War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  The door closed. We waited. After five minutes, I had the robot start ringing the doorbell again.

  When the door opened again, a bolt of lightning fried the robot, then the door closed.

  I picked up the microphone for the loudspeaker. “You’re completely surrounded and completely outnumbered. You have the option to surrender or die, but we aren’t going away. Don’t be stupid.”

  “You have such a soft, gentle way of inducing compliance,” Carmelita said.

  “Hell, what am I supposed to do? Send in a keg of beer and hope they drink themselves into a stupor?”

  She shrugged. “Works for me.”

  The door opened and Susan Reed stepped out. She stood on the porch for a moment, then raised her hands and started walking toward us. The door closed behind her.

  “She is an illusionist, among other things,” Carmelita said.

  “Susan, stop.” I said as she reached the middle of the street. “Stop, turn right, and walk down the middle of the street.”

  Susan kept coming. I pulled out my Raider and fired at the street in front of her. The explosive incendiary bullet blew a hole in the pavement, but the woman didn’t flinch or slow down.

  “Shields up!” Carmelita shouted. “That’s not Susan!”

  “Fire!” I shouted. Heavy weapons cut loose all along the street. The thing that looked like Susan exploded, very loudly and spectacularly, sending a fireball thirty feet in the air. When the debris stopped raining down and the smoke cleared, the hole in the pavement was five feet wide and two or three feet deep.

  “Nice call,” I said. I suspected the thing we destroyed was probably a household robot with a little extra explosive attached, but I’d let the forensics team figure it out later. The presence of the explosive was disturbing. I got on the radio Conway had given me.

  “Captain Conway, assume there are explosives in the house.”

  “Roger that, Captain James. I’m going to move people a little farther away.”

  One of the second-story windows broke, followed by a fireball arcing out of it toward the troops on my left. It splashed against an invisible shield twenty feet from anyone.

  “Wow.” Carmelita breathed.

  “Magitek shield,” I said absently. “A magitek works with an aeromancer to store magik in an enhancing device. Any mage can trigger it. The larger the device, the stronger the magitek engineer, the more power can be stored, the larger the shield can be generated, and the more times it can be used.”

  “But it runs down?”

  “Yeah, like a battery. It has to be recharged.”

  “And that’s the kind of thing you can do?”

  I glanced down at her. “We build that kind of thing in factories. Magitek engineers design them, usually a technician builds them. What I can do is this.”

  I sent my magik into Farringdon’s house, killing all the electricity. The lights went out, along with the heat. A second spell caused all the locks to pop open. My third spell was designed to disable any firearms inside. I picked up the microphone again.

  “If you’re tired of your parlor games, we’re waiting for you to come out, one at a time, with your hands in the air.”

  A bolt of pure energy blew the front door off its hinges and lanced toward us. It hit Carmelita’s shield, and I found myself flying backward through the air with her. Thankfully we landed on a grassy lawn, and she managed to hold onto her shield, but it still felt as though I’d been dropped on my back from ten feet in the air. Which I had.

  Gasping for breath, my mind a blackness filled with pain, I saw three bolts of energy blast from our three spirit mages toward the house, through the open space where the front door had been. Silence followed.

  The woman spirit mage leaned over me. “Are you all right?”

  “It probably depends on your definition of all right.” My vision was still sprinkled with incredibly bright white lights.

  “I think you can probably send your people into the house,” she said.

  “Farringdon survived a battle with other spirit mages before.”

  Her grin held no humor. “Not with me, he didn’t. Besides, Captain James, we cheat.”

  She held out a magitek enhancer on her palm. “I believe you made this, or at least that’s what Commissioner Whittaker told me.”

  “I do a little side work for spare change occasionally,” I said, taking the hand she offered. She pulled me to my feet, and every rib I owned protested. I picked up my radio. “Captain Conway, send a shielded team in. Tell them to be careful.”

  The inside of the house’s first floor was a shambles. Farringdon was dead, but to my amazement, the others were all alive, although unconscious. I had no doubt Farringdon’s bolt would have killed me if not for Carmelita’s shield.

  There were seven people besides Farringdon in the house. Rather than take any chances with them, Whittaker had them all taken to Gettysburg instead of the jail downtown.

  As I was supervising all that, my phone rang.

  “James.”

  “Where the hell are you?” Kirsten asked. “Are you all right? I think I just saw someone who looks like you on the news.”

  I glanced at my chrono and discovered it was almost two o’clock in the morning. “Just getting ready to go home. It’s been a long day. Why are you still up?”

  “Watching a newscast. Really exciting. There’s some kind of mage battle going on up in Owings Mills, and they evacuated an entire neighborhood. You’re not involved in that, are you?”

  Chapter 30

  “Do I get overtime for days like this?” Carmelita asked when I dropped her off at the gates of the Domingo estate at four o’clock in the morning.

  “Dream on. You would if you were simply a detective, but as a sergeant, you’re considered supervisory personnel.”

  “Who do I supervise?”

  “You can boss Luanne around when I’m not in the office.”

  “Fat chance. The woman is twice my size, and she’s got an attitude.”

  “That’s why I hired her. Quit whining, you make twice what she does.”

  “You really are a bitch.”

  “Yup. See you Wednesday.”

  “Today’s Tuesday.”

  “And that’s why I hired you. Keen sense of the obvious. Sleep in. Turn off your phone. I’m going to, and Whittaker can screw himself. We just busted the HLA leadership in the Metroplex. You’ll be a hero next time you show up at Whodunit.”

  Carmelita grinned. “Drive safe.”

  If it wasn’t for one of Kirsten’s potions, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to drive the forty minutes home. I parked the car, stumbled into the house, and poured myself a hot bath with a large dollop of healing oils. A healthy portion of aged whiskey comforted me as I soaked for an hour, then I crawled into bed.

  The phone rang, and as I struggled to find it, I saw there was light outside my window. In spite of my best intentions, I had forgotten to turn the damned thing off before I went to bed.

  “James.”

  “Where are you?” Whittaker asked.

  “In bed. What the hell do you want?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re insubordinate?”

  “Every boss I ever had.”

  I heard him chuckle. “When do you plan on coming into the office?”

  “Tomorrow. I don’t even know what day today is, but whatever tomorrow is.” I hung up, turned off the phone, and went back to sleep.

  When I next awoke, the sun had shifted. I got up, took a shower, and felt a lot more human than I had earlier. Kirsten had left a note on the kitchen table, Come down to the shop and we’ll go shopping.

  One of our elven bodyguards, Llerywin, was lying on the couch watching an old vid on the screen in the living room.

  “Where’s your buddy?” I asked.

  “Siarin went into town with Kirsten.”

  “So, Siarin is Kirsten’s bodyguard and you’re mine?”

  She sat up, “Oh, no. We take turns
guarding the house and the shop. We were told that you didn’t need a bodyguard, but Kirsten does.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Your mother.”

  I laughed. “I’m not going to ask exactly what she said.”

  “Kirsten left some apple tarts. They’re tasty.”

  They were, and that’s what I had for breakfast with a cup of coffee. I stuck my head out the door and discovered that the temperature was frigid in spite of the bright sunshine, so I dismissed the idea of riding my bike. On the drive in, I reflected that having a car was nice sometimes.

  It was midafternoon when I arrived at Enchantments. Kirsten immediately turned things over to her assistant and hauled me back out the door.

  “I have a friend who sells clothes that are exactly what you need for work,” she said. “They’re a little pricey but worth it.”

  “I was thinking more about a bargain store chain,” I said. “I mean, if I’m going to be destroying my clothes on a regular basis, why pay more?” The jeans and leather I normally wore took a lot of abuse.

  The shop she took me to was owned by a witch, and the high prices were due to the spells she set into the fabric. The owner showed me a lovely blue satin blouse, very girly with ruffles. I about swooned when she slashed it with a knife—or tried to slash it with a knife. The fabric didn’t cut.

  “Oooh, I like that,” I breathed.

  “Wash and wear, also,” she said. “Blood, dirt, soot, fecal matter—all comes out with grocery-store detergent, or in a sonic cleaner if you have one of them.”

  “You don’t happen to sell jeans and casual clothes like this, do you?”

  “Sure.” She led me to a back room. “A lot of my customers are bikers. They’re very hard on their clothes.”

  Even the eye-popping bill didn’t stop me from hauling an armload of clothes out of the place. I had even ordered a new spelled-leather biker jacket. What good is money if you can’t spend it occasionally? Besides, my salary had just doubled.

  We hauled it all over to Kirsten’s shop, and I stashed it in her back room. Since I still had a few dollars in my bank account, I offered to take her out to dinner to thank her. To my surprise, Aleks walked into her shop just as we were about to leave.

  I felt myself light up at the sight of him.

  “We’re on our way to Jack’s,” Kirsten said. “Care to join us?”

  We asked Siarin if she wanted to go with us, but she declined. “I’m going back up to your house, and Llerywin and I are going to that Kitchen Witch place. Great food.”

  Jack’s Oyster House was down the hill from Kirsten’s shop, right on the street that ran around the harbor. As we walked, I noted the lack of people out on the street. It was a part of town that catered to pedestrians and tourists, and though the evening was brisk, it seemed rather deserted.

  I mentioned it, and Kirsten said, “It’s been this way since the riots and then the bombing of the Palace of Commerce. It’s gotten even worse since Lucifer’s Lair closed. There have been a number of muggings and demons snatching humans right off the street, even in the middle of the day.”

  A single woman was walking about a block in front of us, and suddenly three demons appeared, two in front of her and one behind. She screamed. I took off running, drawing my Raider. Aleks pounded along just behind me.

  When I drew close enough that I could be sure of my shot, I stopped, aimed, and fired at the demon with its back to me. It arched its back and staggered. I fired again and resumed running.

  One of the demons grabbed the woman. Aleks extended his arm, and a ball of white energy left his hand. It hit the third demon, and it disappeared. That caught the attention of the demon holding the woman, and it turned toward us. I stopped again, aimed, and fired. The demon was a couple of feet taller than the woman, so I wasn’t worried about hitting her. My bullet hit it in the face and exploded.

  Aleks let loose with another energy ball, and the demon I had shot in the back disappeared, just as its companion had done.

  We reached the woman just as the now-headless demon dropped her. I caught her in my arms and pulled her away.

  Other people on the street were screaming and shouting, and a uniformed cop ran up to us. I identified myself, then turned the woman over to him and his partner. I gave them a brief synopsis of what we’d witnessed, and made sure she was all right and the cops had everything under control.

  As my companions and I continued down the street, Kirsten said, “See what I mean? It’s bad for business.”

  The upside was that we didn’t have any trouble finding a table overlooking the harbor at Jack’s. We entered our order and sat back to watch the sunset.

  “What happened to those demons?” Kirsten asked Aleks.

  “They were converted into energy,” he said. “Broken down into their atomic particles.”

  Her brows knitted.

  “Aleks is a spirit mage,” I said. “Even rarer than a magitek.”

  He nodded. “I pull energy from the world around me. What I did with those demons was concentrate the energy, then redirect it.”

  “Spirit magik is very similar to that of elven mages,” I said. “I had three spirit mages on that job last night. One of the HLA radicals we captured was a spirit mage. I was very thankful that we came out of that without destroying the neighborhood and losing a lot of lives.”

  Our drinks came along with three dozen oysters, and we dug in.

  “Have you ever used a magitek enhancer?” I asked Aleks.

  He shook his head. “Not entirely sure what that is or how I’d use it. Isn’t that what your grandfather used to create the Rift?”

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t his intention. He wanted to scare humans into dismantling their nuclear weapons and end the wars.”

  “It worked,” Kirsten said.

  “Not in the way he intended,” I said.

  Humans had destroyed all their nukes in the aftermath of his demonstration. No one wanted a repeat of seeing a ravenous hoard of demons boiling out of another Rift. One was bad enough. That was before they discovered the Rift moved around, and that different beings came through in different locations.

  I continued, “Anyway, the woman I spoke with last night said that a small enhancer could be used by a spirit mage to focus the energy she wielded and control it better.”

  “I’d like to talk with her,” Aleks said.

  After dinner, we walked Kirsten back to her shop. I gathered a few of the clothes I had bought to take to Aleks’s apartment, and she put the rest in her van to take to our house. Then Aleks and I walked to his place to spend the night.

  Chapter 31

  The unfortunate part of the exciting night with Farringdon and his HLA buddies was the news organizations showing me at the scene. It was almost impossible to block all the drones they had constantly flying over the city. That evidently alerted my Aunt Courtney to the fact that I was still living in the Metroplex.

  A week after the Farringdon affair, I left the office about six o’clock to meet Aleks for dinner at a fancy steakhouse. I walked because the restaurant was only about six blocks from my office, and parking in downtown Baltimore had been a mess ever since the invention of the automobile.

  The harbor in Baltimore was surrounded by hills to the north, so everything going north was uphill. It was cold and gray, but the lights and decorations for Christmas seemed to make the weather feel appropriate. There were people out on the street, and the surviving stores were staying open to catch as much business as they could.

  The attack came as I crossed a small, sort of sunken, park surrounded by skyscraper office buildings. I entered the park at street level and proceeded to the three sets of wide stone steps on the other side, leading up in three different directions between the tall buildings. I often used it as a shortcut.

  I heard the distinctive sound of a fireball and automatically triggered the magitek device I carried at all times. It set up an electrical field around me—a poor substitute
for a true shield, but that was something my magikal talents couldn’t produce.

  The fireball hit the field, causing a flash of electrical energy mixed with fire. Hot and uncomfortable, but at least I didn’t get charbroiled. I dove for cover behind a fountain with a sculpture and drew my pistol. Before I could look around to try and see where the fireball had come from, a bolt of lightning hit me. The electrical field surrounding me dealt with that a lot better.

  Two more fireballs flew in from different directions, and the heat level turned up significantly. Looking around wildly, I tried to see where the attacks were coming from. A man stood at the top of one of the staircases, and I snapped off a shot in his direction.

  Another lightning bolt lit up my magitek shield. I spun around and saw another man standing at the open side of the park. I fired at him, and he went down. At the whoosh sound of more fireballs coming at me, I leaped up and ran toward the steps to my left. The fireballs splashed behind me.

  The little lightning box that my father built for me when I was a child had four settings. The personal shield was step one. The second setting loosed an electrical charge thirty feet in the direction I pointed it. The charge was enough to knock out a man or stun a demon. The third setting would launch a lethal hundred thousand volt, one hundred fifty milliamp lightning bolt at my target. And phase four would blanket a twenty-foot radius around me with a sustained hundred thousand volts. When my daddy made that box, he wasn’t worried about collateral damage, only about keeping his little girl safe.

  I triggered step four.

  A man appeared on the top of the stairs ahead of me, levelling his pistol at me. I fired and he flinched. I took the steps three at a time, firing again. Then I got close enough, and the lightning hit him. He did a shaking, stumbling dance and collapsed. I ran past him as a fireball splashed down behind me.

  At the top of the steps, the walkway widened, creating a corner I could hide behind. I skidded to a stop and peered back around to see if anyone followed me. Two men were starting up the steps. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I stepped out, aimed, and shot one and then the other, then ducked back behind the corner.