by TR Cameron
Ruby sighed. “Well, SOP or not, I’m definitely not bringing the others along if I decide to talk to them. That would be like offering ourselves up on a silver platter. If I didn’t do it for that scumbag Sloane, I’m certainly not planning to do it for the paranoid defense agency.”
The joke earned a chuckle. “Seems like a smart move.”
Ruby asked, “Do you think this is important, in the big picture?”
The other woman nodded. “Selfishly, I don’t want them messing with my people because they can’t get to you. Overall, they’re clearly planning to be here for the long term. You’ll have to deal with them anyway, so might as well get it done.”
“Okay. Set up a meet at the Casino Graveyard. Midnight tomorrow. He has to be there in person for me to show up.”
Alejo laughed. “Do you want me to tell him to come alone and unarmed, too?”
Ruby let out a soft snort. “No, I’m not that stupid. But make it clear that if he’s not there, I won’t be either.”
Ruby had set the meeting for the next day rather than rousting the agent out of bed for an immediate chat because preparations were required. By the time midnight rolled around, she had improved the drones Demetrius had bought for her, outfitting one of them with a special tool she’d crafted and all three with the concealment magic tech she’d been working on. She was confident the PDA versions wouldn’t be able to see through it. Especially if they have no idea such a thing exists, right?
She paced behind Demetrius’s computer chair, his bedroom offering precious little space in which to burn off her nervous energy. The infomancer had connected to all three drones, which she’d concealed near the meeting site earlier in the day so they wouldn’t have to waste battery power flying to get there. Each had a small solar panel on the top that would have topped off their batteries as they waited in the camouflaged spots she’d left them. I don’t think I could’ve prepared for this any better. Now hopefully the PDA shows up on time.
She didn’t doubt that the PDA agent would bring friends. He’d be stupid not to, especially since he had to figure she’d chosen the location for a reason. Even if I had shown up in person, it would’ve been reasonably easy to escape from there. Maybe he does just want to talk. Guess we’ll see. With twenty minutes to go, Demetrius brought the drones out from cover, sending one up high to surveil the site. At one minute before the appointed time, a trio of black SUVs pulled in and formed a triangle around the clearing she’d selected for their meeting. A government sedan followed them, probably one of the bulletproof glass models, and agent Paul Andrews emerged from it. You slimy bugger.
Margrave had dropped off a speaker at the site for her earlier in the day, under a veil and in disguise, in case they were watching. She activated the connection. “What can I do for the Paranormal Defense Agency?” The drone caught the echoes as her voice bounced around the clearing, and every one of the agents turned in a circle, drawing weapons and looking for her. The agent in charge shook his head. “Games? Really?”
The screens in front of her displayed feeds from all three drones. One hovered over the vehicles, high enough that they shouldn’t be able to hear the fans, giving her a big picture look at what was going on. The second one was still in its concealed location, waiting for circumstances to call it into play. The third, one of the tiny versions she’d built to take into the field, moved smoothly along a path they’d scouted out beforehand, just far enough off the ground that it wouldn’t reveal itself by disturbing the dust and dirt.
She replied, “You must think I’m either stupid or ridiculously trusting to show up with all my people where all your people could get at us. I’m a lot of things, but that naïve, I’m not.”
He put his hands on his hips. “Yet, here I am, as you asked me to be. You’re not holding up your end of the bargain.”
She laughed, enjoying the fact that he had no idea he’d been in a room with her before, had her literally at arm’s length. The microphone distorted her voice, rendering it unrecognizable. The speaker had a small charge to destroy it when they finished, so there’d be no way to trace that back to her, either. “Oh, please, Agent Andrews. Let’s be professionals. I needed to see how you’d act. It was a predictable response, fortunately, so we can probably talk.”
He crossed his arms. “Fine. I’ll be brief. You need to stop what you’re doing and let us handle things.”
“You’ve been doing such a good job so far. I think the owners of the Mist would totally agree.” She slapped Demetrius on the shoulder, having no desire to continue the conversation any longer than necessary.
He muted the microphone and said, “Shush. This is harder than it looks.”
“I thought you were supposed to be awesome at this stuff. Put me back on.” He activated the mic, and she added, “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I trusted you to take care of things. What would happen to my friends and me?”
He shrugged. “The usual. Debriefings, release.”
Ruby laughed. “Yeah, right.” On the screen in front of her, the drone was finally close enough to fire its payload. A tracking device flew out and stuck onto the back of the car, the small black magnetic pearl more or less invisible against the vehicle’s skin. “Anyway, while it’s been nice chatting, I have to go. Here’s the plan: you stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of your way. We’ll both be happy. Otherwise, things could go badly, and you’ll wind up on the losing end of that particular tally.”
She pointed, and Demetrius hit the button to activate the charge inside the speaker, destroying it. On the video feed, the agents reacted, spinning toward the noise, then piled back into their cars and drove away. The small drone returned to its concealed location for pickup later, and the one up high kept track of the vehicles under Demetrius’s guidance. The third, set to follow the tracking device automatically, rose into the air and started moving. Ruby clapped Demetrius on the shoulder. “Great work, Tree. Now I need to get ready to go have a real conversation with that douchebag.”
He nodded. “Remember, you owe me another date.”
She laughed, rolled her eyes, and gave him a lingering kiss on the neck. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. You’d be so bored without me.”
She left the room before he could argue, headed for her one-on-one with Agent Andrews.
Chapter Fourteen
The drone tracked the locator back to a home in a residential area to the southeast of the Strip. Ruby portaled as close as she could, then used an autonomous vehicle to take her the rest of the way. She rode in the disguise of an elderly human man in a tracksuit, in case anyone happened to be looking for her. With a couple of blocks to go, she bailed out and traveled toward the agent’s house through several backyards. The drone hovered overhead, providing a view of the home, and before she entered its range she muttered, “I’m here,” into her comm.
A click of acknowledgment sounded, and she crept into the fenced-in area at the rear of the agent’s home. Her magical senses were on the lookout for traps, and her eyepieces cycled through detection modes to help her spot mundane ones. She launched her other drone, this one controlled by the small phone-like device Margrave had created, and piloted it close to peer into the home’s windows.
The first floor showed a kitchen and a living room-dining room combination area. The second contained a home office and two bedrooms with an apparently sleeping Paranormal Defense Agency boss-type person occupying one. She asked, “Tree, any security system inside?”
He replied, “Activate the booster.” She reached down to her belt and hit the switch on the device that would allow him faster access to the area’s computer networks. After thirty seconds or so, he said, “Okay, I’m into it. I set it into maintenance mode. It will still register what goes on but won’t trigger any alarms or call out.”
“You’re the best.”
“Now you owe me even more. I’m thinking a weekend away, with you focused entirely on pampering me.”
“Yeah, yeah, put it on my
to-do list.” She used force magic to release the latch on the window, then tried to slide it open. It didn’t move, and she brought the drone around for a better look. The image it sent back showed a wooden board wedged into place to prevent the pane from rising. Old school, simple and smart. You might not be the total idiot I took you for. Also, I need to cut those for all the windows and sliding doors in our house.
Concentrating carefully, she used magic with one hand to move the wood out of the way and the other to lift the window. The wooden rectangle fell to the grass. Ruby reestablished her veil, force-blasted herself up to the second floor, and clambered up to sit on the windowsill with a leg on either side. She drew a breath to speak.
The figure on the bed twitched. Suddenly, a gun whipped around to point at her. She knocked it from his hand with force magic and waggled a finger after letting her veil fall. “Now, now. Be nice. I thought you wanted to talk.”
He sat up, offering her a view of his bare chest, the chiseled nature of which suggested he put in significant time at the gym. Unfortunately, no amount of pumping iron can compensate for being a scumbag. He replied, “Yeah, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
She grinned and hoped her dragon’s face scared him a little. “Well, that’s not my problem. You didn’t really think I’d bring my friends along and expose them to whatever nonsense you had planned, did you? What do you want?”
“Can I get up?”
“No.”
“Okay, can I grab a shirt then?”
She shook her head. “Also no. Talk.”
He sighed and ran his hands through his rumpled brown hair. “I’ll be direct. There’s no place for vigilantes in this town anymore. We’re here now, and we have it all in hand. You and your friends need to step down.”
She barked a laugh. “Yeah, but that would require someone useful to step up. I don’t really dig your methods, what with the heavy-handed tactics and the constant surveillance. What’s next, random searches of people on the Strip?”
He shrugged. “Gotta do what you gotta do to keep the innocent safe.”
“See, on that we agree. I have to do the same.”
Agent Andrews grinned suddenly for no apparent reason. “So, no way I can convince you to give it up and come in peacefully? Or, failing that, to fade away into the night, so I don’t have to worry about you and your buddies causing trouble?”
Ruby scowled. “Causing trouble? Have you been paying attention at all?”
The receiver in her ear pinged softly. Demetrius advised, “Agents moving in. Looks like they’ve established an outer perimeter about two blocks around and are pushing forward. Lots of them.”
The half-naked man in the bed started to speak, and she cut him off. “Yeah, I know, you’re trying to keep me here while your friends move in for the kill. You couldn’t play nice, just once? That’s too bad.”
She called up a force shield with one hand, placing it between him and the nightstand beside him, then used the other to blast the piece of furniture to shards. The barrier prevented any of them from striking him, but the demonstration of the instant conversion from functional object to kindling inspired a look of shock on his face. Ruby nodded. “You might wish to consider if us being on different sides is really what you want.”
He threw himself off the far side of the bed, his hand reaching for something on that side’s nightstand, and she fell backward out of the window. She landed on a soft burst of magic, cast a veil, and snuck away. After a minute of careful creeping, she encountered one of the oncoming agents and angled to avoid him, making sure her sound and sight concealment was at full strength.
Her magic failed with a whisper of strangeness, and he spotted her. He shouted, whipped his gun around, and pulled the trigger. She dove to the ground and rolled to elude the stream of bullets, cursing under her breath. “What the hell?”
Morrigan replied, “They have weird backpacks on. Maybe they’re the same things that the bastard on the Strip had? Some sort of portable anti-magic emitter?”
Ruby cursed again. “Okay, give them points for coming prepared, anyway. Fortunately, I also brought my backup people, who are way better than Paul Andrews’. Let’s mix it up.”
A low crunching emanated from the trees behind the man, and Idryll slammed into him, knocking him forward onto his face. The tiger-woman dropped to one knee and delivered a punch to his head that caused a crack to echo through the area. She said, “Just the nose, I think. He should be out for a while. Do you want the backpack?”
Ruby did, but getting it like this was too dangerous. “No. There could be tracking devices or any number of other surprises. Plus, we truly have to get out of here before fate gives them a break, and we don’t need the extra weight. Tree, I could use a clear vector.”
His voice carried unexpected concern. “There really isn’t one. The agents are closing in from everywhere, and more are arriving. I don’t think it’s their entire complement or anything, but there are a lot of the bastards. They called for backup from local PD, too. They’ll be on-site in ten minutes or so.”
Ruby replied, “Okay. We’re going to break through to the south, then. As soon as we’re out of the range of these stupid things, we’ll portal out of here.” Which is what I should’ve done in the first place, but I was being clever. Or paranoid. Or both. She needed to solve her portaling problem. “Morrigan, if you’re clear to portal, you should get out of here.”
“The hell I will.” A cacophonous mix of light and sound came from the north as Morrigan either fired one of her flash-bang arrows or used one of Margrave’s grenades.
Ruby frowned. “Are you on top of the agent’s house?”
Her sister laughed. “Maybe. Following you now. Go.”
She and Idryll moved on parallel tracks, hunting for PDA personnel. The tiger-woman took them out quietly, one after the next, her natural skills much better than Ruby’s in the absence of magic. They finally came up against the outer perimeter, created by groups of four at thirty-foot or so intervals. She breathed, “Damn, they’re pretty serious about this whole thing.”
Morrigan stepped up behind her. “Well, you do have a rare talent for upsetting people.”
Idryll muttered, “She’s right, you do.”
Ruby shook her head. “Gas them, and we’ll hit whoever doesn’t fall.” An arrow sailed above with a slight whir, landing in the center of the quartet. Billows of vapor came out, and one of them fell instantly. The other three quickly brought masks to their faces, and in that moment of distraction, Ruby and Idryll struck. Ruby raced forward and led with her left, punching the nearest agent’s ribs. When he tried to bring his rifle around to point at her, she whipped a right cross over it, connecting with his cheek. The stun knuckles detonated, knocking him unconscious. She used the momentum from the blow to twist herself into a spin and smash an elbow into the face of the next closest foe. He got the butt of his rifle up in time to deflect it a little, preventing it from being a knockout shot.
Ruby did another half-turn and whipped her leg around in a roundhouse kick that slammed into his thighs, the strike to the nerve junction numbing his nearer limb. He went down on one knee, and she punched down with her right, discharging another shock blast. She turned to see that Idryll had unsheathed her claws, and the other woman had cut the rifle away from the man, along with the backpack he wore. She grabbed the back of his head with her left hand and brought it down to meet her rising left knee, and the man fell backward with a groan. Her partner lifted the bag. “Sure you don’t want this?”
“No, same reasons as before. Let’s get out of here.”
Idryll dropped the object with a shake of her head. “Missed opportunity.”
Morrigan sauntered up and observed, “Yeah, a missed chance to get caught. You know they’re going to have a locator on that thing.”
The trio continued to bicker over their comms as they took out more PDA personnel drawn by the fight’s noise, disabled all the emitters, and hastily portaled
away as soon as they had a slim opening with working magic.
Chapter Fifteen
Julianna Sloane was impressed with her subordinates. That wasn’t an unfamiliar situation, but in this case, Smith had outdone himself. It had only taken him a matter of days to secure and furnish a luxurious apartment high in a tower overlooking the Vegas Strip and arrange the move from Reno to Vegas. She stood before the wall of windows in her bedroom and gazed down at the early morning pedestrians as sunrise broke over the horizon. This is right. This is what I need.
A glance at the expensive watch gracing her wrist, a gift from her late husband, told her it was time to go. She arrived in the living room at the same moment as Vicki Thompson. The other woman had added a chunky silver necklace to her outfit of black turtleneck and pinstripe suit, and it suited her perfectly. It looked heavy enough to be wrapped around the knuckles as a weapon or unsnapped and used as a short-range whip.
Julianna’s husband had taught her the ins and outs of such things, training her to keep a wary eye on her surroundings in a way that she never had before. Her sense of potential dangers had been relatively refined to begin with, but it became far better developed after Gabriel’s instruction. She shook her head, pushing away sad thoughts, and smiled at Thompson. “Are we good to go?”
She nodded. “Yes. They’re assembled, having coffee and donuts.”
Julianna chuckled. “Just like a corporate meeting, right? Well, it’s an unusual kind of corporation, but the concepts are similar enough, I suppose. Let’s go.” Her security had recommended she no longer have visitors in her apartment, and in any case, she wouldn’t have wanted these particular people in her private domain. They entered the boardroom after a short elevator ride, and she nodded at the assembled group. They were a fairly hard-looking bunch, and despite their quasi-professional dress, their violent backgrounds were apparent, be they military, martial arts, or simply life experience.