by Ben Reeder
“Vortigern,” I growled. Half of the Sentinels turned to face me, and a few leveled their staves at me. I did my best to ignore the glowing ankhs that were being pointed my direction and walked through the opening in the semicircle. Dr. Corwin stood next to Vortigern, his own staff held beside him.
“Ah, Mr. Fortunato,” Vortigern said. “So good to see you outside of police custody for once.”
“Wish I could say I was happy to see you,” I said, gesturing at the Sentinels with my open right hand. “But it seems like we have bigger problems.”
“Namely, why these blue-cloaked representatives of the Council’s oppressive policies are even here,” the Infernal lawyer said. “Which of the Laws do the gentlemen inside stand accused of?”
An older Sentinel with gray streaked brown hair and an action hero’s jawline lowered his paramiir. “That’s what we’re here to determine, if they’ve even broken any laws, but more specifically, we’re here to find out why Wizard Corwin and his apprentice captured them.”
Dr. C. stepped forward and pulled out a slim metal tube. “Everything you need is here, Sentinel Carter. I’ve been working on this for a while, at the request of Master Draeden. Even my apprentice isn’t aware of the full scope of the operation, per the Council’s order.” Carter took the tube and pulled the slip of paper protruding from its side to reveal the rest of the document. He scanned it, then let it roll back into the tube before he handed it back to Dr. C.
“It looks authentic, but I’ll have to verify it.”
“Please do, Carter.” As the big Sentinel walked away and pulled out his cell phone, Dr. C. motioned for me to come to his side. He’d moved a few feet further from Vortigern and out of easy earshot of Carter.
“So, now that he mentions it,” I said in a low voice as I stood beside him, “Which of the Nine Laws did they break?”
“The Third Law,” he answered, matching my tone. “Make no Pact with Infernal Powers.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Is Kyle Vortigern standing here claiming that they’re his clients?”
“Solid call,” I said. “So, now we just have to prove it.”
“That’s where Detective Collins comes in. But let’s wait to talk more about this until after Carter tells us he’ll be leaving.”
“Sentinels,” was all Carter said, and the group of blue cloaked figures retracted their staves before retreating.
“That has to be disappointing,” I said.
“This whole situation is more disturbing than disappointing,” Dr. C said. “The whole reason I was put on this particular case is because Master Draeden was afraid there was a leak somewhere in the Conclave as a whole. The Sentinels showing up so fast points toward him being right.”
“Because you didn’t tell anyone what we’d done,” I said, only half meaning it as a question. He shook his head. “So, it looked like we went off the rez when we captured this crew.”
“When it shouldn’t have looked like anything to anyone. No one should have known about that. But,” he turned and crossed to Vortigern, “someone else decided to show up, and I’ve got something of a quandary as to how it was you got here first. And on top of that, I’m left trying to figure out if there is a connection between your arrival and the Sentinel’s. So, riddle me this, shyster. How did you know about these guys, and how did you even know to look for them, much less where to find them?”
“I’m afraid I can’t reveal the nature of my relationship with my clients. Attorney client privilege.”
“You realize we’re not cops, right?” I asked.
“You may not be, Mr. Fortunato, but Wizard Corwin is, or is so close to it as to make no difference. As a member of the Conclave, he is bound by the same strictures that the Sentinels are. And as fearsome as your reputation is, my boy, even you will not make me break the sanctity of a sworn oath. Now, what I can tell you…” He broke off at the sound of a screech in the distance.
“Vortigern, get out of here,” Dr. C. said. “We have enough to deal with without having to worry about protecting you. Chance, inside, overwatch on my six.” He turned to the double doors and pushed them inward.
I spun to face outside and backed toward the doorway, drawing my wand and the battle gauntlet as I went. “Induendum,” I said along the way, feeling the ley line energy course down my arm. Vortigern sprang into motion a second later, jumping behind me and putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Your pardon, Mr. Fortunato,” he said, pulling me toward the door.
“Get the Hell out of here!” I growled.
“Would that I could, but the safety of my clients is of paramount importance to me,” he said. “Careful, the threshold is raised. One step back. There we are.” His hand left my shoulder after I passed the door. It closed too slowly for me, but nothing came screaming through it. Once the latch clicked shut, I activated the ward on it.
“We’re in, wards are up!” I called out. My voice echoed in the warehouse’s main room, and I turned to make sure nothing else had gone wrong behind my back. Another screech came, this one muted by the walls.
In spite of the fact that we’d technically kidnapped six people, we were trying to treat them relatively well, even if they had gone in with mass murder on their minds. They were all locked into separate, soundproof pods that Dr. C had bought from a local contractor. Six faces appeared at the small windows of each door, all of them looking curious.
“Stay ready,” Dr. C. said. “If we’re facing what I think we are, the wards will barely slow them down.”
“What? I thought your wards were some serious shit!”
“They are, unless they’re trying to stop something…” he paused as three winged creatures blasted through the glass along the top of the wall. “Righteous,” he finished as light sparkled off the falling shards.
Three ancient looking women sporting leathery wings, dog-like heads with thick, writhing ropes of hair and coal black skin hovered near the ceiling, their faces drawn into vicious snarls. Each held a long whip with several tails, each tail a strand of bronze with knots along its length, like a scourge.
“Furies,” I whispered. Suddenly I understood what Dr. C meant. Furies were just one of the punishments for oath breakers. And if this bunch had sworn an oath against the wrath of the Erinyes, someone was in deep shit. They were one of the few beings who worked all three sides, Infernal, Celestial, as well as the Mortal realms. It didn’t matter who you were, if you invoked them in your oath, they were justified to come after you no matter where you were. Wards weren’t proof against them because the oath was considered the same as an invitation. Which meant our only option was to fight.
“Vengeance!” one of them croaked when she dive-bombed Dr. Corwin, forcing him to dodge and roll. That was about as far as she got, because Dr. C rolled to his feet and hit her with a red beam and sent her spinning with black smoke billowing from her side. Another one swooped down at me, and I raised my left fist until the crystal mounted on the back of my hand was right between her blood-red eyes. She straightened her body out, presenting a much smaller target while she zigzagged her way toward me.
“Ictus! Ictus!” I called out, and a pair of telekinetic bolts streaked past her on either side. She turned a sideslip into a banking dive, flipping her body around feet first at the last second to bring her taloned feet to bear. “Obex!” I barked at the last second, and she flattened herself against my shield. Bones snapped on impact, eliciting a scream of rage and pain as she slid off the invisible hemisphere with her legs and arms bent at painful angles. The third was engulfed in black flame, and I could smell brimstone. Aside from me, the only one of us who could cast Hellfire was Vortigern. I followed the streak of Infernal fire back to the lawyer, then looked back to the Fury. No sound was coming from inside the shadowy fireball, which was wrong to me on so many levels. Hellfire was pure hate and wrath, and it seared the soul more than the body, though it could cause terrible physical damage, too.
The gout
of Hellfire died, and the last Fury floated free, apparently unhurt. She threw back her head and let out a hideous, ululating shriek, which was what I was guessing passed for Fury laughter. “Ignis!” I yelled. A stream of bright yellow flame erupted from a point about six inches from my knuckles and whipped out toward her. She turned my way, ready to dodge, but caught another red beam in the back right about the time my fire reached her. A charred black lump fell from the fireball a few moments later.
“Well, that just complicated things,” Dr. C. said.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because our boys must have taken some kind of oath. The Erinyes showing up just made keeping that promise a high priority again.”
“Doesn’t it mean that at least one of them actually broke that promise?”
“Maybe they intended to,” he answered. “The question is, do they still mean to do it?”
I mimed shaking something, then looked between my hands. “Magic eight ball says...Sources say no.”
“Your picking up new pop culture references,” he said.
“Actually, that one was yours. I still don’t exactly get it, but it kinda makes sense. Lucas says the one I really need to get into is some kind of space western.”
“He’s been trying to get me into that one, too. But we can go into that later. First, take a moment, look over their files and the evidence,” he pointed to a table in the middle of the semi-circle. “Get a feel for things, so you know what we’re looking for.”
The files weren’t very thick, but it still took me a few minutes to go through all of them. Details were important. Each guy had carried very little. No wallets, no identification on any of them, but all of them carried a handgun, a heavy revolver. A couple of magazines each or a handful of shotgun shells. And pictures. Each guy had three or four printed pictures in their pockets, each one sporting a social media web address on the bottom of the page. The other thing they were carrying only made things seem weirder. All of them carried two pairs of military grade zip ties. The kind you use when you don’t want someone to get away. Odd choices for a bunch of guys just looking to shoot up a school.
“Sir?” I said. “Did you notice this?” Instantly, Dr. C was at my side, with Vortigern on his heels.
“Tell me what you’re seeing,” he said.
“All of these pics…the girls are blonde, and I think they’re all the same age. In the same graduating class. They brought zip ties, too. It looks like they might have been looking to abduct, not kill.”
“This level of precision is more often found in kidnappers and serial killers than mass shooters,” Vortigern added.
“I noticed the zip ties, too. Let’s see if we can convince at least one of these guys to talk. Remember what we discussed for interrogations.”
“Bad interrogator,” I pointed to him, “Sidekick who stands there and says nothing.” I put my thumb to my chest.
“Precisely.”
“And my role in all of this?” Vortigern asked. “They are clients, after all.”
“Your objections will be duly noted. But seriously, we’re not demons. We have rules, and we follow them. It won’t be pleasant, but we’re not going to hurt them, and we won’t mess with their free will.”
“I will see to that,” Vortigern said. Dr. C rolled his eyes and led me to the first white cube.
As we approached it, he gestured to it, and the face disappeared from the eight-inch window set in the door. The sounds of industrial metal were a faint vibration from outside, which meant the music had to be blasting pretty loud to make it through the soundproofing. Dr. C reached up and pressed one of the glowing green buttons on the panel to the left of the door, and the music stopped. Then he pressed a couple of buttons below that and the interior dimmed a little.
Warm air rolled over us when he opened the door and stepped in. I followed him and shut the door behind me, doing my best to maintain the same casual air he did. The driver was player number one, a guy maybe a year out of high school sitting in the one chair in the room. Sweat soaked his shirt and hair, and his eyes were red and puffy. He sniffled, and I could see the trails of snot running under his nose.
“Well, I hear you’re Mr. White,” Dr. C said.
“You’re not a cop,” ‘Mr. White’ said. “I ain’t gotta talk to you. I got rights.” He sniffled again.
“You’re right, we’re not cops. Which means, you ‘ain’t gotta’ talk to us at all. But see, that’s where you’re wrong. You know cops read you that little card. You have the right to remain silent. If you say anything, we’ll screw you with it in a court of law, all that crap?”
“Yeah. You ain’t read me my rights yet. You gotta let me go.”
“Remember how we’re not cops?” Dr. C smiled. “There are no rights, there will be no court of law. There’s just you, and me, and this cube. Oh, and him.” He pointed at me.
“Who’s he? Your boyfriend?” White smiled, revealing decaying teeth and inflamed gums.
“Better you never get formally introduced to him. Besides, you have bigger problems, and he’s just as happy to let them kill you as do it himself.”
“Let who kill me?” White said.
“Didn’t you see them attack just a few minutes ago?” Dr. C asked.
“Those flying things? What the Hell were they?”
“Furies,” Dr. C said. “The very things you inflicted on yourselves when you took your oath to serve whatever demon it is. They were here to kill you.” I gave an amused grunt, and Dr. C nodded. “Well, to rip your intestines out and then kill you. Maybe. Sometimes they like to flay all the skin off your body first. They’re big on torture. It’s kind of their signature thing.”
“But…we didn’t break our oath!” White said. “I know I didn’t!”
“See, that’s the problem. It depends on the wording of the oath. If any of you said the word ‘we’ during the oath, you’re all just as screwed if one of you breaks it as if all of you do.”
“And at least one of you broke it,” I added. “Or else the Furies would never have showed up.”
“Well, they weren’t after me,” he said. “I didn’t break my oath.” My eyebrows dipped a little as he confessed to taking an oath by denying he had broken it. It was the kind of thing that would have guaranteed him an instant death sentence with the average Sentinel. But we weren’t the average Sentinel, and Dr. C was playing a longer game.
“Uh-oh,” Dr. C said. “I don’t like the looks of that.” He came over to me and made sure he was standing so I had to face away from our prisoner to look at him. “Are you sure?” he asked, then lifted his chin at me. I nodded and leaned forward for a few seconds before straightening up. “You’re right. It can’t be traced back to us. Okay.”
By now, the first trickles of sweat were starting to inch their way down my back. I’d gotten used to West Texas heat the summer before, but in a closed in room, it was hard to cool off. Adding to that the bits of dog and cat hair that were being pumped in through the vent, and this guy was in worse shape and a teamster with a hangover and the flu.
Dr. C went over to the chair and undid the manacles. Instantly, White rubbed his shirtsleeve across his nose. “You’re free to go.”
“What?” White asked. “But what about the Furies?”
“You’re not talking, so you’re useless to us. And you said it yourself. You haven’t done anything to put yourself in any danger…have you?”
“No,” White said almost as soon as Dr. C asked the question.
“Then go.” He gestured at the door, and it swung open. Vortigern was visible a few feet from the opening. “Good luck. You also might want to thank your lawyer before you go.” White got to his feet slowly, and Dr. Corwin put an arm around his shoulders, guiding him out. Five faces were framed by the windows in the doors, all eyes on White as Dr. Corwin led him to the door.
“What are you doing?” Vortigern demanded.
“What you wanted,” Dr. C said with an insincere smile. “I’
m letting him go.”
“You can’t let him go!”
“Dude, I thought you were supposed to be my lawyer,” White said. “Isn’t that your job, to make them let me go?”
“You don’t understand the danger you’re in, sir,” Vortigern said. “Right now, those cells are the safest place for you and your friends.”
“No way, man,” White laughed. “I didn’t talk, so I didn’t break my oath.” Vortigern winced at the casual admission.
“If you leave, know that you are doing so against the advice of legal counsel.”
“Whatever, man. Some lawyer,” White scoffed before he left. Vortigern shook his head.
“I have a fool for a client,” Vortigern said, shaking his head.
The next four, Green, Brown, Blue, and Gray went pretty much the same, and an hour later, we were down to the last guy, who had given Dr. C the name of Mr. Black. He looked out of his cube at us with a troubled expression on his face.
“We need this guy to talk,” I said. “We’re running out of bad guys.”
“We’re also running out of colors,” Dr. C. said. “But there’s a method to this. Recognize which one he is?”
“Last one I caught,” I said.
“And according to what you told me, the only one anyone else saw. He’s the guiltiest one of the bunch, in terms of how close he came to committing the actual crime. So, we put some real pressure on him. All of what went on before…”
“It was just for show,” I picked up. “We let everyone else go and let him see it.”
“And now, here we are, taking our time, looking pleased with ourselves…try to look pleased with yourself… talking about how we’re going to put the thumbscrews to this guy.”
Thumping reached our ears, and we looked at the cube to see the last guy pounding on the glass. “You think he’ll talk?” I asked.
“Not yet. You head home. I’m going to get him something to eat and some water, then I’m going to put more industrial metal on, and grade some papers while I let him stew and decide on how we should handle him.”