"Any car with a computer? Even our Tesla?"
"Any car with computer-controlled systems."
An older model car pulled up behind us, driven by a white-haired African-American man. He got out with the shuffle I associated with arthritis. Was he part of the assassination team?
"Are you folks okay?" he asked as he approached. No scent of duplicity; just a decent man trying to help.
Mike said, "Thanks for stopping. We had an accident. That SUV hit us and knocked us off the road. When we got out to exchange information, the guys ran to another vehicle and drove away."
The man eyed the trashed SUV. "Damn, I think they got the worst of it. That Tesla must be built like a tank."
"Tank or not," said Mike, "this one's not going anywhere soon. I need to take my friend to the hospital to get checked out."
"I can give you a ride to the nearest clinic, or I can call 911 for you."
"Let me buy your car," I said. "How much do you want for it?"
He looked at me as if the crash had rattled my brain. "Lady, my car's only worth about a grand, and I need it for work. Let me call you a taxi."
"I'll give you twenty for your car."
"Twenty dollars? She's not worth much, but she's worth a lot more than—"
"Twenty thousand dollars," I said. I pulled the wad of cash from my purse and riffled the stack of hundred-dollar bills.
He licked his lips and stared. "That can't be real, can it?"
"It's real money and I'm in a real hurry," I said.
"What's your name, sir?" asked Mike.
"Jenkins."
"Mr. Jenkins, trust me. The money is real. This is Las Vegas; crazy things happen here," said Mike.
Mike took the money from me and pressed it into Mr. Jenkins' hands. He examined the bills closely, rubbing the paper and sniffing the ink.
"Do we have a deal, Mr. Jenkins?" I asked.
"Are you folks in trouble with the law? Are the police going to take this away from me? I got grandkids to take care of."
"No, the police aren't after us," I said. "In fact, the sergeant in charge of the Las Vegas SWAT team is a close friend of mine."
Mr. Jenkins thought for a moment, then decided. "Okay, I'll sell you my car. I've got the title in the glove box."
In a few minutes, we had written a bill of sale for the purchase of a 2006 Hyundai Sonata for the price of fifteen hundred dollars, and we had signed the title over.
"The extra eighteen-five can be considered a delivery fee," I said with a laugh. “No sense giving the tax man a cut of that.”
Mr. Jenkins was typing on his phone, calling a cab to pick him up. The sight of the phone gave me an idea. I pulled out and activated one of my coins.
"Mr. Jenkins, do you know what this is?" I asked as I handed it to him.
He weighed the coin in his hand. "It looks like gold."
"It is—real gold," I said. "It's also more valuable as a marker than as gold."
"A marker? It's not a casino chip." He suddenly looked suspicious and tried to hand the coin back. "I just want the money; I don't want a marker."
"Oh, no! Mr. Jenkins, you keep the money; the marker is a gift."
Mike said, "It's like bitcoin. There's an app that can tell you how much it's worth."
"My grandson lost five grand on bitcoin a few years back."
"Even if it's worthless, it's still gold. Keep it as a souvenir," I said. "You can also use it if you or your family ever need treatment at our hospital."
"Hospital?"
I handed him my card from the hospital, the one with CEO in big letters. "Yes, our hospital. Show up with this and the coin and you'll receive free treatment."
He still looked dubious. Mike said, "Even if the marker is a fake, you'll have a great story to tell. Plus, you've got the cash."
While they talked, I put the base decal on the front bumper of my new car, using a flash of heat to fuse it to the plastic.
A taxi pulled up behind the Sonata and honked. I gave Mr. Jenkins a hug. "Thank you for helping us out. Bless you."
Mike shook his hand, and he entered the taxi and left. Then Mike waved the key to the car and said, "I think I should drive."
Inside the car, from the passenger seat, I complained, "The accident wasn't my fault. They attacked us."
Mike shook his head. "It's not that, Luna. I want you to be on the lookout for any more black SUVs."
"Hmph. Okay."
"Where do you want to go? To the hospital to get checked out?"
"Hell no!" I said. "We're going to Nellis to find those assholes and make sure they never bother us again."
"Are you sure you don't want your pack with you when we go? It's a military base with lots of armed guards."
"No. This needs to be surgical, not a massacre. My full pack would kill everyone on the base."
"You're the boss, Luna. I'm glad you're not going to kill a lot of people."
I crossed my arms. "A lot of people are going to die. But only those responsible."
19
The fake IDs, the decal, and Mike's obvious military haircut and demeanor made it easy to get onto the base.
Getting into the secure area was a different story. We pulled up to an area sectioned off by a twelve-foot-tall double fence. There was a clear area between the fences, about twelve feet across. They had strung coils of razor wire over each fence.
I stuck my head out of the window as we pulled up to the gate, catching a whiff of the SUV attackers. I pulled back at my inner wolf like a nagging conscience. She wanted to tear into that fence and hunt down the attackers that had dared endanger the cubs.
I zapped the cameras aimed at us before they could get a look at our faces.
There were two Marine guards at the gate, one standing in front of a massive steel wedge barrier inset into the pavement, and the second inside a guard shack behind a bulletproof window. That guard stared at us with the glazed look of a sociopath.
The outer guard was about five-six and built like a tank, huge biceps straining the fabric of his uniform sleeves. His name-tag read Sanchez.
"Corporal Sanchez," said Mike, "how you doing? We've got an appointment inside with the colonel."
"Do I know you, sir?" asked Sanchez as he looked at our ID cards.
"Yeah. We used to lift together at the gym on base. I was with the SEAL team."
"I remember you. I heard you got in a fight with your team and all of you ended up in the hospital." Sanchez scanned the bar-codes on our cards, receiving a green light.
"Yeah, well, it wasn't really my team, and it wasn't much of a fight—"
An alert beeped on the corporal's scanner. "Sorry, even though I know you and your IDs are valid, you're not on the access list. You can't come in."
"Are you sure? We have an appointment. Maybe we could call from your guard shack?"
"I'm sure. Drive back to the main area and resubmit your visit request."
I took a deep breath and cast a spell around the corporal's head. The opposite of my oxygen mask spell, this spell removed all the oxygen from around a person's head. It would usually leave them unconscious in about thirty seconds.
I tried to cast the same spell around the second guard, but the combination of distance, the intervening steel, and bulletproof glass made it impossible.
The corporal's eyes unfocused and he staggered. Mike and I exited the car. Mike put his hand on the corporal's shoulder and said loudly enough for the other guard to hear, "Hey, buddy. You look sick. Want me to call 911?"
I stepped around the car and approached the guard shack. The guard came out with his weapon aimed at me. Juggling spells, I completed the one that rendered the primer in cartridges inert while keeping the other guard wrapped in nitrogen.
"I think your friend is sick or something. Do you want to call 911?"
"Halt!" he said.
"Hey, you wouldn't shoot a pregnant woman, would you?" I took a step closer.
Click! The guard cycled the action on
the rifle and pulled the trigger again.
Another dud. "Hey!" I protested. "What kind of monster shoots at a pregnant woman?"
"I'd shoot my mother if she tried to enter here." He was fumbling with his weapon, unable to clear the jammed dud round.
He threw the rifle down and pulled a .45. I was now only two steps away from him. The scent of adrenaline swept from him. Adrenaline, but no fear. He still thought the pregnant woman was no threat. His eyes flicked to Mike, who was kneeling beside the other guard.
I almost felt sorry for him. Then the .45 clicked on a dud and he cycled the action to reload and tried again.
"You're a persistent little bastard," I said. I extended my claws and shifted my jaw to fangs. No more talking until this was done.
There was the scent of fear. Followed by the scent of blood. Blood sheeted over the poured-concrete wall of the guard shack and he fell to the ground. I had to hold back from ravaging his corpse, only succeeding because I promised my wolf's side that the real attackers were inside the building.
I spun at a noise behind me. Mike was dragging the unconscious guard toward the guard shack with one hand. In his other hand he held the guard's rifle.
Mike froze at the sight of my fangs and claws. I shifted them back to human to ask, "What the hell are you doing? Leave him there!"
"No, Luna. He's just a Marine doing his job." Mike nodded to the corpse. "That one tried to shoot us with no excuse and got what he deserved. We were lucky his rifle jammed—"
"His weapons didn't 'jam,'" I said. "I zapped them with a spell to inactivate the primers."
I pointed at the M-16 in his hand. "Throw that away, it's useless without ammo."
Mike shook his head. "It might come in handy. I'll keep it to scare people. I don't have fangs like you."
"Whatever. Let's get going," I said.
"I'm going to cuff this guy and put him inside the guard shack."
Impatient, I reached down and grabbed the front of the guard's shirt, lifting him as if he was a bag of groceries. Mike opened the door to the shack, and I tossed the man inside.
I released the spell that had rendered the guard unconscious. While Mike was cuffing him with his own cuffs, his eyes started blinking, and his head jerked.
"Good, he's waking up. Poor guy must have a heart condition or something to pass out like that," said Mike.
"Mike, I zapped him with a spell to knock him out."
"I didn't know you could do that," Mike said. He looked outside at the corpse and turned to me, obviously wondering why I hadn't zapped both guards.
"He was too far away and I can't juggle many spells at once," I said.
"Just how many tricks do you know?" asked Mike.
"I can do a lot more than that. We don't have time right now to go over just what I can do."
"I don't need to know everything. But I need to know if you can get us into and out of that building."
"I can get us in," I said.
Mike froze at the incomplete answer, then stood. "That's good enough for me. I swore to follow you."
In less than a minute, we were facing a solid steel door with a scanner and keypad beside it. The door had a large handle with a key mechanism underneath.
"Should have brought some C4," muttered Mike, reminding me of Logan. "Can you rip the door off?"
"Maybe, but it would take time we don't have." In the distance, the sound of sirens approaching drifted in.
"How about the electronic lock? You have some spell to zap that open?"
I reached out and hit the electronic lock with a lightning bolt. The display blanked out, followed by the sound of extra bolts inside the door shooting into the steel frame, locking the door down tighter than before.
"Oops. That didn't work out like I planned. Mason's the one who can open doors with magic."
I closed my eyes and thought. Maybe the guard shack had a release for the door? No, that would be stupid, to leave control of the door to this super secret facility outside. Still, something about the guard tickled a memory—something about handcuffs.
"Let me try this," I said as I pulled a silver-colored marble-sized charm from my purse. It was a platinum globe with the craters of the moon embossed on the surface. "Mason gave me this."
"Are you going to call him for help?"
"No, we don't want Mason dropping a mountain on this base. This charm has special properties." I popped the catch and the globe hinged open, revealing a small key affixed to the inner half.
"That's just a standard-issue handcuff key," said Mike.
"Oh, it does much more than that," I said. "Mason claims it can open any mechanical lock on Earth."
Mike shook his head, then tilted an ear toward the guard shack. "I hear sirens coming this way."
"I heard them a while ago." I pushed the tiny key into the lock mechanism. It appeared much too small to do anything.
"Is there a magic word? Like 'open sesame’?" asked Mike.
"No, it should just work." Then the globe tingled my fingers with magic. The globe reformed into a T-handle in my hand, allowing me to twist. A series of mechanical clicks and snicks accompanied the release of the door. I pulled back and the door swung smoothly open. I pulled the magic key out, and it instantly shifted back to a charm, which I put back in my purse.
I pulled the door open all the way and Mike and I entered. There was a short hallway with another door that matched the outer door at the end. Along one wall were mounted dozens of small lockers. There was a sign above the lockers that all cell phones must be left outside the secure area.
By habit, I scanned the area for microphones and cameras, zapping the cameras and silencing the microphones with tiny bubbles of still air.
"We should prop the door open, so we have an escape route," said Mike.
"There's no going back," I said. I pulled the door shut by the inner handle, which caused the bolts to slam home. I pulled up even harder on the handle until the metal screamed and the internal mechanism broke.
Mike stroked the bent handle. "Damn, you're strong. But now we're stuck in this man-trap."
"Man-trap?"
"That's what we call this two-door setup. It's like a tiny prison cell."
I waved away his objection. "We've broken out of tougher places."
There was a sudden hiss as hidden nozzles started pumping gas into the space. My oxygen mask spell started immediately, leaving a bubble of clean air around my head.
I was unaffected, but Mike started tearing up. He closed his eyes and held his breath while reaching blindly for the exit.
I reached over and touched his shoulder. Touching him helped me get a second bubble around his head before the gas could do more damage. "It's okay, Mike. You can breathe now. Just don't rub your eyes."
Unable to hold his breath any longer, Mike gasped. His eyes were red, and snot was running down his nose, but he could breathe. I released his shoulder; confident the spell would continue until I cancelled it.
"I can breathe!" exclaimed Mike. "This is great." Then he looked up at the camera mounted in the corner near the ceiling. "But now they know the gas didn't work."
"I zapped the camera and the microphones," I said. "They can't see or hear what we're doing."
Mike shook his head and muttered, "You're full of tricks. Hey, this air-bubble thing is better than an M50 gas mask. Can you teach me this trick? Does it work underwater?"
My thoughts raced off on a tangent. Could I create a charm that reproduced the oxygen mask spell? I had learned a lot more about magic since I had made that first spell. I would need some gold, an isotope of iron not found on Earth, and a few other ingredients.
My inner wolf nipped me in the ass, causing me to jerk suddenly. I had been standing here in a magician's daze for almost five minutes while thinking about that spell. Mike was looking at me in concern.
"Sorry, Mike. Sometimes I go into a daze. Occupational hazard of being a magician. Shake me if I drift off."
"Okay, no more
talk about magic until we're done. Anyway, it wouldn't work if they used nerve or blister agents. Those just need to touch your skin."
"I could probably extend the layer of air to cover your entire—"
"Luna! Don't think about magic now! Let's get the hell out of here."
I tweaked the spell to increase our oxygen percentage and took a deep breath.
I reached into my purse and pulled out a pair of gloves, a match to the pair I had worn on my last visit to Fae.
"Here, Mike, these are for you. I made them up specially for you."
"Weightlifters' gloves?" he asked as he took them. "Wow, these are heavy. They must weigh five pounds each."
"I put iron inserts in the knuckles. They'll both protect your skin and let you hit a lot harder."
He pulled the gloves on and wriggled his fingers as he tightened the straps. "Thanks, Luna. You're a good boss."
"No problem. You're tough, but still human."
"Sometimes I wish I could be a werewolf."
"Oh no, I need a human to work with. I couldn't bring another werewolf here. If I used magic in front of another werewolf, they would probably attack me."
Mike reached up and rubbed the magic coin he wore around his neck through his shirt. "Then I'll be your human soldier."
"With those gloves, you'd be able to knock out a werewolf. In fact, you'll probably have to pull punches on humans to avoid killing them."
The nozzles stopped spewing gas and a set of blowers started sucking away the fouled air. Over the noise, I could hear the steps of a group of men on the other side of the inner door.
"Mike, when they open that door, they'll expect us to be curled up on the floor from the gas. There are five or six men with guns out there."
"Can you do that trick with their bullets you used outside?"
"I'll have to drop the oxygen mask spell to do it. There's still a little gas in the air here. Can you take it?"
"I can take it." Mike stepped over to stand between me and the inner door, holding the useless rifle at port arms. "I'll give you a few seconds to get the spell to work."
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 41