by SM Reine
Malcolm was the kind of guy who seemed better suited to crushing beer cans on his forehead at frat parties than Union leadership. Which meant, of course, that I liked him a hell of a lot. Never knew when you might need a beer can crushed against someone’s noggin.
“What do you think of the redecoration?” Malcolm asked brightly. We were riding on top of his tank as it trundled northeast out of Reno, heading for the Fernley Union base. There hadn’t been enough room for both of us in there with Fritz and the two unconscious people, so we’d volunteered to ride on top. Get a little fresh air, use any other brutes we passed as target practice.
“Redecoration? You mean…this?” I waved my AK-47 at the streets, craters, and crumbling debris swarming with nightmares.
Yes, they’d given me an AK-47.
Me. Of all people.
If Suzy had been capable of consciousness without blathering like a college student who’d taken too many mushrooms, she would have confiscated the gun in a heartbeat. She didn’t even trust me with the stapler we shared at our conjoined desks.
“I can see how it might look bad,” Malcolm said. “I do still have one eye.” He’d lost the other one in a fight with a chisav demon shortly before enlisting with the Union, or so he’d told me. Chisav demons: just as good for permanently disfiguring kopides as they were for illegal betting.
“I’m just amazed we kept the MOAD incident hidden from the general public as long as we did,” I said. “The media control team is good, but not ‘hiding the apocalypse from the world for a few days’ kinda good.”
“We hid it for almost a couple of weeks. Think that’s a Union record.”
The scariest, shittiest world record ever made.
Our tank crawled over a shattered freeway. In this part of town, the damage looked less like it had been eaten by the Mother of All Demons, and more like it had been deliberately blasted apart. There were none of the tunnels that that we’d seen south of town. And there were hundreds of cars stopped on the freeway. They hadn’t gotten blown up in the middle of an incident. They’d gotten stopped at barricades before people ditched their cars.
The Union must have destroyed the freeways. That seemed to fit our sick idea of damage control. Cutting Reno off from the surrounding world in more ways than one.
The tanks had some kind of flexible treads that rolled over the debris like it was nothing. I was barely bumped around on top. But anyone who had been trying to escape with, say, a minivan, three children, and the family dog would have been screwed.
I wondered how many people had been eaten by ichor-infected brutes because the Union hadn’t wanted them to escape.
And then I stopped wondering because that was a really unpleasant line of thought.
Now that we were heading out north on I-80, I had a good look at the mirror city from a distance. The clouds had parted around midday, and it was sunny as it would ever get. The thin winter sunlight had burned away the nightmare fog.
Even when it was bright outside, seeing a city of angelic ruins hanging over the Truckee Meadows made me feel like I had to be going insane.
No way could that be real.
Yet here I was on a tank with Commander Malcolm Gallagher, holding a fully automatic gun to my chest when, until recently, I hadn’t even been a fan of shooting handguns.
I wasn’t going insane. Reality had gone insane.
And it just kept getting crazier as we got further out of town.
The haze of nightmare demons thinned out even more. Shadows became actual shadows instead of sentient evil. Fewer of the buildings were ruined.
A tent city had been erected past John Ascuaga’s Nugget Casino. It was an endless sea of white canvas that hummed with magic. “Isn’t that lovely?” Malcolm asked. “Almost as cozy as keeping people in their condos downtown, but so much less convenient. FEMA helped us with that. FEMA and some witches, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I said.
“We’ve evacuated most folks who live in the Reno-Sparks area, but a lot of people have nowhere to go. And some of them are too stubborn to leave. These damn Nevadans! It’s the libertarian blood. Don’t trust the government at all—as well they shouldn’t.” He blinked at me with his one good eye. It was probably supposed to be a wink. That’s what I’d always assumed, anyway.
“Can’t imagine why they don’t trust us,” I muttered. After all, we were so helpful and cuddly and shit.
We had to trundle beyond Sparks for almost an hour to reach the base. Fritz had said it was in a town called Fernley, but it didn’t look like much of a town to me. More like a lonely gas station and some kind of wastewater treatment plant.
The base was a mile from the gas station, jammed into a warehouse complex that stood alone in the foothills. When I said alone, I really meant alone. Dirt in the back, dirt on either side, empty sky above.
It was all surrounded by electrified wire, as though there were something worth protecting in those drab, monolithic white buildings. The guard towers looked to have been hastily erected, so I guessed the fence had been, too. Those were aftermarket additions from the Union.
We didn’t have to deal with the men in the guard towers. Something about arriving in a convoy of ichor-splattered tanks seemed to serve as our security clearance.
Soon as we crossed through the gate, I started to sneeze.
Electrified wire wasn’t the only aftermarket addition to the warehouse.
“You okay?” Malcolm asked when I kept sneezing.
I’m allergic to magic. Yes, it’s the worst quirk for a witch to have, and no, I don’t think it’s as funny as my coworkers do.
My throat was all closed up so I couldn’t respond to Malcolm. I just nodded and kept on sneezing into my sleeve.
The tickle didn’t go away once we got clear of the fence, either. The magic was too strong. And it wasn’t just in the fence—it felt like it was all over that damn warehouse. Didn’t feel right, that magic. Felt six kinds of fucked up. But we were only a few miles from a recent demon apocalypse, surrounded by witches who’d been fighting, so I guess that was par for the course.
I managed to start breathing again by the time the tank pulled into the garage, which was conveniently sized to fit all the tanks the Union could want. Could have fit a few X-Wings too. That was what the whole place reminded me of: an Imperial hangar, filled with machines of death paid for with civilian taxes, and guarded by Stormtroopers.
Okay, kopides weren’t Stormtroopers.
But seriously.
With help, I pulled Fritz, Suzy, and our friend the pilot out of the tank. Malcolm had stretchers waiting for them. One of them was stained with blood.
“We’re short on supplies,” he said by way of apology when he caught my disgusted stare. “Been lots of need for medical care these days.” He whirled a finger through the air, indicating the doorway to the EMTs. “Get ‘em up to the med bay.”
“Hope you’ve got enough dark chocolate to deal with the aftermath of the Dementors,” I said.
I didn’t expect Malcolm to understand the reference, but he laughed, slapping a knee.
I liked the guy for a lot of reasons, and not just those of the beer-forehead-crushing persuasion.
“We’ll get you settled in, eh?” Malcolm asked, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Make sure you get all kinds of cozy, just in case the investigation’s gonna take a while.”
I shot a sideways look at him. It was unsettling to have a Union commander—even one as friendly as Malcolm—aware of my internal investigation. I wasn’t used to operating in that capacity when everybody knew about it.
If Malcolm knew, then everyone must have known.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I just need to collect information about the MOAD incident to present to the vice president. I won’t be here long and I don’t need an entire room.”
Malcolm patted my shoulder. “Mate, Lucrezia de Angel-tits isn’t scheduled to arrive for a month.”
My jaw dropped.
“A month?” A beat after that, I added, “Angel-tits?”
“Dangerous women are hot. What can I say?”
He was fucking insane. But he did get me curious. “Have you hooked up with her? Does she have teeth all up in her business?”
“A gentleman never tells,” Malcolm said, steering me through the garage. He took me in the opposite direction that the stretchers had gone. “I’m not a gentleman, but I’m also too sober to chat ladies at the moment. In any case, you’ll want to settle into your room. I hear you’re aspis for Director Friederling now, so you get to stay in the penthouse suite.”
I eyed all the stark metal walkways, the tanks, the gun racks. “Penthouse, huh?”
“Nearest thing we have,” he said. “I’ll have Gary take you. Gary Zettel. Remember him?”
I wished I didn’t. “Can’t wait to see his shining face. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna jump right into the investigation. I’ll settle down later.”
“You’ll work yourself to death,” Malcolm said.
Working myself to death was exactly what I was afraid of.
Someone called Malcolm’s name. There was saluting involved. It was a kopis working over by a BearCat—one of those big assault vehicles that looked like the offspring of a drunken tryst between a tank and a Jeep.
“Sorry mate, duty calls,” Malcolm said. He jogged toward the voice.
I’d been all fired up to dig into the investigation—all the better to finish investigating and leave ASAP—but once he was gone, I felt lost and overwhelmed among all the Union equipment. I was truly in the belly of the beast. Cubeville was more my speed, not navigating the tides of armed men running in formation.
As much as I disliked Gary Zettel, I should have taken Malcolm’s offer to have him show me to my room. He also would have been able to give me a tour of the base.
It might have been better to give myself a tour. After all, I had Fritz-level security clearance now, and he was Director of the Magical Violations Department. In theory, I should have been able to go anywhere I wanted, even places that a rank-and-file kopis wouldn’t have been able to go.
The problem was that I didn’t know where to begin finding people who might be responsible for the MOAD incident.
Everywhere I looked, there were kopides and aspides who’d been fighting on the front lines. People who were still healing from broken bones. People with demon bites and bullet wounds.
Pawns in the inter-organizational politics between the Union and OPA.
“No pressure, Hawke,” I muttered.
I settled for heading in the direction that the stretchers had been taken.
It was easy to find the medical bay because it took up half the ground floor of the main warehouse building. Malcolm hadn’t been kidding about how stretched our resources were. Just peering through the doors, I glimpsed dozens of beds, all occupied. And not nearly enough staff to take care of those people.
Another stretcher squealed past me, pushed by a single witch. It didn’t enter the medical bay, which made sense—there would have been no point in taking a dead body in there.
This wasn’t just any dead body, though. The whole thing was made of the same demon obsidian as the ethereal city. The man was frozen into a contorted position, like he’d died gasping.
That was something I could have lived my entire life without seeing.
The witch pushed the body through a different set of double doors. When they swung open, I saw another familiar face: Bellamy, Malcolm’s aspis.
I followed the body into the room.
There were no beds in this area. Just shelves. Lots of shelves. Every single one was occupied by an obsidian corpse. Bellamy was walking among the shelves with a notebook, as if taking inventory.
“Hey,” I said, jogging to his side. He helped move the new body onto a new shelf.
“Agent Hawke,” Bellamy said. “I didn’t know you were assigned here.”
“Neither did I, until this morning,” I said.
“Good to have you with the team.” Bellamy was the opposite of Malcolm: sedate, well dressed, cogent. He’d been assigned as Malcolm’s aspis in some desperate attempt to make the seasoned kopis act like an adult, but it hadn’t worked.
I was happy to see him, though. If anyone knew what had been happening in Reno, it would be the sober guy partnered to the drunken commander. I pulled a small Steno pad out of my jacket’s inner pocket, tugged the pen out of the coils. “Got a minute to talk to me?”
Bellamy looked like he wanted to refuse, but he was too professional for that. He finished sliding the body onto the shelf and stood at attention. “How can I help you, Agent Hawke?”
“Lucrezia de Angelis wants me to give her a report on how the MOAD incident was handled. Since you’re Malcolm’s aspis, I hoped you’d have some insights for me,” I said.
“What do you already know?”
I lifted my pen. “This is the Mother of all Demons.” I lifted the notebook. “This is Reno.” I crashed them together, making explosion noises and tiny screams, like my notebook was dying.
Bellamy’s mouth thinned. “Yes, that’s basically what happened.”
“Who ordered the destruction of the freeways around Reno’s perimeter?” I asked.
He went from annoyed to interested instantly. “Who told you about that?”
“I saw it when I came in. Doesn’t take a tip-off to figure out what happened.”
“The order came from on high—likely the same person who has you investigating the MOAD incident,” Bellamy said. “We delayed destruction of travel routes as long as possible and escorted many thousands of civilians safely to camps.”
“So it was usual PR control,” I said. “Trying to keep the outside world from learning what was going on firsthand. Did we fry the cell towers too?”
He nodded. “A necessary evil.”
We might have had different definitions of “necessary.” I jotted down a couple of notes, along with a frowny-face doodle, then gestured at the bodies on the shelves. “How did this happen?”
“A variety of ways. All it took was a single bite from an infected demon, or a scratch from an object recently infected by ichor,” Bellamy said. He lifted a hand as though to delay more questions from me. “Don’t worry. It’s under control. We’re still recovering bodies, but there are no new ichor infections. The spread ended when the Mother of All Demons was terminated.”
I drew another frowning face. “You mean the infected brutes aren’t biting anyone?”
“What infected brutes?”
“The ones that just tried to kill me when my chopper landed unexpectedly downtown,” I said.
This seemed to be news to Bellamy. He rocked back on his heels, blowing a breath out of his mouth. “That’s quite the allegation you’re making, Agent Hawke. My understanding is that the only demons remaining in the Reno-Sparks territory are natives—survivors of the apocalypse.”
“You can ask Malcolm if you don’t believe me. He saw them too.”
Bellamy gave a short laugh. “If you plan to use his testimony in your report, I’ll give you fair warning right now—don’t bother. He’s been making a lot of egregious, unsubstantiated claims. At this point, he’s filed enough reports while under the influence that everything he reports goes directly into the shredder.”
“Under the influence of what, exactly?” I knew that Malcolm was an alcoholic, but that sounded more serious.
Bellamy looked uncomfortable. “I prefer not to discuss this, actually.”
“Can’t imagine why,” I said. The fate of a kopis and his aspis were intertwined, so Bellamy was caboose on whatever train Malcolm was driving straight into the side of a mountain.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to give you the kind of information you want, Agent Hawke,” he said, “and I have a lot of work to do organizing these bodies. We’re trying to interview everyone by the end of the week.”
I blinked. “Interview?”
“Yes, the bodies,” Be
llamy said.
He walked around one of the shelves, and I realized that we weren’t alone.
There was somebody walking among all the dead permanently entombed in obsidian. Someone who I recognized even more readily than Bellamy.
It was Isobel Stonecrow.
Seeing Isobel in Reno—far from her usual stomping grounds of Southern California—wasn’t exactly a pleasant shock, since one might say we had a history. If you could call the long, naked weekend we’d spent together a history. Few months of flirting, few hours of doing the horizontal mambo, and that had been the end of it.
Now she was going to marry Fritz Friederling. You know, my kopis on the stretcher getting wheeled to the med bay who wanted me to attend their wedding.
I’d have kinda preferred to see the Mother of All Demons.
I doubted the Mother of All Demons would have been anywhere near as pleasant to the eyeballs as Isobel, though. Nobody was.
Even when Isobel was dressed in her idea of business casual, she was wearing a blouse cut low enough to show the inner swell of her breasts. Her waist was belted in to the rough circumference of my joined hands, and her hips…don’t even get me started on her hips. Or her thighs. All those long, creamy inches of thigh bared by the slits in her skirt, which almost went up to the aforementioned waist.
Not professional. Not professional at all.
But when you’re the fiancée of the director who runs the Magical Violations Department, and also happen to be a one-of-a-kind necrocognitive, you can wear anything you want.
“You’re interviewing bodies,” I said.
Isobel managed a small smile. “I’m the only one who can do it. They still have their souls…attached.” She trailed a finger along the rigid sleeve of one of the cadavers.
Bellamy checked his watch. “I need to take my lunch break, but I’ll be back for more interviews in an hour, Miss Stonecrow.”
“Can’t wait,” she said.
The aspis left, and we were alone.
Very alone.
“Where’s Fritz?” Isobel asked, glancing around as though she expected to see him around a nearby corner.