by SM Reine
Zettel took in Wright’s size. “Fallon patrol?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, snapping a salute.
“What did you find?”
“We found nothing. It’s what we lost that’s the problem.” Wright’s upper lip glistened with sweat. It seemed to take all of his strength to keep his chin up and eyes fixed on the helicopter. “First, communications to the base dropped. Then Zane disappeared—”
“Who?”
Allyson finished placing the ribbons and pulled out her smartphone, which would only function within the wards. She showed it to Zettel.
The personnel record included a photo of a young skinhead, eyes rimmed with bruises. He had a tiny cross tattooed under his left eye. “Zane St. Vil from Louisiana,” she said. “Former pilot, one year out of basic. Low priority.”
Zettel didn’t recognize him, but considering how many kopides passed through the Fallon base, that didn’t mean much of anything.
“Go on,” he told Wright.
“That’s it. No communication within Fallon, and Zane is missing. When I lost contact, I came back immediately, per regulation sixteen—”
“So he’s probably dead by now.” Zettel waved to an approaching pilot, who jammed a helmet onto his head as he jogged over. Wright gaped wordlessly at him. “Get back to the SUVs, Wright. You’re on the ground team.”
He swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
The entire base had woken up now. In the dim light, Zettel could see lines of men pouring out of the building as they mobilized. Only the faces were visible. Their black uniforms rendered them invisible in the night.
“The chopper’s secure for confrontation,” Allyson said. “An angel could jump in with his wings at full blast without dropping us.”
“What do we have to do to get the rest of the power back?” Zettel asked.
As if to respond, emergency lights flooded the platform with red light. The wail of sirens pierced the darkness.
“Passive wards in the perimeter,” she said with a small, satisfied smile. “They even work against angels. Our newest invention.”
“Well done,” Zettel said. A unit joined them on the tarmac: two kopides with guns and another witch. Enough power to take down most demon threats.
They all climbed into the helicopter. Zettel turned on his earpiece. The buzz of control’s voices immediately came to life.
Barely even midnight, and Zettel was ready to kill an angel. There were worse ways to start a day.
It was a short flight to Fallon. Zettel hung halfway out the door, watching the spotlights scan the desert underneath them. Coyotes darted away from their light. The white tails of jackrabbits flared and vanished.
“Control has a transmission for us,” Allyson said. She showed Zettel the screen of her cell phone. It was a blurry, pixelated feed from a uniform camera.
A circle of power on the floor, a body in the center of a pentagram, smears of blood—it was a ritual space unlike any he had ever seen before. The body on the ground wore Union black, but the detail was too poor to make out the features of the witch beside him.
Mono audio crackled through the speaker. “Come and get me,” said the witch.
A white flash, and the image was gone.
“That’s it?” Zettel asked.
She nodded as she tucked the phone into one of her leg pouches. “We’ve been invited to party.”
“Good thing we brought presents.”
Zettel signaled to one of the women, who handed him an MSG90. It was a great sniper rifle—strong, but light. He sat in the door of the helicopter with his feet braced against the skids as he loaded it.
The first signs of destruction appeared in the form of cracked roads, and the damage worsened as they approached Fallon. It looked like a shift in tectonic plates had split the highway from the main street; a few buildings were trembling, on the verge of collapse. Half of Walmart had already fallen.
Zettel kept a hand hooked in a strap as the helicopter banked hard, whipping wind through the open door.
“Check this out,” Allyson said, pointing over his shoulder.
The helicopter finished its ninety-degree rotation. They hovered over a circle of devastation: flattened buildings, a flipped Union SUV, a few black-clad bodies. The ground team that had been chasing the chopper took positions around the crater.
A dozen kopides and aspides jumped out of their vehicles, training their guns on the same point: a man standing beside three dusty bodies in the center of what used to be a bar, with a notebook in one hand and a brush in the other.
Zettel lifted the scope of the rifle to his eye to see who had caused so much destruction, focusing the crosshairs on his cheek. Zettel recognized that face. He had seen it in Hell, right before the Union had seized control of the Palace of Dis.
It was James fucking Faulkner: most powerful witch alive, aspis to Elise Kavanagh, and near the top of the Union’s most wanted list.
Faulkner was at a standstill with all of the other kopides watching him. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Zettel’s gaze skimmed the street, taking in the destroyed antique shop, the crater in the pavement, the rubble. No wonder none of those morons were moving. They were probably too busy shitting themselves.
“If he moves, shoot him,” Zettel said, shoving the MSG90 into the hands of a witch.
“Don’t kill him,” Allyson said.
If anyone else had given that order, Zettel would have immediately put them in their place—probably violently. But this was Allyson.
“He’s taken out half of the town,” he said.
“I know, and I want him.”
Zettel sized up Allyson. She was a tough bitch, tougher than any other witch he had known, and he had seen her do things outside the Union rulebook and beyond the boundaries of most women’s nerves. But maybe too much confidence wasn’t a good thing where James Faulkner was concerned.
“He’s done too much damage,” Zettel said. “Ehrlick, get ready.”
Allyson gripped Zettel’s shoulder. “No, Gary. I want what he knows.”
Her hard stare spoke volumes. It had been breaking the rules that led Allyson to learn written magic; she wanted to break them again.
Ehrlick sat with his feet on the skids and attached a laser scope to the top of his rifle. The pilot circled slowly over Faulkner, keeping the spotlight trained on him as the sniper took aim.
Faulkner didn’t move. He only gazed at the helicopter, as though inviting them to attack.
Fear crawled down Zettel’s spine like a wet rat. It almost seemed like Faulkner was looking straight at him.
“Let me neutralize him,” Allyson said again.
Zettel lifted a hand, preparing to signal to Ehrlick.
And then Faulkner moved. The witch lifted a hand to point at the helicopter, his first finger out and thumb lifted in the shape of a gun.
Faulkner’s lips formed a word: Bang.
A gunshot rang out.
Zettel flinched, but there were no flashes of magic, no bright lights.
The helicopter began a controlled descent. Ehrlick breathed a sigh and prepared himself for a second shot.
Then Zettel saw the blood pouring from James’s chest. He had been hit.
James Faulkner finally fell.
The helicopter settled on a level patch of pavement as the Union soldiers that had been frozen moments before jumped to life. They circled James’s body, blocking it from Zettel’s view.
Allyson glowered at Zettel, shielding her eyes from the spotlight. He could see angry words forming on her mouth, even if he couldn’t hear her over the buzzing rotors. What the fuck, Gary?
“Ehrlick made the right move,” Zettel said.
With her hair pulled into a severe bun, Allyson’s expression was always a little pinched, but now she looked downright murderous.
“He might bleed to death!” she shouted.
He turned his shoulders so that the others wouldn’t see him arguing with his aspis. Zettel
had only been back in command for a couple of months—he didn’t want his authority undermined again. “He’s dangerous. Better off dead.”
Allyson huffed into her cupped hands, breath fogging the chill night air. “But I need to know.”
“Need to know what? Who’s the better witch?”
She didn’t need to respond. He could see it in her eyes.
The wall of bodies shifted, allowing Zettel to watch as Faulkner was lifted onto a stretcher. There was a lot of blood.
It would be easy to let him die. If they stepped back and took no action, he would bleed out, and the thorn in Zettel’s side that was James Faulkner and Elise Kavanagh would be that much smaller.
“What if he’s the better witch?” Zettel asked.
Allyson’s eyes glowed with hunger. “I’m not the one who got shot today.”
But she also hadn’t destroyed half of Fallon.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Zettel muttered. He raised his voice to address the kopides. “Put the witch in the chopper!”
Zettel tried to put Allyson out of his mind and supervised the relocation of James Faulkner’s unconscious body, just to make sure that nothing funny happened. His wasn’t the only body recovered; there were three others, including St. Vil. Those were taken to the ambulance. All of them were reportedly alive.
Nobody had died that night.
“Guess you were wrong about the angels,” Zettel told Allyson when she returned to his side. She helped lift Faulkner into the helicopter and didn’t respond.
Zettel climbed in after him. He checked the casualty reports on his smartphone as they flew back. Allyson worked on Faulkner as they flew, loosing healing magic over the gunshot wound.
The Union had motion and heat sensors throughout the region that were currently running an inventory on staff and wildlife. Watching the numbers pile up was a nauseating experience.
“That was too easy, you know. He wanted us to get him,” Allyson said. She looked at him the way that a hunter looked at a big buck she had just shot in the forest, and Zettel almost pitied Faulkner for it.
Easy, she had said. Three buildings were completely leveled. The pavement had been ripped up in a one-mile radius, as though a giant earthworm had ripped open a tunnel underneath. And they had lost two SUVs to falling debris.
Zettel barked a laugh. “Too easy. You’re crazy.”
“Easy,” Allyson repeated, putting a possessive hand on James’s shoulder. “Trust me. If James Faulkner didn’t want to be caught, we wouldn’t have caught him.”
IV
The Union headquarters in Montana took three days to prepare for its newest prisoner. They kept James Faulkner sedated the entire time, and Zettel didn’t allow the medics to rouse the witch until he was already in a containment cell at HQ.
Zettel couldn’t help but feel disappointed at how uneventful the transfer had been. He had been hoping that Elise would try to save her aspis, so Zettel had prepared a room with very bright lights to receive her.
But Elise never showed.
“This is overkill,” Allyson said, pacing behind Zettel.
First she thought it was too easy. Now she thought he was making it too difficult.
They were observing the end of Faulkner’s transfer from the safety of an adjacent room on a gray-scale security monitor. Zettel touched the keyboard to switch the monitor to a rear view of the cell. The medic slid a needle into James’s arm.
“You know what he did in Hell?” Zettel asked. “He broke out of prison. He mutilated an honored apothecary. He broke into the House of Abraxas—the home of the judge himself! And then he escaped high trial.” Even saying it made chills roll down Zettel’s arms, but he didn’t dare show how much that unsettled him, even to his aspis. “Overkill? There is no overkill where James Faulkner is concerned.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Allyson said. “I already gave you my risk assessment for him. He’s a serious danger, but he’s only a man.”
“He’s ‘only a man’ that was indicted for violation of the Treaty of Dis.”
“That ruling was classified by HQ,” Allyson said.
He smiled grimly. “It’s not classified. There was no ruling. The entire Council died before they could come to an agreement.”
The door to the surveillance room opened, and Yasir stuck his head inside. He was a young commander, fresh out of the Marines, and still in officers’ training. He was a good guy. Very smart. And today, he looked like he was in a huge hurry.
“The meeting starts in fifteen minutes,” he said.
“I know.” Zettel put every ounce of “leave me alone” that he could muster into those two words. “I’ll be there. Thank you.”
Yasir slipped out again, closing the door behind him. Zettel returned his attention to the monitor.
The medic was gone. Now a kopis named Rooke was patting Faulkner down again. It was protocol to search prisoners when they were transferred to the holding cells at HQ, even if they had already been through multiple security measures at other bases.
Rooke pushed back Faulkner’s sleeves a few inches, revealing those strange brown tattoos on his arms.
“Did the researchers ever find an explanation for what those are?” Zettel asked.
Allyson opened the logs on her cell phone, reading aloud as she skimmed them. “Tattoos cover sixty percent of his body,” she said, pushing a lock of red hair behind her ear. “They cover his calves, thighs, hips, stomach, ribs, chest, and arms. Only his back, posterior, neck, and face are bare.”
“Those are observations, not explanations,” he said.
“But that’s all the information we have on them. We don’t know what they are.” Allyson passed her phone to him.
The images documented James Faulkner’s cavity search, and every inch of his naked body had been photographed in unflattering detail, from his hairy calves to his scarred abdomen. All covered in tattoos.
“His skin was unmarked five months ago,” Zettel said. They had encountered each other when the Union seized the Palace of Dis—shortly before Faulkner vanished without a trace. “What would motivate a man to tattoo his entire body within a matter of weeks?”
“I have a theory,” she said.
“Let me hear it.”
“I don’t think those are tattoos.” There was a sly smile on Allyson’s lips, the kind of expression she always got when she was on the verge of acquiring a new and dangerous weapon. She didn’t smile very often. It gave Zettel chills. “The marks look like henna.”
“So it’s temporary,” he said. “Dangerous?”
“Definitely.”
Rooke finished searching Faulkner and took a seat in the corner. It left the witch twitching his way toward consciousness on the cold floor of the cell.
“I think it’s an advancement,” she said, pointing to the symbols stitched into her armband. Since deconstructing written magic, she had spent every waking moment figuring out new spells. She carried them with her everywhere she went. “Let me talk to him. I can find out.”
“I don’t want you to fight with him.”
“I’m the only one who knows anything about written magic in the entire organization, Gary. Nobody else will have the right questions for him.”
Before Zettel could decide, the door opened again.
It was Yasir.
“Five minutes,” the young commander said. “They’re asking for you.”
“I’m coming,” Zettel said. This time, Yasir didn’t leave as quickly. He hung in the doorway with an expectant look. Zettel swore silently and faced Allyson again. “You want to deal with James Faulkner? Fine. Don’t kill him. I’ll be back in an hour—I have to meet with the Office of Preternatural Affairs.”
She smiled again. “Yes, sir.”
James woke up in the Union cell feeling groggy, numb, and dried out.
His eyes opened on a blank concrete ceiling. A light was embedded in the center, protected by a wire cage. It gave off a soft, whining buzz.
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br /> He sat up and rubbed his sore legs. They were covered in white linen, with a white shirt to match—an obvious contrast to what Union soldiers wore. They had been kind enough to give him long sleeves, but not so kind as to put him in a cell that was much warmer than freezing.
James’s chest ached like he had taken a sledgehammer to the sternum, and he dimly recalled being shot. Despite all of his planning, he had expected himself to be too valuable for the Union to actually shoot him—a serious mistake that he wouldn’t make again. Yet there was no wound. The Union’s finest healers must have paid him a visit.
He also wasn’t alone. A man sat in the corner with a gun in his lap. His nametag said “Rooke.”
“Hello,” James said.
Rooke didn’t reply. His silence gave off a feeling of tension, strength—a kopis, then. No surprises there.
James pushed himself to his feet. Rooke aimed the gun at his chest.
He paced the cell and counted the strides it took to move between walls. Twelve feet by twelve feet. Generous in comparison to Hell’s idea of a prison. Every wall had a camera on it. He wouldn’t be able to write any lengthy spells in this cell without being watched.
Placing a hand against the wall, he sent a curl of magic through the cracks in the wall. Concrete. Only six inches thick, but there was steel inside. Quite secure, for most humans.
“Sit down,” Rooke said.
James sat down in the middle of the floor, where every camera would be able to track him.
Let them watch. Let them wonder.
His eyes fell closed, and he meditated.
He drifted among the beat of his heart and the magic that pulsed along with it. He avoided thoughts of what the Union would attempt to do if he remained in their custody. He didn’t think about what he would do in retaliation to that. He also didn’t think about the last several weeks, or what had become of Elise Kavanagh.
Those weren’t calm, meditative thoughts. They were black. Vengeful.
He sighed and tried to clear his mind again.
The drugs must not have completely left his system, because he felt himself begin to sink into sleep. A face rose to the surface of his mind—a freckled face with a crooked nose, broad lips, and angry eyes.