Gremlin Night

by Dale Ivan Smith

  “The New York front office wants to speak with you. You are to report to the Brooklyn castle at once.”

  “We’re not finished here,” I said. “We need to search the place.”

  “Oh, we’re not finished, but you are,” she retorted, looking down her nose at me. “You need to take the teleportal to the Brooklyn castle. Enjoy the ride. I suspect it will be your last as a field agent.”

  2

  Teleportals are simple enough, a super-secret arcane way to jump between two cities in an instant. The vast majority of humanity had no idea dragons actually existed. That spells were real. They certainly didn’t know you could step through a dragon-crafted door in Peoria and wind up in Brooklyn a heartbeat later. Like my hippy grandmother would say, it would blow their minds.

  The teleportal opened into a small, windowless room with a pair of overly serious-looking guards in body armor, standing at a counter behind high-impact diamond-glass. Behind them a slender man in a bespoke suit wearing gold-framed glasses sat at a desk beside a closed door, reading a scroll. Kenji Akimoto. He looked up as the teleportal finished playing Vivaldi’s “Winter.”

  I waved a hand. Kenji adjusted his glasses, smiled at me.

  “State your name, please,” one of the guards ordered. He was a big white guy with a shaved head and a coiled serpent tattoo around his neck.

  I ignored him. “Hey, Kenji, I didn’t know you were here.”

  Kenji didn’t answer. I thought I detected a very slight headshake, but it was hard to tell at this distance.

  “Please state your name,” the guard repeated, stony face turning annoyed.

  His companion was an even bigger Polynesian-looking man. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

  “I know you,” I told him.

  He smiled for an instant, then went back to being impassive.

  “We can do this all night if you’d like,” the first guard said. “Please state your name.”

  “Elizabeth Anna Marquez.”

  He stared into a brass-rimmed glass magnifier on a brass arm set into the counter in front of him. “Please state your mother’s maiden name.” The magnifier made his eye appear huge.

  “You know who it is,” I said.

  “Ma’am, please state your mother’s maiden name.”

  Tweaking guards used to be more fun.

  “Fiona Kelly.”

  He nodded. “You may enter.” A bell rang. The familiar looking Polynesian guard tapped the counter in front of him. The diamond glass door swung open.

  It came to me. “Guardian Tua, isn’t it?” I asked him.

  Tua grinned. “That’s me.” The other guard gave him a dirty look, which he ignored. “Good to see you again, Sorcerer-Agent Marquez.”

  “You were at Sacramento last time I saw you.” That was a tiny R.U.N.E. office. A downer of an operation, with Tua being the one bright spot.

  He flashed white teeth. “Now I’m in the big time.” We both laughed.

  The other guard was doing his best impression of a stone troll. I didn’t want to get Tua in trouble.

  “Hang in there, Tua,” I said.

  “Always.” He leaned down, gesturing at the other guard. “Don’t worry about Michaels. He just needs more fiber in his diet.”

  I snorted.

  Kenji rose to greet me. “You’re in hot water again, Elizabeth.”

  I shrugged. “Some things never change.”

  He stepped closer, lowered his voice. He still limped. “I think it may be serious this time.”

  “It always is.”

  “Director Wu wants to see you in her office immediately upon your arrival,” he said.

  That wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. I needed to be debriefed after all. “Which is now. Got it.”

  Kenji bowed slightly. He was good man and an excellent sorcerer. He’d been a great field agent, too, until the Sapporo incident. He’d been an exchange officer when I met him after I’d graduated from the Academy.

  “Glad to see you here,” I said. “Hope you aren’t just stuck in this room the whole time.”

  He laughed softly. “All personnel must do a shift each week in the guard room. Including the Director.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Really.” He motioned at the door behind him. “She’s waiting.”

  “I’ll bet she is.” I opened the door. “Thanks, Kenji. See you around.”

  “I hope so.” He sounded sad.

  The Brooklyn castle was the staging area for R.U.N.E. operations in the greater New York area. The arrival room was below ground. The castle originally had been a stone keep built in the Middle Ages, then shipped to America in the early 1970s, when R.U.N.E. first set up shop. Dismantling a stone keep, transporting it on a ship and then reassembling it in Brooklyn didn’t come cheap. Fortunately, magic made it livable, and that was the twisted genius of the move—castles being stone made them more grounded, magically speaking.

  I took a winding stair, the narrow kind with high stone steps that were tripping hazards, up to the great hall on the ground level. Fancy woven tapestries hung on the stone walls. The tapestries had classic medieval scenes: a unicorn and a maiden, a knight and a dragon, a wizard in a tuxedo and top hat speaking with a troll in a three-piece suit. Okay, that last wasn’t medieval, it was a gift from another secret magical organization, and you don’t refuse those sorts of gifts. Not if you want to keep things together.

  The Aquarian Circle had given that particular tapestry to R.U.N.E. It was just the sort of thing my grandma and her friends would create. It reminded me of those eye-stabbing oil paintings you’d see at a pop-up roadside stand, it was that bad.

  Next to it was a plaque, engraved with a motto in four different languages: “Perception determines reality.” The languages were human, draconic, goblin, and elvish. I could read all of them, thanks to being forced by my mother’s instructions to the R.U.N.E. Academy. Most sorcerers read draconic, but the others didn’t really matter, since all manifestations spoke the language of the humans they’d coalesced around. All those extra classes ruined any hope of a love life when I was at the Academy.

  I shook my head. I didn’t have that much time now. I crossed to the stairs heading up to Wu’s office. Before I could reach the first step, a voice rang out cold and clear across the hall.

  “This way, Sorcerer Agent Marquez.” Director Wu waited, tall and imperious, near the departure rooms at the far end of the hall. She wore crisply pressed tan slacks, flats, and a high-collared red blouse under a narrow-waisted gray suit jacket. The silver R.U.N.E. director’s pentagram shone above her left breast.

  “I thought you’d debrief me in your office,” I said when I reached her. She briefed me there before the Peoria assignment. Being a short girl, I had to crane my neck to look up at her.

  “We’re going to cut to the chase this time.” She turned and led me to one of departure rooms. I couldn’t decide whether my heart should lift or sink at this. The teleportal could lead to my next assignment, or it could lead back to the Silos, or worse, the Library.

  The teleportal waited at the far end of the room, a pinewood door surrounded by a silver sculpture of a dragon. An office desk with accompanying manager’s high-backed chair behind it stood next to one wall. A pair of steel folding chairs that had seen better days faced the desk. Gorilla shelving lined the opposite wall, filled with boxes, crates and bins. A couple of guards flanked the teleportal. A man in a cardigan sweater and tweed slacks stood in front of the shelving, ticking off items on a list on his clipboard.

  Wu perched in the high-backed chair. She nodded at a folding chair. I took the hint and sat.

  Her gaze raked me. “You wore that to Peoria?”

  “Sure. I like black.” I always wore my motorcycle jacket, with the silver boot chain which came in handy when a manifestation wouldn’t do as told. My black tube top and black jeans matched it. Like I said before, I wish I’d have worn my Docs but they’d needed some repair a
fter the previous “temporary” assignment.

  Wu crossed her arms and shook her head. “We have much more appropriate fashion sets for you then “biker chick.” Her voice was sour.

  I waved my arms. “Field ops approved me,” I said.

  “Field ops needs to be spoken with.” We’d had this conversation at least a dozen times since I’d been put under her command, pending a permanent assignment. Apparently, she never tired of ragging on my fashion choices.

  Wu was a by-the-book sort. It hadn’t been fun getting lectured by her after I arrived from the Silos. Not just once, but a one-on-one six-week procedures course, three hours a day. Definitely not my idea of a fun time.

  I shrugged. “Our cover is a wacky non-profit,” I pointed out, which was stupid, because she knew all that. But hey, she started it. “We’re supposed to be investigating the folklore and fairy tales, right?” R.U.N.E.’s cover was Research for Unknown Native Ethnography, a private UNESCO-like-non-profit supposedly filled with starry-eyed, earnest “the truth is out there” types, rather than a private supernatural organization dedicated to keeping magic in line.

  “The cover is only to be used if local law enforcement or the media confront you, or it’s necessary for a particular mission. It wasn’t necessary here. A low profile was.” Her tone went acidic. “You broke your mission’s parameters in Peoria, Sorcerer-Agent Marquez. You ignored the orders of Sorcerer-Agent Kirk.”

  “Nancy and I were partners,” I said. “She’s not senior to me.”

  Wu tapped a slender finger for emphasis. “One, she’s senior to you in terms seniority—she’s worked for R.U.N.E. since before you were born. Two, she’s the agent-in-charge for this assignment. Three, you were temporarily attached to the Midwest office.”

  I repressed a shiver at the implication in the word temporarily.

  “We took down Burt,” I said. “That was the point of the exercise, wasn’t it?” The Midwest office had been after him for months, easy, from what I’d gathered. For a hulking brute, he’d been really hard to find. As usual, R.U.N.E. couldn’t muster enough agents to make a full sweep. There was always something else that needed attention, too.

  “You nearly turned a surveillance into a front-and-center disaster,” Wu snapped. “Six humans were killed, others wounded.”

  I looked away for an instant, stomach rolling “But they were all bad,” I replied, quoting a line from my mother’s favorite movie.

  “If you mean they were criminals working for a murderous manifestation, yes, but we are not, and I emphasize this in the starkest, most blindingly obvious fashion I can, so that even you will understand, we are not vigilantes. We are R.U.N.E. agents. Am I clear about this?”

  I felt about two inches tall right then, like I was back in the Academy and Maxwell Dark was pounding procedural law into us.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She tapped her fingers and gave me a hard look. “Both numbers could have been much higher, too.”

  “I freed six women from captivity.”

  She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “That you did. We would have swept the building after Burt had left.”

  “But what if he’d taken the women with him. Would you have followed?”

  “That’s why you and Kirk were on surveillance,” she said, tone acidic.

  “We were there. That was the time to act.”

  Wu bit back a reply, tapped her fingers together, slowly, as she regarded me.

  “Your reassignment to field work is on a probationary basis, Ms. Marquez. Tonight’s reckless behavior is more than enough to end it.”

  I kept my mouth shut. It had only been a month since I’d been back in the field.

  Her gaze could have made a dragon blink. “I’ll repeat myself. You are on probation in a field agent capacity. Despite any friends you might have in this organization, and any goodwill your actions in the Silos might have engendered, I can terminate your field assignment, and send you back to the Silos, permanently assigned to guard duty. Or even assign you to the Library.”

  I closed my eyes. Not the Library. I wasn’t the type to do research and compile records. The very idea made me want to leap into the Abyss.

  Wu sighed. It was a long, drawn out sigh, filled with regret, the kind of sigh that told the listener if things were different it would instead have been a sigh of satisfaction.

  I opened one eye. Wu shook her head.

  “You are very fortunate we need you in the field tonight.” She glanced at the old-style gold wristwatch with a slender maroon band she wore on her left wrist. “It’s only eight o’clock. Why is it trouble is always double on the longest night of the year?”

  I blinked. Wu quoting an old R.U.N.E. Academy saying? She didn’t seem the type to quote a saying about manifested mayhem being worse on Solstice.

  She pursed her lips. “By rights, despite the need, I should send you back to the Silos or give you a Library assignment. You left quite a mess in Peoria, Sorcerer-Agent.”

  I continued keeping my mouth closed, listening. Things were looking up.

  She cocked her head at me, obviously expected me to respond.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I intoned.

  “You could try sounding like you meant it,” Wu said. She stared sadly at the teleportal. “Needs must,” she whispered. She turned back to me, basilisk glare back.

  “You will stay in the field, for now. You’ll continue in a field agent capacity for tonight.”

  Tonight. I definitely wasn’t off the hook. Sure, it was the longest night of the year, but it was just one night.

  Wu looked at cardigan-sweater-clipboard-man. “Carter, would you please bring the paroled manifestation we discussed earlier?” She asked him.

  The man nodded. He went to an oak chest, bound with iron bands, and inserted a skeleton key in the lock. “Open,” he said. The lock clicked open. He raised the lid and reached inside, lifting what looked like a gunmetal cylinder about a foot long and brought it over.

  “Please give it to Sorcerer-Agent Marquez,” Wu ordered.

  He placed it in my arms. My sorcerer’s vision brought the object’s true nature into focus. The cylinder was actually a giant jade chrysalis, about a foot long. It was warm in my hands.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “A fly-by-night?”

  Wu nodded. “Yes.”

  Let me out, a voice said in my head.

  My eyes widened. “It’s awake.”

  “Yes, but bound in its chrysalis.” She paused, face expressionless. “Provided no one releases it.” She emphasized no one.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m transporting a criminal? Why isn’t it in the Silos?”

  Wu regarded me coolly. “Following instructions is part of being a good field agent, Marquez,” she said.

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t get to ask questions.” I wasn’t going to be played. R.U.N.E. agents had a duty to ask questions. Wu knew that.

  “Indeed,” Wu said. “This Class III manifestation does not have criminal status.”

  I crossed my arms. “But it’s in trouble, is that it?”

  “It has failed to register itself and as such has been bound for service.”

  Ah, that explained it. A Class III supernatural had existed long enough to become solid, but it wasn’t permanent, not yet. Manifestations needed a bit more time to become fully permanent, Class IV or above.

  The Laws of the Compact said that solid demi-permanents, Class III manifestations, that had failed to pledge those same laws were then bound to the service of sorcerers and wizards until such time as they had either earned their permanency or had been dissolved.

  “Whose service?” I asked.

  “Skyler Farlance, the Regional Director for the Pacific Northwest,” she replied. “The same regional director who you will be reporting to for tonight’s assignment.”

  My ears perked up at the name. I’d heard stories about Skyler Farlance. He was a second-order wizard, which put him way above me in magical ability. He’
d been involved in stopping the Black Ring’s assassination attempt on the United Nations five years ago. The word was he was a real lady-killer. The photos I’d seen of him showed a strikingly handsome and always sharply-dressed blond--movie star looks and apparently charisma to match.

  Rumor had it he’d had a dozen lovers in R.U.N.E., and more outside the agency.

  Rumor was often wrong. But everyone agreed he was an Adonis in a bespoke suit. Fine if you loved the chiseled, well-tailored type.

  He wasn’t my type.

  I liked tall, dark, handsome, and earthy. The kind with muscles, a quiet smile that made my toes curl. Now, that was the real deal.

  Wu frowned. “Are you paying attention, Sorcerer Marquez?” she asked, her voice suddenly even more stiff and formal.

  I blinked. My thoughts had strayed. “Yes, Director,” I said, struggling to get back to the briefing. It had been far too long since I’d had a date, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. I needed to prove I could I complete this assignment. I was mentally running in circles. Spending the past six months out of circulation, four of them helping guard a Gods-forsaken silo in the middle of North Dakota, had made me antsy for action.

  Wu’s gaze locked on mine. “Good, because you must always remember the first rule. You do remember the first rule, correct?”

  “Pay attention,” I replied automatically. Gods, she was channeling my first teacher, Wanda the Merciless.

  Wu nodded. “Very good, Sorcerer Agent. Take the sealed chrysalis and report to Regional Director Farlance. Follow his orders to the letter. Understood?”

  I nodded. Portland was better than Peoria, and way better than the Silos, but it wasn’t the big time, arcane speaking, in my book. Plus, I was from there, so it didn’t have the same appeal as the East Coast. I’d kill to get assigned to London, or Paris, but I’d settle for New York City.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying my best to sound like a professional who could indeed be assigned to New York City, London, Paris, or even Chicago. A little voice in the back of my head was saying I was screwed, but I didn’t know that. I told the voice to shut up and let me get on with this assignment, so that I could impress the powers that be. “What is my assignment?”