To Gage’s mild annoyance, the two of them set to cracking open boxes for basic shit like cash and gems. He, on the other hand, strode toward a specific container, an unassuming and unglamorous one. He picked it up and brought it back out to the lobby steps ahead of Mick and Antonio, who trailed with their lesser booty.
“Guys,” ordered Gage, “go help everyone else. Mick, second floor, start sniping at the cops from a different angle than where Jay is. Antonio, first floor. Same deal.”
They complained in guttural voices but obeyed. As they ran off, Gage examined the white safe deposit box before him. He cast a lesser, subtler version of the same spell he’d used to crack the vault, and the lock disconnected. Smiling, Gage opened it to reveal a massive stack of paper.
“Why keep European bearer bonds in Europe,” he mused, “when you can hide them in one of the most popular travel and vacation destinations in the world? Viva Las Vegas, baby. Heh, heh.”
He flipped through them. Each one was worth five thousand dollars and issued out of Luxembourg. They made mere cash look like toilet paper by comparison.
Gage loaded most of the bonds into a flat, unmarked parcel, stuffed it into his backpack, and then tossed some printer paper into the safe deposit box. He closed it, replaced the lock, and returned the whole thing to its place in the vault. The investigators would at first assume they’d only come for the obvious valuables Mick and Antonio had grabbed.
He turned to his men and announced, “All right, gentlemen, let’s get going. Sneaking is out of the question, so it looks like we get to blast our way out.”
There was a sudden burst of shouting from upstairs. More cops, he assumed, until his radio crackled.
“Uh, Gage?” It was Jay.
“What?”
“Do you, uh, know any other witches? Maybe one with a really weird-ass dress?”
Gage paused. “What?” he asked again.
“Just get up here.” Jay sounded uncertain. “You know when something’s just…wrong? This shit’s wrong, man.”
“Sure,” Agent MacDonald jeered, throwing up her hands, “it’s probably nothing, they said. Some asshole prospector’s propane stash probably went up in smoke and disturbed a fault line under an old mine or some shit. From now on, anytime I hear something like that, I’m going to assume it’s code for ‘We’re sending you guys into the middle of a frickin’ Die Hard movie.’ Look at this!”
Agent Richardson, who was behind the wheel, could see as well as she could. The Wells Fargo Tower in Vegas was surrounded by cops, both regular and SWAT. Sporadic yet consistent gunfire had been echoing through the city for the last four or five minutes.
“Joys of being a public servant.” He sighed. “Did those guys cross state lines? Unless they did, it’s not our purview. Or unless they’re terrorists instead of bank robbers, but that seems unlikely.”
He drove past the rows of palm trees that surrounded the plaza.
MacDonald offered, “Or unless they’re using some of that magic or alien tech or whatever it was we heard about in LA.”
There was a pause, then they both burst out laughing. Whoever the poor sod was who’d had to write up that report on the LA gang scene was going to be a laughingstock for the rest of their career. Agents all over the country had been snickering over that report for a week and a half.
Then, from the second floor of the tower, where it looked like a couple of windows had been shot out, there was an odd, eerie flash of green light.
Their humor had vanished. MacDonald cleared her throat. Richardson squinted. Silently, he parked the car, and the two unbuckled and opened their car doors.
As they stepped out, there was another flash of a normal yellowish color and the familiar cracks of rifle fire.
“Shit!” MacDonald hit the ground.
A second later, the windshield of their car shattered like a collapsing sheet of ice as both agents scrambled to hide behind the engine block.
“Well,” remarked Richardson, drawing his sidearm, “so much for our insurance.”
“Yeah, yeah.” MacDonald had her gun out and was aiming it at the second-floor windows. “Shut up and return fire.” She squeezed off three shots.
Richardson aimed and fired two of his own. They were out of effective handgun range, but simply shooting in the bad guys’ general direction ought to provide some cover while the SWAT guys prepared to move in.
He wondered, though, what that green light had been. His first guess was a high-powered laser, the kind some federal agents had been blinded with back in 2020. But it hadn’t looked like a concentrated beam. It was broader and diffused, like a glowing forcefield.
As local law enforcement started shooting back too, Richardson and MacDonald crept closer to them. An officer near the back approached, timing his runs as he darted from vehicle to vehicle.
“Who the hell are you?” he hissed. “Feds?”
“Yes, sir,” Richardson answered, pulling out his badge.
MacDonald did likewise, keeping one hand on the gun. “MacDonald and Richardson, FBI. We were rerouted here from another operation and ordered to observe and assist. What’s the situation, aside from the obvious?”
Scowling as gunshots rang out behind them and speaking during lulls in the noise, the officer explained, “Bank robbery, which is the part we all get. But they got some kind of tech that we can’t identify, and we think they might be a goddamn cult or something. Is that why you guys are on it now? Here, listen to this.”
Another cop brought out a new device that allowed them to magnify sounds within a certain distance, and some of the conversation from within the tower became audible.
“...don’t know how it works, but it’s real, man. Whether you want to call it magic, psychic powers, a miracle, or what, it’s going to be what gets us out of this shit. Now stand back and let them do their job!”
Richardson squinted. “Magic, eh?”
The green light appeared again, this time on the first floor through the window. Two men within were holding up their left hands and making strange gestures, and a translucent emerald field was forming in front of them. Both held rifles in their right hands at a low ready position.
The SWAT commander barked, “Take ‘em out!”
Gunshots rang out, only to spark off the greenish light mass as though it were a bulletproof shield.
MacDonald gawked. “What the ever-loving hell?”
Then robbers on the second floor fired back with what seemed to be an automatic rifle and a submachine gun. Everyone outside darted back to cover.
One, though, was too slow, and he grunted and fell as bullets struck him. He was wearing body armor, and it clearly saved his life, but the impact through the vest was enough that he had to be dragged from the fight and given medical attention.
Richardson and MacDonald, confident the SWAT team could handle the combat, hung back from the action and focused on filming and observing the strange green light as well as listening to what the robbers said via the magnification device.
One of the criminals who seemed to be in charge of the defenses shouted at another, “Cover them! They’re losing the shield!”
Richardson looked up and saw that the green light was fading in front of the two men holding it. A gunman on the second floor started shooting again, but it was too late. Two SWAT officers opened fire, and the guy on the left-hand side of the green shield dropped with red holes in his chest and head.
Over the amplification device, the leader bellowed, “Goddammit! Fucking bastards!”
Then a new man appeared at the second-story window, covering himself with a small green shield with his left hand while he reared back with his right. Oddly, an MP5 hung against his body on a sling, but he wasn’t trying to use it.
Instead, a spot of orange flame appeared in his right hand, and he tossed it out the window. A fireball or miniature meteor about the size of a softball headed straight toward the nearest police car, which two guys were crouched behind.
&
nbsp; “Move!” one of them yelled, and they jumped and rolled as the projectile struck the vehicle, blasting it three feet off the ground and engulfing it in flames and smoke.
MacDonald rubbed her eyes. “Did I just see that? Did that guy have a weaponized flare gun that I didn’t notice, or did he create a goddamn fireball in his hand?”
Richardson felt his spine going cold. “I don’t know. Might have been an optical illusion.” He didn’t believe that, but it helped to say it.
Cops and robbers traded more volleys of gunfire, though neither side lost any more people. A moment later, the leader’s voice spoke once more.
“Almost done with the loot!” he informed his comrades. “Just hold them off a little longer.”
Richardson exchanged glances with the SWAT commander. The criminals would be moving out soon, then the real fight would begin.
What that would look like, no one had any idea.
As if realizing that they had to hobble the ability of law enforcement to intercept them during their departure, the robbers retaliated by having at least four gunmen open fire at once. Rifle and SMG rounds rained down from the second floor or zipped out from the first, wreaking havoc on cars, palm trees, and random other pieces of landscaping.
MacDonald took cover behind their car’s engine block again. “Richardson! Get down!”
Richardson dove and rolled, but he took a bad twist in the process and a bullet struck near his foot, causing him to jerk reflexively forward and end his roll slightly in front of the car.
Out in the open, while fire was peppering the vehicle.
His heart leaped into his throat as he looked up and saw the muzzle flash of a rifle pointed at him from one of the ground-floor windows.
Then, still frozen, he saw something hovering in midair perhaps three feet in front of his face: a small pointed full-metal-jacket lead projectile. It had been stopped before it could hit him.
“Uhhhh...” he stammered, no longer sure what the hell was happening.
Two figures strode up behind him. Richardson glanced over his shoulder, assuming it was more of the local police, but the first glance belied this.
It was a pair of individuals he’d never seen before; a nerdy-looking white man in his thirties and an attractive black woman in her twenties, both wearing curious black cloaks over their clothes. The guy was dressed like an office worker or an accountant, while the woman was wearing a flowing multicolored dress.
“I’d move if I were you, officer.” The man’s voice was polite and cultured. He plucked the bullet out of the air as he moved past.
Richardson rolled behind the car and heard the suspended bullet hit the ground. When he looked up again, MacDonald beside him and the other cops watching in befuddlement, the mysterious pair were striding across the private street that separated the Wells Fargo Tower from the rest of the plaza.
A translucent barrier had appeared in front of them, the same shade of green as the one the officers had seen inside the bank.
“Who the hell are they?” one of the SWAT officers asked over the radios.
Through the amplification device, they heard one of the robbers ask the same thing.
The criminals began shooting again, but their guns were no more effective against the green barrier hovering in front of the two black-cloaked persons than the cops’ weapons had been against their shield. It appeared to have been generated by the same means, natural or supernatural.
The SWAT commander raised his hand and lowered it in a chopping motion. “Cease fire!” There was too much risk of hitting their new allies in the back. He looked at the two FBI agents and raised an eyebrow.
“Uh,” MacDonald shrugged, “they’re not with us, whoever they are.”
“ATF?” someone asked over the radio.
“Never seen ATF in a dress,” someone else called back.
“Okay.” The commander pinched the bridge of his nose. “Does anyone know what the fuck is going on at this point?” He looked at the assembled team, all of whom shook their heads. He sighed. “Right. Everyone take cover and…sit tight, I guess. Fuck.”
The strange couple, moving at a casual pace, made a beeline for the front entrance. The green shield expanded to surround them, and their forms became indistinct within the emerald-hued haze.
The thieves’ leader’s voice rasped from the device. “New orders. Kill those two, whatever it takes!”
Gunfire blazed as all the men within started shooting; Richardson estimated there were between five and seven of them. Stranger still, from two points at the windows, fireballs and rippling waves of iridescent light and wind streaked out and down, but they were no more effective against the barrier than bullets had been. The arcane attacks exploded in clouds of flame and sparks, to no effect.
The green cloud entered the building. A moment later, people screamed and cursed, and colored bolts of light streaked around inside the tower as though someone was shooting off fireworks.
An officer who’d been scouting the rear of the scene ran up to them, keeping low in case the crooks started shooting again. He told the SWAT commander, “That green stuff goes all the way around. They’ve pretty much enveloped the entire first three floors of the building with it.”
While the commander hemmed and hawed, Richardson wiped the sweat from his face. “Oh, man. Now what?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kera revved the bike, pushing her speed up to a good sixty miles per hour on a street marked for forty. Good thing most of the cops in the area were still back at the textile factory. If she could keep ahead of her pursuers on the current long, straight road, she’d have a better chance of losing them after she ducked down a side street or an alley.
But as good a bike as Zee was, he could only do so much on city streets. The three cars speeding after her were slowly gaining, and if she wasn’t careful, they were going to catch her too quickly for her to make it to the warehouse she’d picked for the confrontation.
She wove around and then in front of a large pickup truck. She winced at the thought that the gangsters might crash into an innocent, but she figured they wouldn’t. The truck was big enough that their car would get totaled by the impact.
She scanned ahead. The road curved around to the left, and there were a couple of residential streets and business-park-type areas to the sides. A shortcut might present itself or a nonstandard avenue that a motorcycle could fit through but a car could not.
Kera bobbed and wove, and one of the cars behind her fell back out of sight as it got stuck behind other vehicles.
She laughed, but she knew they’d find her again soon.
Kera turned left after the curve and zipped onto a broad grassy area where two or three companies had offices, then she spied a sidewalk ahead. No one was walking at this hour, and there were no gates or other obstructions.
She swerved onto the walk and drove down it, noting with exasperation that the first of the pursuing cars appeared right before she vanished behind the nearest building. The drivers had probably seen her, but they couldn’t follow and would have to guess where she’d emerge back onto a street.
Please, she thought, let this damn sidewalk emerge somewhere they’d never think of. I just need a little bit of time, dammit!
The sidewalk wended its way through the industrial park area but ultimately took a very straight and obvious course out the other side onto a street that ran parallel to the one she’d departed. When she neared the end, where the walk passed through a fence before rejoining the asphalt, she slowed down and checked in both directions.
“Shit,” she gasped, “I lost ‘em entirely. You did too good a job, MacDonagh. Chalk it up to the luck spell, maybe?”
Kera buzzed onto the road, weaving into the far lane and intending to turn off somewhere. Two cars rounded the nearby corner in unison, one in each lane, and rubber squealed as they hit the gas at the sight of her. The gangsters had figured out her simple plan after all, and she was back to being closer to them tha
n she’d like.
“Fuck.” She revved the bike and plunged down the street faster than was wise before taking another sharp, dangerous turn onto a different street. Leading moving vehicles into a trap was more trouble than she’d imagined it would be. Good learning experience, but one she wished she’d avoided.
A semi was there, parked by the roadside, with its rear compartment detached and open at both ends. A wooden ramp ran up into it, and it was mostly empty.
“Okay,” Kera snarled, “let’s see you guys follow me through there.”
Clenching her jaw, the girl sped up the ramp to the shock of the nearby workers who’d just finished unloading the compartment and entered the dark square tunnel, jetted out the other end, and went airborne for a second or two. The bike hit the asphalt hard as it came out, and another parked car was right in front of her.
“Fucksticks!” she sputtered and swung to the side. The cars pursuing her had slowed briefly as they tried to comprehend her stunt. She hadn’t lost them, but at least she’d gained a little ground.
There was a third car too, an SUV following the initial pair. Somehow, Kera suspected the third was not affiliated with the gang, which raised the question of who the hell they were.
“A smoke spell?” she mused as she picked up speed again. “It’d throw them off. No, too much energy, gotta save that for the main event. Smoke requires heat and something to combust. What about fog? That’s just half-condensed water vapor. Yeah, we’ll go with that.”
She took another turn, running a red light, and the three vehicles did the same. Luckily for all of them, there was no cross-traffic.
Or cops.
Kera concentrated, spoke a few words, and flicked her fingers from atop the bike’s handles. She felt channeled energy gathering the moisture in the air around and behind her and forming it into a thick mass of white mist.
The headlights following her dimmed, and the sounds of the engines faded. Grinning, Kera kicked up her speed. Soon she saw the cars emerge from the cloud in her rearview mirror, but she’d gained enough on them that they almost certainly couldn’t catch her before she reached the warehouse and got inside.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Two Page 21