stretched a little thin.”

  If only I hadn’t broken the Aegis.

  Oh, I had power on my own, power enough to have come out on top in everything before this particular module. But what came next would be different.

  I had no doubt that without the Aegis, Garret and the Facility Ass-hats would have caught me days ago. If not for the bracelet, I felt certain my friends would be dead by now.

  And it was gone.

  I sat for a long moment staring into Simon’s cabinet. My chest positively ached with loss. I’d put on a brave face with my friends last night, and they’d helped me to smile, but…

  Things were about to get horrific.

  Mom had been lost for years, honestly; it’d just happened in slow motion. Even though the actual timetable might have been off, it felt as if I’d lost Dad and Simon both within the same few days.

  “But Liz hadn’t lost them,” I muttered to myself as I felt the ache in my heart threaten to spill over into my eyes. “She would see them both again. She just needed to do some stuff first.”

  Which defined my actual problem.

  I’d dealt with some pretty horrific things over the course of the last few days, and we’d mostly come out on top. I’d had augmentation, no doubt, but we’d won the day. Yet now, I suspected the future was about to get a bit darker, and quite a bit harder.

  And here I sat, Aegis shattered, power dimmed.

  If I didn’t figure something out, it wouldn’t just be Simon and Dad. I’d lose my best friends too.

  Problem being, they didn’t even recognize the problem. They did what they thought right and best, and they wouldn’t abandon me in this fight.

  They didn’t understand they were about to get themselves killed.

  2

  I couldn’t say how long I’d sat in front of that cabinet before Alicia slipped up behind me.

  “Hey.” Her voice rasped with awakening. “How long have you been up?”

  “I’m not certain.” I pushed myself to my feet.

  Alicia stood, still in the same t-shirt she’d worn to bed. On the front of it, a Wiccan pentacle had been depicted, crafted from vines.

  Ironic that Alicia had been the one to become the vessel for an angelic force.

  “Okay, well,” Alicia glanced at the floor, uncomfortable. “I wanted to tell you I stayed the night for another reason besides cataloging Simon’s toys.”

  “Yeah?” I chuckled. “Does Abriel get homesick for Knucklebones?”

  “Sometimes.” She smiled. “But I have something for you, Liz, something I think might help.”

  “Is it a new Aegis?” I raised my eyebrows hopefully. “Or maybe two, in case I break another one?”

  “Let’s go back over here.” Alicia sat on the bed and bounced a little. She patted the spot next to her on the mattress. “It’s not that I have something for you.” Her entirely hazel eyes flicked to the floor and her voice dropped a bit. “Abriel has it.”

  “You know,” I said as I sat, “I’m not upset you picked up Abriel’s token, right? I’m not worried about any secrets you might have discovered.” I paused. “I know you just want to help me.”

  “I hope you know that.” She picked at the quilt. “I hope you know the same is true of Simon. He doesn’t operate like other men, but he always looked out for you.”

  “I do know that.” I nodded. “Simon has always taken care of me.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” Alicia’s eyes flicked up to me as they began to burn, a white symphony of brilliance. That beautiful not-color held a radiant warmth that echoed into eternity. “I hope you continue to.”

  She touched my face.

  I remembered things I had never known, and things I had long forgotten.

  3

  Time was a mountain, and before it, we were specks of nothingness. Yet even in that emptiness, that horrible realization of the scale of eternity, I could find joy.

  I found joy when he spoke my name.

  “Abriel.” He cast my name across the waters of infinity, creating ripples of moonlight. His speaking of it felt like the first Word of creation, and it blossomed in my heart like a flower of fury and flame.

  yes, simon.

  He sat in a dingy little diner, although not the same one he had sat in with Aiden. One empty plate had been pushed to the edge of the table, and Simon worked on another that held a greasy hamburger. On the side of the table closest to me, a strawberry shake began to melt.

  “There’s a little whisper of a girl that’s outside in the alley.” He stopped chewing long enough to show me his clever grin. “I think I got ’er on the hook.”

  i know you have been concerned. it would seem congratulations are in order.

  “She’s gonna step back in here, any moment now.” He took a bite of the burger and pushed it one side. “I’d like you to hang about. It’s possible I’ll want to leave her a memory of today.”

  simply done, simon. I paused. here she is, coming inside.

  “Oh.” Realizing Liz had opened the door, Simon inhaled another few bites of his burger, then set his plate off to one side.

  If Liz even realized that Simon stuffed his face, she didn’t know it. She walked like a person in shock, her eyes wide. Her dark hair lay scattered all around her head, wind tossed.

  In her hand, she held the blue ball cap.

  “So.” Simon leaned back in the booth and opened his arms wide. “Did it turn out to be a magic ball cap?”

  “I don’t know how you’re doing this.” Liz slid into the chair across from him, a tiny slip of a thing. Her normal wit and sarcasm, inherited from her father, seemed dulled by wonder and disbelief.

  “Do you want to know?” Simon leaned across the table. “Are you interested in knowing more?”

  “Maybe.” Young Liz reached across the table and wrapped her fingers around the strawberry shake. She took a long drink. “But I’m not interested in getting taken advantage of.”

  “I understand how scary it can be.” Simon paused. “The feller who first taught me a little bit about all this crazy nonsense had a touch of a poetic bent.”

  “Yeah?” Liz took another sip of her strawberry shake, disbelief writ large across her young features. “By ‘crazy nonsense’ do you mean ‘conning teenage girls’?”

  ***

  Later, Elizabeth Shepherd sat in the same booth and held the feather of a blue jay in one hand. She stared at it, as if all the secrets of existence unfolded from the singular point in space. Her hand trembled, and I thought she might be close to tears.

  “This wind has danced through the world before humans walked upright.” Simon leaned closer to her and quirked the corners of his mouth. “It is the breath of the world.”

  “It’s a thunderstorm,” she gasped and sounded younger than her age. “And it’s inside me.”

  “It’s your birthright. It’s power and wonder and mystery.”

  For a long moment, the two sat in silence. When Elizabeth spoke again, I thought she might break into tears.

  “I—” She shook her head and her dark locks flew around her. “I don’t want this.”

  “No one cares,” Simon said simply.

  that will break
her, I thought. that singular moment.

  But no. The two sat and stared at each other.

  “It’s a hurricane.” The beginnings of tears threatened. “I can’t hold it.”

  “Good analogy. It’s a tempest of force, and you can shape it. I can teach you to master it. Some, anyway.”

  “I—” She bit her lip. “It’s way too big.”

  “Maybe. But you can command it. Just as easily as you can move your arm.”

  “No way.” She shook her head again. Then, almost spiteful, she reached her arm forward. “That’s impossib—”

  Before she finished the word, a burst of air, furious and fierce, burst out from her in all directions. Menus, straws, and glasses went sailing. Simon’s empty plate went into the seat. The blinds at the window next to us furled up, and a waitress, almost blown off her feet, stumbled into a man’s table.

  “What the fuck—?” Across the room, a lone diner glared.

  I scowled. That man needed to learn how to properly express himself.

  For a long moment, no one in the diner spoke. They all simply stared at each other, with several variants confusion scrawled across their faces.

  “Truck went by.” Simon’s voice rang with melody, with conviction and truth.

  “A truck?” A man in a plaid jacket glanced out the window and then to Simon. “Unlikely.”

  “That’s what happened.” Simon’s words rang with spell-wrought truth.

  I didn’t need to look toward him to know what he held. The ace of spades twirled in his left hand, held so it could be seen by the patrons.

  Everyone who looked at him had their gaze drawn to the card. Their eyes grew wide, and one of them sighed in what sounded like pleasure.

  “Happens all the time,” the waitress agreed flatly. “I need a new job.”

  The diners went back to their plates, eyes glazed.

  Before she could say anything, Simon turned to Liz. “Hey there, kid.” He spoke jovially and caught her attention.