Banshee Hunt

by Curtis, Greg

  “Are you in the office Will?” He should be James knew. They had a crisis on their hands and it wasn't that late.

  “Yes.” Will answered him quickly.

  “Are the others with you?”

  “Yes. Out in the main room.”

  “Good. Then can you bring them all into your office and put the phone on speaker so I can talk to you all.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a bit as the cowboy probably considered asking him what was on his mind. But eventually the silence was broken by the sound of Will going to the door to his office and calling everyone in. It took a moment for them to arrive. James heard chairs scraping against the floor in the distance followed by the sound of feet thudding on the carpet. He heard questions being asked of the cowboy and Will answering them as best he could. And then finally he heard Will tell him that everyone was now near the phone and listening.

  “Good.” James didn't waste time with pleasantries. There was no time to waste. “We still have a mole in the office somewhere. And since I don't believe a single one of you would voluntarily work for the banshee, and you're all warded against magic there's only one possibility. Someone's wards have been removed.”

  The response was of course confusion. Voices were raised in disagreement and disbelief. And naturally everyone started telling him he had to be wrong. All the checks had come back negative. None of them were traitors. James really did want to agree with them. He desperately wanted to be wrong. But he knew better. And he knew a quick way to reach the truth. Which was why he kept calling for quiet. And eventually he got it. But he doubted it would last long.

  “Okay, now in a while you're going to have to call for a rune caster to double check everyone's wards. Tonight if possible. But before that happens I have a quick and dirty way of checking. Everyone's warded with the same spells. Right Peters?” Peters should know he figured. Wards and runes were his thing.

  “Yeah.” Peters answered in his usual laconic fashion.

  “And all the wards leave markings on the skin? Tattoos?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So everyone should have the same warding markings. Guys it's time to strip! One of you will have some markings that aren't like the others.”

  “What?!” Will was the first to protest, but far from the last as everyone realised what he was asking them to do. And no one was happy about it.

  James had expected that. But he stayed on the line, waiting for the commotion to die down. Because in the end he knew it would. They all knew what he was suggesting was simply common sense. But more than that they all knew that to object too loudly might be to make the others wonder if they were the mole. That was why he'd had everyone come together in the room. So that no one could make some excuse to leave and not be noticed. Because he was certain that if any of the banshee's victims had guessed his plan that was exactly what they would have done.

  When this was over James figured, there would only be two people left to be checked. Him, and everyone knew he was naturally immune to the magic of mind bending. So did the banshee which was why she'd come after him so aggressively. He was the one man she couldn't bend. And Yasmin who he assumed was still not back. But he seriously doubted it was her after what they had done. Everyone else the banshee had sent after him had regarded him as the most evil man alive. They hadn't exactly been rushing to jump into bed with him.

  So James stood there in the treatment room and waited for the calm to return. And then for the disrobing to begin. But that didn't happen. Instead he heard the sound of a door being ripped open followed by people yelling and feet thudding rapidly on the carpet. James guessed then that they'd found their man. And he understood who it was a few moments later when people started yelling at Daniels to stop running.

  Daniels. Their Intelligence guy. The master of IT who could no doubt cover all his electronic fingerprints. The one whose magic granted them access to all their secrets. And the one who ahd delivered them no useful results from his interview with the priest, and probably slowed down their data matching by at least fifty percent. All those apologies he'd brought them about the difficulties his staff were having doing the facial recognition. The chances were that the only problem they had was their boss. James suddenly wanted to cry. They had been comprehensively out played.

  No wonder the banshee had been so far ahead of them. They literally had had no secrets from her. He had no secrets from her. She knew he was naturally immune to her magic. That she couldn't simply have his wards removed and then start poisoning his thoughts. The others she could bend. But he had always had to die.

  Of course Daniels wasn't going to get away. It took time, and there was a lot of confused shouting and the sound of things being broken, but eventually he heard the clink of heavy metal links crashing in to one another and he knew they had caught him. He heard the sound of the cold steel manacles being applied. Next he heard the sound of material being torn – an expensive Italian suit no doubt – and guessed the others were busy checking out his markings. But of course they didn't need to. James knew what they'd find.

  “Shit! His wards have been rubbed out!” Peters was the first to shout it out. And the chances were that since he was their resident expert in putting wards on, he didn't need to see the absence of the markings to know what had happened.

  “Did you hear that?” Will shouted at him suddenly, obviously much closer to the phone as his voice was much louder.

  “Yes. We have our mole.”

  “But Daniels! I would never …”

  “Of course not. You weren't meant to. No one was. The banshees have had us outclassed from start to finish. This isn't your failure. It's everyone's. From the top to the bottom. We've been fighting a war and we never even realised it.”

  “A war?”

  “The banshees versus the Illuminati. They've already taken Hong Kong and Macau. Now they were going for New York.”

  Silence was the only answer he got from the other end of the phone. And James supposed he had to expect that. The Illuminati had long since assumed that they ruled the world of magic unopposed. It was almost a belief. And not just theirs either. The rest of the magical realm believed it too. So they had simply never expected an attack like this. An infiltration by an enemy. Hell they never expected an attack at all.

  “The banshee has a tame rune caster. The chances are that she brought him or her with her. It's the way her people work. And then she started hunting out people to bend. The chances are that Daniels with his string of girlfriends simply walked into her trap without knowing. He was likely drugged – his wards wouldn't protect him against that – and then his wards were removed. After that he was hers.”

  “Soo Chi was probably only using a strategy her family have used hundreds of times before. Infiltration and corruption. And it's worked.”

  “That's why the records from the Illuminati in Hong Kong were so poor. Why they only seem to care that the gifted don't expose themselves to the world. Not that they don't use their magic to cause harm. My guess is that the banshees long ago got to their wards as well. And I would doubt that there's a single member of their enforcement team that they don't control now. The banshees have taken control of the entire office.”

  “And if there was ever a member of their group immune to the banshee gift, I'd guess they killed them. It's what Soo Chi did when she came here. Or what she tried to do. Identify and eliminate the threats. And then take control of the Illuminati one by one.”

  “But you still need to do your strip tease I'm afraid guys. Where there's one there may be more. And then everyone else in the rest of the organisation – the elders included – is going to have to be checked as well. Sorry about that.”

  And the strange thing was that as he said it James realised he was actually sorry for the turmoil he was causing. Maybe he'd been one of them for too long. Although later he suspected he might see the funny side in it. No one else would though, so it would probably pay not to mention it to anyon
e.

  “Damn!” Will clearly wasn't seeing the funny side in this just yet. “But understood.”

  “There's one more thing.” James carried on, his brain finally clicking into high gear as he had the scent of his quarry in his nose. “Does Daniels know where Matti is?”

  “I don't know. But I doubt it since I don't know. But I'll put in a request to the elders to have her moved again – after their wards have been checked.”

  “Thanks.” James was grateful though surprisingly not that worried. Mainly because he doubted the banshee would have had time to start tracking her down again. Not so soon anyway. Not when her hiding place had just been raided only that morning and when she was wounded. She was good – but there were limits.

  In any case she was soon going to be in his custody. Because he suddenly realised that he knew where she'd gone. The answer wasn't in the clinic after all. It was in the research she'd been doing. And he suddenly realised that that was exactly what she'd been doing. Daniels had been her source. But what he'd been providing her with was far more than just a warning that they were coming. He'd given her names and details. The people who posed the biggest threat to her plans and the ways they could be controlled. That was how she'd known to come after him when he went to the German. How she'd known to go after Matti. Where and how.

  So the banshee knew all about his life and his family. She knew where everyone that was connected to him was. She knew he was her most deadly threat. And at the same time she was wounded and in need of medical care. Human medical care instead of animal. She needed a hospital with drugs and doctors. There was only one place he knew of that was on both of those lists. A place that would be able to provide the care she needed and which she also had reports on because a member of his family was staying at it.

  “Will, I'm going to keep hunting here. I think I know where our banshee’s run to and I need to check it out. Can you get a team ready please?”

  “Yes. Where do you want me to send them?”

  “Not now. Sorry. Not before the rune casters have been through. And not before I've checked it out. I'll give you a call in two or three hours when I know for sure.”

  With that he hung up and headed back out to the car. It was time to end this. And somehow it almost seemed appropriate that it should end in the place where his greatest failure was currently recovering from her latest nervous collapse. Because when this was over he decided, he was going to fix that. The biggest remaining failure of his life. He was going to tell his ex-wife about magic and Francis. The rules be damned.

  She was a victim of magic. And she was the mother of his daughter – a gifted young witch. She had the right to know. More than that she had the need. And Matti had the right and the need to be able to talk to her mother about that part of her life. She was a thirteen year old girl after all. She needed her mother. Not a woman she had to keep secrets from. Not a woman who kept being sent in and out of Fairview Haven because she couldn't understand or live with the guilt of what she'd done.

  It was time to stop feeling sorry for himself and start fixing things.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Fairview Haven was dark and quiet when James drove up to it. But it was late and he'd expected that. The staff – most of them anyway – had presumably gone home for the night. The patients were in their rooms. The downstairs lights for the main rooms were hopefully dimmed as no one was there. He couldn't tell as he didn't drive up to the main gate, choosing instead to drive a little further down the road to where he thought he would be safe. Despite that he knew from the moment he got out of the car that things were not right. He could feel it.

  Maybe what he'd told the German so long ago – it felt like years instead of just a couple of weeks – wasn't completely true. Maybe he did have a gift. A gift for sensing danger. Or then again maybe it was simply the instincts of a cop. Either way, as he stood outside the twelve foot tall stone block wall and thought about going in, he was certain that what lay ahead of him was dangerous. And for once he also thought about back up. Maybe some of what the German had said had finally sunk in. Or maybe it was simply that he had doubts that he could do this alone. Especially in his present condition. Which was why he reached for his phone.

  “James?” The cowboy answered after the first ring. He was really alert tonight. But then he'd been waiting for his call.

  “How goes it?”

  “It's in hand. Peters has been cleared and now he and Petros are going through the rest of us. Daniels is downstairs in the cells, swearing he hasn't done anything. But his wards have been removed completely and it looks like it was done some time ago. I don't think he would be able to tell us what he's done. I've sent word upstairs to the elders after they were cleared and they'll be doing whatever they need to do with Matti to keep her safe.”

  “Thank you!” That was what he truly cared about.

  “You have news?”

  “Not yet. I'm outside Fairview Haven and everything looks calm. But I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'll call you back when I know more.” It was time James figured to clue him in. Though of course he knew what Will's response would be.

  “Wait for back up. We have a team prepared.”

  “I'm just going to do some scouting. This may be nothing more than a hunch and a bad curry. I'll call you back in thirty.”

  With that James hung up and then turned the phone off so that the cowboy couldn't call him back. The last thing he needed while he was inside the grounds was the phone ringing and giving away his position. And he also didn't want to hear Will order him to wait for back up and have to disobey him. That would not go down well with the elders or the German. But really, what choice did any of them have? They'd hired themselves a hunter, and what sort of hunter was afraid to hunt his quarry?

  After that it was time for the tools, and he went to the back of the car and popped the trunk.

  The universal key was first on his list of tools and he quickly pocketed the spelled glove and its mate. But then he decided that it would be a mistake to go through the main gate. There was security on it in the form of guards and a camera as well. The last thing he needed to do was warn his enemy that he was about. It was time to make an entrance, literally. And so he picked up the spelled chalk and dropped that in his pocket as well. There were enough trees surrounding the walls that he could use it without being spotted.

  After that he started grabbing every reasonably sized tool he had and stuffing them into his duffel. He figured it was best to be prepared. Then, instead of walking to the main gate he headed in the other direction, looking for a concealed location far away from it where he could use the chalk unseen.

  Fifty yards south he found one where the trees on his side were thick enough that the neighbours would never see the light of the chalk, and where he could see tree tops on the other side of the stone block wall as well. He shouldn't be seen and hopefully he wouldn't be heard either. Something that seemed likely when after standing there silently for a bit and doing nothing more than listening, he realised he couldn't hear anyone on the other side.

  The chalk was easy to use, and he quickly drew the outline of a large window on the stone blocks of the wall and then divided it up into smaller sections. Then when he was ready he stood back and spoke the command.

  “Urven!”

  The result was as always, intense and he had to look away. A bright flash of ruby red light lit up the lines he'd drawn. James covered his eyes as he turned away from it, but was still a little blinded.

  But once the light had died away and he turned back to the wall he could see huge black lines where the white chalk had been and he knew it had done what he wanted. The magic was that of a sort of debonding. It didn't actually cut so much as simply turn the stone into dust. It would allow him to simply push out the blocks one at a time.

  But he didn't do that immediately. Instead he stood there silently and listened. Trying to hear if anyone on the other side had seen the light and was comi
ng running. Although most of the light appeared on his side of the wall where he'd drawn the lines, some would always leak through.

  Fortunately he heard nothing. None of the neighbours from the farm across the road made any noise, and hopefully the trees had blocked the light. If they had seen anything, with a little luck they would have assumed it was simply a car brake light. Nor could he hear anyone inside the clinic ground. But while the trees had hopefully blocked most of what they might have seen he couldn't be sure. He had no way of knowing how bright the light on that side had been nor how dense the trees were.

  So all he could do was wait and listen and hope. He waited a long time, pressing his ear to the wall every so often – as if that would help – and peeking through the cracks. For five and then ten minutes he waited nervously. But when finally he heard and saw nothing, he decided that he must have got away with it. That was his cue to break in he figured, and with his heart beating a little more quickly than it should he squeezed his fingers into the grooves the chalk had cut and started working the first block free.