A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  “That’s her,” Patrick said softly.

  Tasha started to pull the sheet back up, but Patrick reached out swiftly, grabbing it from her. Tasha’s eyes widened as she touched Patrick’s hand momentarily, and then she jerked away, as if he’d burned her.

  “I need to see the rest of her.”

  She frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea . . .”

  “I need to.” His eyes were black beneath the fluorescent lights.

  Tasha looked at me helplessly. All I could do was nod.

  Slowly, Patrick tugged the sheet down. It was clear that Tasha hadn’t had the chance to repair the rest of Caitlin’s body so thoroughly. Her right arm was still missing at the elbow, and her left leg was criss-crossed with horrible gouges. She was naked, of course, and I saw for the first time that her genitals were untouched—smooth, unblemished skin and a triangle of pale red hair. That discounted any theories about her murder being psychosexual, which still left us with questions about why Henry alone had been so viciously raped.

  I wanted to cover up her lower half, but Patrick didn’t seem to be dwelling on it. Gently, he reached out and touched the white pit of her neck, above her right clavicle. The same spot where Lucian’s tattoo flared. What was it about that spot?

  Smoothly, as if it were the most natural thing in the word, Patrick reached down and pressed his lips to Caitlin’s neck. I felt something unravel in the air—a current of power suddenly swirling to life around us, dark and resinous, as if someone had locked the entire room in amber. When Patrick stood up, his eyes were a shade of yellow that I’d seen only once. The eyes of an arctic wolf.

  An impossible shudder passed through Caitlin’s body. The spot where Patrick’s lips had touched her began to smoke, glowing red. Then she simply . . . dissolved. It was like every bone and muscle in her body gave a great, heaving sigh, and then fell apart. Her flesh crumbled, her bones shivered and desiccated, right on the table. Within seconds, there was only a dark stain left.

  Patrick blinked. His eyes had returned to their usual shade of brown.

  “We can go now,” he said simply.

  Tasha looked horrified and speechless.

  “Okay, Patrick.” My hand hovered just above his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Lucian stared at the empty table for a second. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but his face was hard.

  Then we filed out of the morgue—two adults on either side of a tall, pale boy, each of us keeping our distance, suddenly afraid to touch him.

  A page from Selena forced us to change direction, and we found ourselves heading toward the ballistics lab instead of the break room. I was surprised to find a crowd standing outside the entrance to the lab. Derrick leaned against the glass partition with Miles standing next to him. Mia stood a bit off to the side, talking to an indistinct figure in a gray hooded sweatshirt. The figure turned, and I saw that it was Wolfie. Lucian had come through. He smirked at me, and I nodded.

  And now we were seven. It was a good number. Seven deadly sins, seven samurai, 7-Eleven. It seemed to fit.

  “She paged you, too?” Derrick asked.

  I nodded. “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Nope.”

  Selena emerged from the ballistics lab. She crooked her finger. “Come in. All of you. And don’t touch anything unless Linus says it’s okay first.”

  “I get to see the weapons?” Mia looked awed.

  “From a distance,” Selena said firmly. “Although we do have some protective gear for you. Linus picked it out special.”

  “Awesome,” she whispered.

  Great. Selena had just become her new favorite person.

  We all crowded into the ballistics lab, standing dutifully next to the steel counters and GSR-testing equipment. A water tank stood in the middle of the room, which was used for test-firing ammunition, as well as a block of yellow ballistics gel for measuring impact velocity. It wiggled like Jell-O. Mia reached out to touch it, but Selena shook her head. Silently, she put her hand down, looking at the floor.

  Linus looked up from a comparison microscope and grinned at us. He’d put on a little weight, but it looked good on him. His cheeks were fuller, and he’d started to grow a beard, which made him look bearish but also kind of jovial. Santa Claus with a Sig Sauer. I briefly thought of that scene from Scrooged, where Santa has to defend his workshop with a semiautomatic. It was hard to keep a straight face.

  “Hi, everyone!” I don’t think I’d ever seen Linus this excited before. He was normally so bland and wry-humored, but now his eyes glowed almost feverishly. He didn’t usually interact with this many people.

  “Is there a party that I didn’t know about?” I asked Selena blankly.

  She smiled. “Of sorts. Linus and I have been talking, and we think it’s in all your best interests to give you some tactical equipment.”

  “Freakin’ sweet,” Mia exclaimed, although her voice was still soft.

  Selena raised a hand. “Understand that this is a direct reflection of the CORE’s interest in your case. The higher-ups have okayed the insurance cost of dispensing some of our more expensive tactical pieces. The trade-off is that you don’t get to run into any abandoned warehouses with guns blazing. This is an official operation, and we’re going to do it according to policy. That mean’s you’ll be monitored at all times.”

  “You’re the boss of us,” I confirmed.

  Her eyes grazed me. “That’s right, Tess. We’ll be in constant contact with wireless headsets. We’ll be watching your team from every angle. If things get too hot and I say the word, you disengage. No questions. Got it?”

  I nodded solemnly. I’d never had the CORE fully backing me on an operation before. It was exhilarating, but also scary. Dozens of eyes would be watching me, waiting for me to shoot myself in the foot. Literally.

  “We’re a team?” Patrick asked. There was a note of cold humor in his voice. Even though his eyes had returned to their normal color, I still thought I could see flecks of gold inside them.

  “Two teams, actually,” Selena clarified. “Alpha team will be our offensive group. That’s Tess, Lucian, and Wolfie.”

  Wolfie looked up in surprise as she said his name. “For real?”

  “Duessa called me this morning to vouch for you. So you’re in. Just follow my orders and don’t do anything stupid.”

  That must have been why Lucian was meeting with Duessa. I gave him a surprised look. He merely winked at me.

  “Okay.” Wolfie braced himself against the steel counter. He was nervous, but I could see the flush of excitement on his face. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Beta team,” Selena continued, “is Derrick, Miles, and Patrick. Derrick will run as much interference as possible with his abilities, and Miles will act as our point man, reading the space for us. Patrick, you’ll stay with them at all times and act as a communiqué. Your job will be to watch their blind spots, see what they can’t. And if something doesn’t look right, you tell me right away. Got it?”

  Patrick nodded. “Sure.” His voice cracked a little. “I can do that.”

  I knew that Selena was making his responsibility sound far more active than it really was. In essence, she was putting him between Miles and Derrick so that the two could keep an eye on him. She knew that he was much more likely to get into trouble on the sidelines, especially if he got restless and decided to go hunting. This way, he was in the action, but still protected.

  “I’ve got faith in you.” She held his gaze. “You’ve had a real tough couple of days, but I know that you’re strong. And the worst will be over soon.”

  He simply nodded. But I could see the flash of pride in his eyes. I’d never known Selena to be this gentle before. She had a way with teenagers. Maybe I should ask her to start hanging out with Mia.

  As if on cue, Mia stepped forward. “Selena? What about me?”

  “Are you kidding?” Selena grinned. “You’re the linchpin, kid. You’ll be in the mobile
HQ, monitoring all the cameras and radios. That’s six video screens with nonstop action, and you’ll see all of it, like nobody else can. Your eyes are probably sharper than mine, so I’ll be relying on you to catch what I miss.”

  Before Mia could reply, Selena reached into her pocket and withdrew something that looked like a tiny flashlight. It was a black cylinder with a blinking red button.

  “This is the kill switch,” she said. “It’s connected to every headset and every pager. If you see something that looks wrong, all you have to do is press this button, and everyone will get the signal to abort.” She placed it in Mia’s hand. “You’ve got control over the entire operation.”

  For a second, I thought Mia might see through the ruse. The “kill switch” was probably just a laser pen that Linus had rigged with a flashing LED light.

  But Mia’s expression was undeniably solemn as her fingers closed around the black cylinder. She held it close. “Thanks, Selena,” she whispered.

  Selena nodded. “You’ve dealt with a lot of crazy stuff in the last year, and you’ve proven that you’re solid. I trust you, Mia.”

  She blushed slightly. “Thank you. This rocks.”

  Man. Selena was much better than I gave her credit for sometimes.

  She turned to Linus. “Are we ready for the tour?”

  He was already smiling. “Step right up, folks.” He walked over to the reinforced steel door of the weapons vault, set in the far corner of the lab. “Few people ever get a chance to see this place. I think you’ll like it.”

  He withdrew a keycard and swiped it through a reader on the door. Selena did the same with her own keycard. The computer processed their biometrics, humming for a moment. I heard the loud bang of the steel tumblers moving, and then the door to the vault swung open. Cold, stale air rushed out of the entranceway.

  We all followed Linus down a flight of steel steps that led to the subterranean weapons and tactical equipment locker. He stepped confidently through the dim blue light provided by overhead panels, while the rest of us gripped the cold handrails, trying not to stumble. After we’d gone about three stories underground, we came to a Plexiglas door. Blue light shimmered in lines around it. Electrical materia flows. Not the kind of security system you wanted to tamper with.

  Linus waved his hand over an invisible sensor, and the door slid open. Lights flickered silently on past the entrance, revealing a vast room—walled entirely in steel—that was roughly the size of a hotel lobby. There were no shelves or pedestals. Every piece of equipment was magnetically affixed to the walls, and locked sliding drawers lined the sides, no doubt filled with more dangerous and fascinating things.

  “Impressive,” Lucian murmured.

  Linus inclined his head. “Thanks.”

  Mia peered at a cluster of subcompact, semiautomatic pistols. Several of them had modified triggers, light sights, and other extras.

  “Guess I don’t get one of these,” she said.

  I couldn’t tell if there was relief or disappointment in her voice.

  “We’re not in the business of arming kids,” Selena said. “Besides, some of those triggers require almost twenty pounds of force to pull them. The kickback would only end up hurting you. And then you couldn’t be our eyes and ears.”

  “Yeah.” She looked away from the gleaming sidearms. “That’s true.”

  I breathed a colossal sigh of relief. Mia would never touch a loaded gun—not on my watch. I cringed whenever she picked up a knife to chop fruit.

  “What about me?” Patrick asked. He didn’t sound eager. Just curious, as if Linus were handing out free suckers.

  “No guns for you either,” Selena said firmly. “But you’ll be well protected, don’t worry. Linus has some more useful equipment for you.”

  As if on cue, Linus pulled out one of the drawers. He withdrew a leather and nylon harness with green, flexible plates of armor affixed to it.

  “This is a STRIKE Cutaway Ballistic Vest,” he said, holding it up so that Patrick could get a closer look. Linus adopted a hushed, almost sacred tone, and I realized that this was what he loved more than anything: explaining tactical equipment. “It’s light—barely three and a half pounds—and has removable soft plating with overlapping side coverage. The armor’s made from woven aramid, which is a rigid composite of polyester and titanium filaments with a polyamide resin matrix.” He stroked the surface of the plates. “The strands of aramid elongate when they’re exposed to heat, and they can withstand the shock of heavy-duty fragmentation rounds. It offers the best blunt trauma protection for its weight and size, which includes materia decompression and sonic blasts.”

  Patrick looked a little speechless.

  “It’s even got a five-year warranty,” Linus said, grinning. “I’ll show you how easy it is to put on in a minute. For now, I’ve also got this for you . . .” He scanned a wall of knives, and I imagined his brain classifying and weighing each blade. Then he snatched a fixed blade that was slightly curved. He handed it gently, hilt first, to Patrick, who took it with an expression bordering on wonderment.

  “This is a Nightwing fixed blade,” Linus explained. “It’s very sharp, so keep it in the holster at all times. You’re only to use it for emergencies. Got it?”

  Patrick nodded slowly.

  “The Nightwing is awesome,” he gushed, the responsible tone vanishing from his voice as plain excitement took hold. “It’s ground from S30-V stainless steel, and has an ergonomic handle that’s easy to grip, even if you’ve never held a knife before. The blade is five point nine inches long, and has adjustable spines with a black tungsten coating. If you’re going to use it . . .” He carefully wrapped Patrick’s fingers around the hilt. “Keep your whole hand under the metal tang, for protection. Slash with it downward, and keep your grip firm. Don’t just swing it around wildly.”

  “I’ll try to remember,” Patrick murmured. I caught a definite note of fear in his voice. The seventeen-year-old kid had replaced the vampire, which relieved me a bit. Hopefully, that hesitation would keep him alive. Or as “alive” as he’d ever be.

  “As for the rest of you . . .” Linus’s enthusiasm was infectious. “All I can say is, I am sooo jealous.”

  “Let’s hurry this along,” Selena warned. “There isn’t time for show and tell.”

  Linus reached for a pistol and handed it to me. “This is for you, Tess.”

  “I already have a gun.”

  “But not this gun.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get too hard describing it to me, Linus. Selena’s right. We’re kind of pressed for time here.”

  He had the decency to blush, but was undeterred in his exposition. “This is a Glock forty-five subcompact, tactical issue. It weighs barely twenty-five ounces, even when loaded, and the trigger needs less than five pounds of pressure. The magazine—”

  “Is expanded to hold ten rounds instead of the standard six,” I interrupted him smoothly, grabbing the pistol. “It’s front-sighted, and six point three inches long with a one point eighteen inch barrel width. It’s also got a tactical light and speed-loader cartridge.” I flicked the ejector port, and the ammo pack dropped into my left hand. “Hey, are these hollow points? I was expecting Glazer rounds.”

  Linus looked on the verge of sulking—I’d ruined his description. “They’re filled with a liquid materia polymer,” he said, “under high pressure. The copper jacket is designed to shred when it hits anything semisolid, including the sort of magnetic aura that a noncorporeal creature might exude. When the round separates, it releases a burst of thermal materia that will instantly combust.”

  “Magic napalm,” I said. “Very cool.”

  He let go of the gun, a little unwillingly. “It’s got a night sight, too,” he mumbled, “and the grip is specially designed so that you can hold it with your athame. It’s also been retrofit with a biometric sensor, which prevents anyone but you from firing it.”

  I holstered the Glock. “I still prefer my athame. But this
’ll be handy if I find myself in a real FUBAR situation.”

  “What about me?” Derrick asked. “What do I get?”

  Linus grinned. “Oh, man. You’re gonna lose it when you see this.” He reached into another drawer and pulled out a second pistol. This one was made entirely of carbon blue steel, and Derrick whistled when he saw it.

  “This is a Glock, too,” Linus explained, “but it’s the G34 model, which has a slightly longer barrel for improved accuracy.” This was a nice way of saying that Derrick couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. “That’s not what’s really special about this baby, though. Here. Hold it.” He gave the pistol to Derrick. “Tell me how it feels.”

  Derrick slid his hand around the grip. I felt a flicker of something—very subtle, but still present, like a whisper of power—and his eyes widened.

  “Does this have dendrite materia in it?” he whispered.

  “Dendrite materia is too unstable to isolate. But it does have a transdermal sensor on the grip. The sensor emits radio waves at an extremely high frequency—over four hundred GHz, at the far end of the microwave spectrum and well above the audible human range—but telepaths like yourself can pick them up, as long as you’re within ten millimeters of the pistol itself.”

  “So I have—what—a psychic uplink with this gun?”

  Linus nodded. “It’ll calibrate itself to your synaptic patterns. If you concentrate, you’ll be able to aim it with your thoughts. Do it right, and every shot will be ninety-nine point nine percent accurate, give or take a brainwave.”

  Derrick cradled the gun. “Sweet,” he whispered.