I nodded. “I’ll talk to Olivia and Whittaker. We’ll get it arranged.”
Chapter 33
I went back to the office and spoke to Commissioner Whittaker. He agreed to my plan. Next, I sent a message to Olivia through my implant. Her response came within five minutes. “Of course, they can come here. I’ll have a plane waiting for them.”
Kirsten and I went home with our elven bodyguards, stopping for food at a couple of shops on the way. Having a house full of hearty appetites put her in a good mood, and I figured they might save me from eating leftovers the rest of the week.
Two more elven warriors were waiting for us at our house—the night shift I was expecting. Folodin and Fasparin were brothers, and although they told me they weren’t twins, I had a hard time telling them apart. Kirsten was so deep into her relationship with Mychal that she wasn’t looking at other men, but in years past, she would have been all over them.
So, we had six elves plus Mychal joining us for dinner. I put the extra leaf in the dining room table and set it with the good china I had given Kirsten years before. She sent me and my new shadows to the liquor store, and we brought back a case of wine. The smell when we walked into the house was divine.
By the time we finished dessert, I surveyed the wreckage and confirmed that leftovers weren’t going to be a problem. Cleaning up wasn’t either. The elven women waved their hands, and within fifteen minutes, I was putting the china away.
“Can you do that?” I asked one of the F brothers.
“Of course.”
The way he said that irritated me. “But that’s women’s work, right?” I asked.
Siarin laughed. “If you want the job done right, you call a woman. Men are much better at making messes than cleaning them up.”
Kirsten looked puzzled. “I thought elven society was a matriarchy. Aren’t the women in charge?”
All of the elven women laughed. “And that’s why,” Siarin said.
I had never seen an elf blush, but the tips of all the males’ ears turned pink, and the women laughed harder.
Llerywin said, “Men are too controlled by their emotions. They get excited and start chopping off heads without thinking. That makes them good warriors, but good decision making requires a calmer personality.”
Considering that all the elves—male and female—carried swords that were almost as long as Kirsten was tall, I didn’t think that was a metaphor.
Soon after, Gildor and Elbereth took their leave, and the rest of us retired to our rooms. The F brothers said they planned to stay awake all night, and Kirsten set them up with a bunch of vids they could watch. To my surprise, they seemed to favor romantic comedies.
It didn’t seem as though I had been asleep very long when a flash of light and a sound like a gong signaled that something was attempting Kirsten’s wards. I leaped out of bed, grabbed my Raider, and also picked up my laser rifle where it sat next to my bedroom door. Cautiously pulling open the curtains, I flinched back as a fireball splashed against the wards.
Obviously, Courtney was persistent. I found my phone and called dispatch, then pulled on a pair of pants and strapped on the holster belt for the Raider. Picking up the electrical box and the rifle, I headed for the stairs. Mychal and Kirsten, both nude, met me on the landing. Mychal had his Raider, and Kirsten had a glowing witch stick in one hand and an athame in the other.
“Demons,” Kirsten said.
I barreled down the stairs to the tune of the gong going off twice more to find the four elves, their swords drawn, guarding the doors and the windows in the dining room.
“Demons!” I shouted.
“Yes, we know,” Llerywin said, as calmly as if she were commenting on the weather. “The question is, do we go out to meet them, or hope the wards hold and they can’t get in?”
Something crashed against the front door, and the house shook.
“We’ve never had a demon attack us before,” Kirsten said.
“Mychal, stay with her,” I said. I nodded to Llerywin. “I have help on the way, but I worry about our neighbors.”
“Then let’s go out and see if we can bring some order to the situation,” Siarin said.
The door flew open. “I’m closing it behind you,” Kirsten said, then started to chant.
The F brothers lunged toward the door. A demon appeared, and one of the brothers spitted it with his sword. The demon melted, just as Ashvial did when he was shot by my mother’s elven arrow.
I followed the brothers out with the elven women behind me. I saw a blue demon—a frost demon—across the street. I triggered the guidelight on my rifle and saw a red dot appear on his chest. I triggered the laser, and his chest disappeared.
The elves each engaged a demon, using magik as well as their spelled swords. I shot two more attackers with the laser rifle. Lights started going on in the houses around us.
A demon fell out of the sky, landing right in front of me and reaching for me. I shot him at point-blank range, severing his arm from his body. But he was too close and bowled me over before I could shoot him again. I rolled, trying to get away from him, but he grabbed my leg with his remaining arm. Drawing the raider, I pressed the muzzle against his head and pulled the trigger. He didn’t let go.
A sword flashed, and his head spun away from his body. He still didn’t let go. The sword fell again, and I was free, but the demon’s hand still clutched my calf.
The world lit up, as though a miniature sun had sprung to life twenty feet above the street. I could see two demons heading toward me, and I shot both of them with the laser.
Quiet. No sounds at all. No demons, except for the bodies of those I had shot. Two elves were still standing in front of me. In the distance I could hear sirens gradually growing louder.
“Where are the others?” I asked the woman nearest to me.
“Around back,” was the answer.
“And up here.” I looked up and saw Siarin standing on the roof. “I think we got them all,” she said.
A car skidded around the corner and screeched to a stop forty feet away. Two men jumped out with their pistols drawn. I recognized them as detectives I commanded in the Arcane division—both mages.
They cautiously approached, surveying the damage and inspecting the bodies of the demons. For some reason, the one who had grabbed me hadn’t melted either.
One of the cops walked up to me. “Captain James? What’s going on?”
He appeared to have trouble keeping his eyes on my face, and then I realized I was naked above the waist. And cold. Damn, it was cold, with tiny flakes of snow falling.
“Demon attack,” I said. “Luckily we had some elven friends spending the night with us.”
Both of the elven women were completely naked, so that attracted the detectives’ attention even more than my chest.
More cars showed up, mostly marked cars carrying uniformed officers.
“What’s that?” one of the cops asked, pointing to the little sun lighting the scene.
“I thought we needed a little more light,” Kirsten’s voice came from the doorway behind me. “Demons don’t like sunlight.”
Proving they were all heterosexual, every cops’ attention turned to her, the elves and I forgotten.
A drone buzzed overhead. I swung the laser toward it and vaporized it.
“Last damn thing I need are topless pictures of me on the morning news,” I said to the nearest cop, who gaped at me.
A fire truck pulled around the corner, attempting to navigate its way between cop cars and cars that had been parked on the street before our little battle. Our house looked fine, although one bush was burned and another one had icicles hanging off it.
The garage of the house to our left was burned, along with the car inside it, but the rest of the house looked okay except for a little char. The house on our right had caught fire, but it was out. The firemen rushed around, then their captain showed up.
“We had a call about the fires, but they seem to
have gone out.”
Kirsten walked up, wearing an old, baggy dress she wore for cleaning house. She handed me a sweatshirt and said, “Our neighbors are going to be upset with us. I figured if I put the fires out, they might cut us a little slack.”
The fireman shook his head. “Put them out? How?”
She waggled her fingers. “I’m a witch.”
He stared at her, paled a little, then said, “Do you need a job?”
The sweatshirt helped with two things—the men quit staring at my chest, and the night got a lot warmer. I couldn’t feel my bare feet, though, and wished I had a little of Kirsten’s magik.
I called the detective over and asked, “Where’s Lieutenant Berger? Who’s coordinating tonight?” Sam Berger was an old partner of mine, and not my favorite cop. One of the first things I did when I was promoted to captain was move Berger to the night shift so I didn’t have to interact with him.
“Uh, I guess you were kinda busy,” the cop said. “The damned demons have gone crazy all over town. Attacks at Novak, Domingo, and Whittaker. Attacks downtown. An attack on the airport. Lieutenant Berger responded to the attack at the Whittaker estate, and the last I heard, he was down.”
“So, who’s coordinating?”
“Sergeant Johansson. He’s out at the Novak estate.”
I rolled my eyes, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and called dispatch. That was all we needed—Martin Johansson’s younger son involved. Who knew what side he was on.
“This is Captain James, Arcane Division. I’ll be online in five. Do you have communications with Commissioner Whittaker?”
“Yes, ma’am. Voice only.”
“Tell him to call me, and route coordination through me. Tell Sergeant Johansson to worry about Novak, and leave the rest to me.”
“Thank God,” the dispatcher said. “It’s been chaos the past hour.”
I found Mychal talking to a couple of uniforms. “I need you to get online and coordinate the police out at Novak and Domingo, and try to keep that fool Johansson from doing any more damage.”
“What’s going on?” he asked as he followed me into the house.
“We weren’t the only ones attacked. This kind of crap is going on all over the Metroplex.”
I opened my laptop and logged in. The last thing I wanted Whittaker to find out was that I didn’t need a computer to access the secure police systems. A flood of reports hit my screen, and it took me ten or fifteen minutes to sort them out.
The fighting at Novak was over, but the assault at Domingo was ongoing. An earthquake was reported west of Baltimore. That was where the Whittaker estate overlooked the Patapsco River. Whittaker mercenaries had repulsed the assault on the airport. Downtown Baltimore looked like there was a demon riot going on, with widespread fires and destruction.
Kirsten set a cup of coffee down beside me, and I gave her a smile of thanks as I picked up my ringing phone. It was Whittaker. I took a large swallow, burned my tongue, and answered, “James. How are things in your neck of the woods? We’re having a lot of fun here.”
Chapter 34
Thankfully, I was working from home, and Kirsten fed me. It was late afternoon before I looked up from the computer, and my eyes were tired and burning. I had to spell my phone to renew its charge.
The demons had disappeared, the fires had all been put out, and the body counts tabulated.
There were no reports of trouble from Findlay House, the Moncrieff estate at Elk Neck, or anywhere near Wilmington, but several of the Novak-Findlay-Domingo allies among the Hundred had been attacked. I was beginning to understand what the Rift War had looked like.
I joined Kirsten and Mychal in the kitchen. He looked as worn out as I felt. Kirsten handed me a small potion bottle, and I drank the contents without asking what it was. I immediately felt better. Then she put a bowl of soup on the table, along with a large glass of fruit juice.
“Are we really in a war against the demons?” Kirsten asked softly.
Mychal and I looked at each other. “They’re becoming much more aggressive,” I said, “but I’m not sure if that’s happening only here in the Mid-Atlantic, or if it’s happening worldwide.”
Mychal shook his head. “I talked with my uncle, and he said some of our allies in Europe reported demon incursions yesterday, but nothing on the scale we are seeing here. He thinks what we have here is Akiyama testing us. They’re sending their demon allies against us to test our strength.” Mychal’s uncle was Henri Novak, the Family’s head of security.
“Do you know anything about Akiyama’s military strength?” I asked.
“Our intelligence says they have an armed force of at least forty thousand magik users and two hundred thousand human troops. Most of those are in Asia. But they could arm at least that many more within a couple of months. That’s a far greater army than we could field, even if we could hire all of Whittaker’s mercenaries.”
“Their magitek facilities are larger than ours also,” I said, “and more directed at designs the military could use. I did a paper on their factories when I was at university. Of course, I had only public sources of information, but those indicated that most of their magiteks were what I would call technician level. They seem to have put a lot more funding into such uses, whereas we go where the money is—catering to wealthy Magi.”
The magitek-powered Akiyama cargo plane I had disabled at Elk Neck showed how far our Far-Eastern competitors had come. The design was clumsy, but the execution was solid. Before I went to bed, I called Mary Sue. She reported that she had produced the first prototypes for the drones Findlay and Whittaker had ordered and promised to deliver them to me the coming weekend.
The following morning, after an uninterrupted night’s sleep, I took care of the most pressing business I had, then took my car, and flew out to the Whittaker estate overlooking the Patapsco River west of Baltimore. It wasn’t necessary, but I was curious. I did call ahead, because being shot out of the sky wasn’t on my to-do list.
The Patapsco wasn’t a large river until it widened where it emptied into the Chesapeake, but it ran through a deep, narrow ravine it had carved for itself over the millennia. The Whittaker estate was comprised of a series of walled compounds arrayed across a ridgeline on the east bank. The main residential compound, surrounded by fifteen-foot stone walls, had the best view. Flanking it on three sides were three more compounds used for housing and training the mercenaries who provided the Family with most of its wealth. Most of the arms factories were located in West Virginia.
I circled above the area, and the damage from the earthquake was immediately apparent, but as far as I could tell, none of the walls or the buildings had sustained any damage. The river had changed its course in several places, and the road leading to the estate was cracked and jumbled. I wondered when they dug the wide, deep ditches outside the walls. I’d never seen them on previous visits.
I set the car down on the driveway inside the main compound, and rolled to a stop near the garages. As I started my trek up the sidewalk leading through expansive lawns toward the front door, two very large shaggy gray dogs raced down the hill.
My first instinct was to draw my weapon, but instead, I stood very still and extended my hands. They slowed, approached me cautiously, stretched to sniff my hands, and began wagging their tales. I had met my boss’s Irish Wolfhounds before, and in spite of being the size of ponies, they were quite gentle and friendly.
Following the dogs, Tom Whittaker came down the steps, wearing khaki pants and a white, open-collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“Good to see you,” he called. “Come on in and have a drink.”
“I’m on duty,” I replied. “My boss frowns on that sort of thing.”
He grinned. “We won’t tell him.”
“I was curious to see the damage from the earthquake,” I said as we walked up to the house.
Whittaker chuckled. “No earthquake, just some minor changes to the local topography. The demons we
ren’t expecting the ground to open up and swallow them, or for the river to change course and wash them away.”
“I noticed some ditches outside the walls that looked like they had been burned. I thought fire didn’t affect most demons.”
“It doesn’t. Those were tunnels filled with a magikal compound comprised of thermite, white phosphorus, and hydrogen peroxide. We triggered a magitek device that collapsed the tunnels, and contact with air ignited the mixture. Rather explosively. We discovered during the Rift War that demons don’t like it very much. I also instructed our magiteks to try your little trick and link an extra enhancer to each of our lightning generators. The effect was quite astonishing.”
I imagined it would be. The enhancers on the lightning generators installed on the compound’s walls were huge—three-cubic-foot boxes.
Inside the house, he ushered me into his office, poured us each a drink, and offered me a soft leather chair. We discussed the events of the previous night and preparations for any new incursions. I also gave him an update on production of the drones he had ordered.
“I’m a little short-handed,” I said. “Sam Berger was the night-shift supervisor, and he’s out of commission.”
“Sam died this morning,” Whittaker said. “His injuries were too severe.” He suggested a couple of other senior lieutenants to take Berger’s place, and we agreed on one.
“Are we still on for Saturday?” I asked.
“The Moncrieff girls? Not a lot of nightclubs going to be open in Baltimore after the rampage downtown,” he answered. “Are you sure their mother is going to believe they’re going out clubbing?”
“The clubs that can be open, will be,” I said. “Depending on whether they think we can provide security. They don’t make any money when they’re closed.”
“Yeah, even during the Rift War, bars managed to serve customers.”
“I need that security on Friday night as well. The media will report it, and people will feel safer coming out on Saturday. The more people out and about, the easier it will be to make those women disappear.”
War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2) Page 20