by Thomas Green
“A spar?” Katherine ran to us, glowering at Amaranta. “He didn’t beat himself up, did he?”
Amaranta kept the pleasant, compassionate smile. “It is as he said. We had a little spar.”
Katherine’s mouth tightened into a line. “You are both drenched. You’ll get cold like this.” She flicked her wrist sideways, saying, ‘Uro.’ [Incinerate]
Amaranta’s car exploded into green flames.
“This will help you dry.” Katherine rushed to me to help me walk there.
I wished I had a way not to get dragged into this fight between them and just kept my mouth shut.
Blankly, Amaranta stared at her burning car. “Did you just blow up my car?” she asked in disbelief.
“It was junk, anyway.” Katherine got me to the blazing inferno, and then started manipulating the flames to dry me. My suit and shirt were still ruined, but I enjoyed the care. She glanced at her. “Sorry, I got carried away. But angels forgive, don’t they?”
Amaranta kept the smile. “And I do forgive you.” She walked to dry a little in the heat, hiding under Katherine’s fire umbrella.
“Plus, you need a proper car, anyway,” Katherine said, “That pile of Italian junk was unworthy of an angel to begin with.” Katherine measured Amaranta with a condescending glare. “And you should also buy knew clothes. This is so tight that you look like a slut.”
Still wearing the forced smile, Amaranta said, “Thank you for your advice.”
Katherine smiled callously and kept drying me.
What did I get myself into?
Katherine didn’t want to let me drive back, but that was not up for a discussion. Sure, I almost drove off the road a few times as my consciousness kept slipping, but she wouldn’t do much better after ten beers. And Amaranta didn’t even bother asking.
On the plus side, Katherine quickly slid from drunkenness to tiredness, and Amaranta decided not to distract me by speaking, so the trip back to New York was peaceful.
The sun was setting when I passed the city sign. I needed a safe place to sleep. Going back to my company meant running into Vivian. I needed to rest tonight, and she would want to shag for the whole night even if it meant keeping me conscious with magic. And, inconveniently enough, I destroyed the defenses at Katherine’s monastery earlier, so that wasn’t an option either.
“Should I drop you both off at the monastery?” I asked when we entered New York, moving in a crawl through the evening traffic.
Katherine snapped to attention. “The deal is that I participate in everything you do mission-wise.”
“I’m too beaten up to work now, so I’m going to sleep. I’ll pick you both up in the morning.”
She glanced at Amaranta. “Is he telling the truth?”
“Yes,” Amaranta said, her voice forcibly pleasant.
Katherine did not look pleased. “Fine. Take us to the monastery.”
I drove to the Bronx and stopped in front of the monastery. Once I parked, I put on a smile, and said, “We meet tomorrow morning.”
“Sure,” Katherine said and turned to Amaranta. “Come. We took in a new nun yesterday and she would love it if you would sign her bible. And then you can lead the evening sermon.”
Amaranta maintained the fake smile. “I would be happy to.” She got out of the car and helped Katherine to do the same.
I waited parked until they entered the monastery. And only two minutes later, I got back onto the street, and drew my phone.
I called Galen, the grandmaster of the Dewin Institute, the Mage Guild of New York.
He picked up after three beeps. “Tell me that the Massachusetts incident was your doing,” he said sharply.
I smiled. “Did you start practicing divination magic?”
“Actually, yes.” He instantly calmed down, content seeping from his voice. “So, is there a pile of corpses to be cleaned up?”
“Not this time. But I need to talk, in private. Are you still in the institute?”
“I was planning to leave, but I suppose I can stay for another hour. Meet me in my office.” He hung up.
Perfect. I drove to Lower Manhattan. The traffic slowed me down, so the sun was barely peeking above the horizon when I drove to the underground lot near the Low Memorial Library.
I walked out, and in the last rays of day, I entered the library through the back maintenance entrance. A beautifully decorated room welcomed me, furniture polished, walls marble.
I approached the Civil War era painting in the center of the left wall and tilted it by pulling on the bottom left corner. The moment the painting moved, it vanished together with a section of the wall beyond, revealing a tunnel lit by a lone light bulb dangling from the ceiling.
A moment after I entered, the wall reappeared behind me. The barren corridor, made of concrete, led me downward for almost two hundred feet before turning right. Before I made the turning, I felt a buzz of electricity creeping up my neck. I glanced over my shoulder, seeing Amaranta now standing behind me.
She now wore a nun habit and had the expression of utter disgust. Though that quickly changed into a venomous smile. “How did you know I would cover up for you when you lied to Katherine?”
“I didn’t.” Honestly, I was too tired to remember her truth sense. “And I suppose that if I chase you away right now, Katherine will hear all about that.”
“Correct.” Amaranta raised her chin. “So, where are we going and what are we doing here?”
Good that I didn’t have my guns, because the idea to shoot someone in the head felt tempting. “I’m going to the Dewin Institute. And you’re not coming with me.”
Her expression hardened. “Why not?”
“These aren’t Church grounds, so an angel walking in uninvited will cause a general panic. And I’m not destroying the relationships I’ve built with the Institute by sneaking you in.”
Amaranta’s face froze for a moment, pain and suffering reflecting in her eyes.
What was I doing? She needed help, not to be told to piss off. “But if you wait here for a few minutes, I’ll get you a permission to enter. So, stay here, don’t move, and I’ll come back for you. Okay?”
She nodded faintly, still looking devastated.
With a heavy heart, I took the corner and walked to the steel door at the corridor’s end. A tablet was taped to the center, and its screen lit up the moment I got close.
The face of a plump, amber-haired woman appeared. “Oh, it’s just you,” the woman said.
“I’m here to see Galen. Tell Dolores to make me the usual.”
“Will do.” She flashed a smile, the screen turned dark and the door clicked open. I entered, nodding at the guardsman sitting in a booth behind a bulletproof glass. By pressing a button on the panel in front of him, he opened the next door for me and I entered the Institute.
The insides were made of marble and gold, lots of gold, everything fashioned into a baroque-style palace. The mages and witches inside wore their usual attires – suits and dresses, all in this month’s fashion.
Most gracefully ignored me, but some nodded in greeting. No one dared to comment about my messed up suit, which pleased me. I returned the greetings by tipping with my hat, and I passed through a long hallway, glancing at the massive mosaic that made the ceiling. Soon, I passed through a set of corridors to reach the mahogany door of Galen’s office.
I didn’t bother with knocking and entered. Dolores, Galen’s secretary, was just finishing a spell above an orange-green elixir in a tall glass. “Here,” she said with a smile and reached for the coffee machine behind her which has already produced a ristretto.
“Thanks,” I said and emptied the healing elixir into me. That gave me the welcomed kick of energy. I took the coffee cup and passed through to the grandmaster’s office.
The room itself matched the guild’s overall baroque style, in sharp contrast to Galen himself, who was thirty, dressed in an Armani suit with the sides of his head shaved, facial features chisel-sharp.
He turned away from his PC’s monitor and formed a smile. “You look like you got run over by a bison herd.”
“I feel like that too.” I was all swollen up, wasn’t I? I sat down on the ornate chair across from his mahogany table. “So, I’m planning a little heist and I need a little help. You don’t want to know the details, trust me.”
Galen smiled, eyes sparkling. “I was sold the moment you said need. You haven’t used that word with me yet and it’s been a few years. What can the guild do for you?”
And this was why we were friends. “I need a new suit, a vampire-proof place to sleep for the next few days, a cipher mage, a void mage, and a one-use-only, high-capacity teleportation matrix with a path-memory function. Everything and everyone must be unconnected to the guild.”
He frowned. “You will need to get the teleportation matrix from the black market since they are officially banned, but they aren’t too uncommon. Everything else is easy to arrange aside from the void mage. As far as I know, there are three in the world, one in Russia and two in China.”
Russia was Lucielle’s territory, so that one wouldn’t do. “Get me intel on the Chinese ones. And since when are cipher mages easy to get? I’ve never even heard of one.”
Galen flashed a smile. “You are merely lucky with that one. There’s this young, extremely talented mage who has been refusing Institute membership for years, much to my displeasure.”
“Good. I’ll solve that in the process.” I put on the most charming smile in my repertoire, and added, “And I need a permission for my friend to enter the Institute, at least for the next few days.”
Galen stopped, measuring me for a moment. This wouldn’t normally be an issue, so the fact that I asked meant there was a catch. “Who is this friend?”
“Amaranta Ricci. You know her as Baraquiel.”
Galen rubbed his face with his palm. “That’s bad, really bad. The institute’s relationship with the Church is… strained, at best. Allowing one of their enforcers to enter our sanctuary would be a rather serious blow to the sense of security of our members.”
“I can convince her to disguise herself,” I said. “No one has to know.”
“I suppose.” Galen relaxed into his chair. “But I need to put a condition on this. You are to not have sex with her on Institute’s ground, no matter the circumstances.”
I needed a few seconds to process that. Where did this come from? “Is there some context I’m missing?”
“First of all, your numerous affairs are all a common topic of gossip around the guild, so anything you do will leak. And you fornicating with an angel would be interpreted by the Church as a defilement of their effigy, even in her case, which would further worsen our relationship.”
“Even in her case? What’s the context behind that?”
“Just ask her about the St. John’s incident. But anyway, I will arrange an outfit suitable for entering our guild for her and allow her entry under the aforementioned arrangement. The total price would be $200.000, payable immediately.”
I reached into my coat to pull out my checkbook. This was how we remained friends. We didn’t deal in favors, but just paid everything out in cash. I wrote the check and handed it to him.
He nodded, pocketed the check, and turned to his PC. After typing for a moment, he said, “Dolores will share one of her older dresses with our new guest. Go with her and I will have the information you require prepared by tomorrow morning. Also, for sleep, you can use office 7-C-F in the eastern wing. I will have sleeping bags delivered.”
“Thank you.” I rose and left his office.
In the assistant’s room, Dolores was already going through a wardrobe. Within a moment, she withdrew a golden-color dress with matching heels and opera length silk gloves. She stuffed both into a carton box that she had emptied of pens and handed it to me. “Both the dress and the shoes are a little used, but they should suffice.” After I took the box, she reached into her table, pulled out a golden pin, and added it to the dress. “And this will allow her entry.”
“Thanks.” I took the box and returned to the entrance. At the guard room, I told the guard that I would be right back and I entered the tunnel.
Amaranta stood exactly where I left her, her expression a mixture of confusion and doubt.
I walked straight to her. “So, I got you a permission to enter, but there are a few conditions attached.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Conditions?”
“First, you dress into this.” I handed her the box. “And second, you make sure no one recognizes you and that no one realizes you’re an angel.”
“Every where’s the same…” she muttered and looked into the box.
I turned to give her at least some privacy. The silence, interrupted only by her clothes dropping to the ground, felt awkward, but I didn’t have a topic I wanted to talk about. Yes, I had a dozen things about which I could question her, but this was neither a good time nor place.
“Done,” she said a minute later.
I turned, seeing her dressed in a golden dress and heels. Due to her extremely lean and muscular figure, the dress hung on her rather awkwardly. And the heels made her almost as tall as I was. I verified she had no church symbols on herself and glanced at the box where she stuffed all her former clothes, arranged so only black cloth was visible from the top. “Good. We can go.”
She smiled. “Are you always this chatty or is it because I beat you up earlier?”
I headed toward the door. “I won the bet.”
“But the fight ended with you lying battered on the ground while I stood above you. The only thing missing was me taking a selfie.”
Yes, that was exactly what was missing. The tablet on the door didn’t even flash and the door just clicked open. We walked in, exchanging nods with the guardsman.
The moment we entered the lobby, Amaranta froze, staring at the beauty. “I should had become a mage,” she whispered.
I grunted. I was used to this, so it didn’t feel special. “Library’s down ahead, the bar’s in the western wing, and I’m sleeping in an unused office in the eastern one. Have fun.” I stepped away, and crossed the lobby, seeing nothing but the image of a sleeping bag in front of me.
Amaranta caught up soon after I left the lobby, when I was passing through a regular corridor. Like in most hallways in here, paintings covered the wall and everything that could be was fashioned from gold, and what wasn’t made from gold was made from ornate wood. “Wait, you are actually going to sleep?”
“In spite of what you think, I don’t have a way to trick your truth sense.”
“But then…” her words died in her mouth and her face dropped. “I need to go. Katherine wants me to lead a second evening sermon.” She turned into lightning and bolted into the chandelier, disappearing in a flash.
Good riddance. I went to the promised office, locked it behind myself, put my hat on a table, kicked off my shoes, and went straight into the prepared sleeping bag. Dealing with Amaranta’s and Katherine’s bullshit was hell exhausting. And tomorrow was going to be worse.
I fell asleep in an instant.
And as suddenly as I fell asleep, an explosion woke me up.
Lucas 6
AN EXPLOSION woke me up. By instinct more than anything else, I rolled to the side and fuelled my shields. I had no idea where I was, head pounding as if a train drove over it. But I kept moving. I needed to not die before I gained some basic orientation.
I stumbled over the blown-in door and gunfire roared, deafening me. Pain burst from my left arm. I leapt forward, and the shots followed. The shooting had two different sounds. A swift, softer one, an assault rifle, and a slower repeating, deep one, a shotgun.
This better be a bad dream. Pain exploded from my left calf and I rolled sideways, forming two spheres of aether in my palms. I didn’t have the time to refine spells, so I just gathered the aether, made it spin, and then let it explode.
Two explosions shook me, shattering a
ll in the room, blowing up the walls connecting to the hallway. I lost hearing, constant ringing filling my ears.
For a moment, the gunfire stopped and I remembered I was in the Dewin Institute. How the hell did I get attacked here? I didn’t have the time to ponder that, and formed two more aether globes in my palms, stretched out my hands, and let them explode. I didn’t direct the blasts, letting the explosions destroy everything around me.
The entire underground complex shook as if hit by an earthquake. The ringing in my ears got worse and dust filled the air. I couldn’t see or hear a thing. And so, I formed two more blasts, even stronger ones, and let them explode. This time, even the walls behind me shattered, destroying more offices beyond and pieces of ceiling fell down.
I pushed aether into my eyes and waited for the dust to settle. Nothing moved and I still couldn’t hear anything over the ringing. A minute passed and the ringing was getting better. Another minute and I started hearing. I still stood motionless for another minute. Meanwhile, blood glued me to my shirt, suit, and pants, my right shoe filling with blood. But I couldn’t afford going to get a treatment unless I made sure there weren’t any surviving attackers.
Lightning flashed from a socket and Amaranta formed next to me. Her eyes darted around, seeing the devastation that surrounded me.
And she apparently could see in darkness because she wasn’t using any light. “What happened?” she asked.
“Vampires, most likely. Can you check if there are any more around?”
She turned to a ball lightning and streaked through the rooms and halls. A few moments later, she returned, forming next to me. “Sixteen dead vampires and two guards. The alarm security is disabled, no one is around, and the lockdown spell is triggered.”
So much for this place being vampire proof. I wavered, the blood loss getting to me. I stretched out my aether in tendrils of darkness. Careful not to touch Amaranta, I spread them through the guild, blended my aether into whatever residual aether I could find, and absorbed everything. That helped, giving me a shot of energy. It wouldn’t heal me, but the energy would help my body to seal the wounds through the regenerative process and also to remake the lost blood. “How did you know to come?”