“Yeah, but they’re going to have their hands full just to keep people from drowning,” I answered. “The water is more to slow them down and short out all the electronics down here. No way they’ll get anything up and running again anytime soon.”
I checked the chrono in my implant. It was eleven forty-five, and the launch of the offensive—other than those demons who jumped early—was scheduled to take place at midnight. Akiyama’s transport planes were due to set down at the Metroplex airport in thirty minutes.
“Wait here.”
I walked down the tunnel and disabled the keypad locking the bulkhead door. I readied my laser rifle, then turned the crank, and opened the door. Thankfully, it was well maintained and made little noise.
The room was dark except for a lot of little blinking lights. I pulled my magikally enhanced night goggles out of my bag and put them on. Karolyn had obviously been in that room before, because her description was accurate. Two major bundles of electrical cables came into the room from different directions. The magitek-enhanced backup generator sat idling on standby.
I approached the door to the wiring room and pushed it open a crack. There was a little more light in there due to a nightlight on the wall above the light switch. Wiring hubs and routers in metal racks filled the room.
Backing out, I returned to my companions.
“Everyone go to those stairs and get ready to escape into the garage when the lights go out. When I kill the electricity, there won’t be any light at all in here. I’ll catch up to you. Aleks, wait for me there.”
I waited until I saw them turn right and then went back down the side tunnel. The first thing I did was shut down the backup generator and drain its magitek enhancer. Then I disabled the magitek converter attached to the cable bundle running in the direction of the house. That cut the electricity running through those fiber-optic cables by ninety percent. I did the same to the cables running toward the garages and other outbuildings.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door to the wiring room and swept the racks there with laser fire. There was a moment of silence on the other side of the door, then people started shouting. On my way out of the power room to the tunnel, I cast a spell that shorted out every electrical device that was left. The lights in the tunnel went out.
I keyed my father’s box to provide me an electrical shield. It shed enough light for me to see as I ran toward where Aleks waited for me at the stairway.
“Ready?” I asked, switching the box off.
“Yes. What do I do?”
The whoosh sound of a fireball had me diving forward onto the stairs. The darkness suddenly illuminated brighter than daylight. I looked up and saw a beam of blinding white light erupting from Aleks’s hand. I waited a second but didn’t hear an answering fireball.
I contacted all the magitek enhancers Gildor had planted.
“Cast the spell to destroy the pipes at me.”
He recoiled, a horrified look on his face. “I can’t do that!”
I chuckled and held up a converter box. “Yes, you can. I’ll be acting as a conduit. You’re not going to hurt me.”
Taking a deep breath, he held out his left hand, and a shaft of that blinding white light shot toward me. I pulled it all into the magitek converter, then redirected it to the enhancers. The sound of high-pressure pipes exploding rang back along the tunnel.
“See? Easy as falling off a cliff. Now, if you don’t mind, get a move on or get the hell out of the way. Things are going to get very wet here very quickly.”
He turned and ran up the stairs with me close behind him.
It was dark in the tunnel, and almost as dark in the garage. I knew the elves could deal with it, but Karolyn, Carmelita, and Aleks would be totally blind.
“Aleks, could you please hang a little light on my back for you to follow?” I guided his hand to my back. “Not very bright, okay?”
The elves were spread out in a semi-circle in front of us, swords in hand.
“Let’s go,” I said, and followed them as they made their way toward the outer wall of the building.
Someone in the garage worked some magik and produced a light. I stopped, aimed, and shot him with the laser. The light went out.
The building was a huge open space. Lots of cars, as well as storage areas and places to work on the cars. We worked our way through and around cars and machines until we reached a doorway.
“Wait here,” Gildor said, opening the door a little and squeezing through it. Flashes of light and the sound of thunder from outside told me that a fight was going on.
I contacted Mychal through my implant. “What’s going on?”
“The mercenaries showed up and are engaged with Moncrieff and Akiyama guardians. Did you get her?”
“Yeah, and disabled their command center. Get your team out of here. Leave the fighting to the professionals.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice. Where are you?”
“Inside the garage. As soon as the elves tell us it’s safe, we’ll make a dash for the limo and fly out of here.”
“Good luck.”
Gildor came back a couple of minutes later.
“I think that with shields and glamours we can safely make it to the limo,” he said.
He took my hand, and the elf who was guarding Karolyn took hers. Hugging the wall, we inched out the door and along the building. At the end, I looked across an open space and located the little blue pyramid sitting on the gravel beside the driveway.
In the distance, a full-fledged mage battle was going on, with Whittaker’s troops fighting from the woods and their foes fighting from inside the house and the roof. About that time, lightning and fire rained down from the sky onto the roof. Mary Sue’s drones. Then a large explosion blew open the front door, and the entrance portico collapsed. Karolyn’s childhood home was taking a beating.
In spite of the glamours, someone spotted us. A bolt of lightning shot toward us from the house. A green-tinged bolt shot back the other way, and light flared in one of the windows. And then Karolyn really cut loose. A burst of wind turned into a whirlwind and slammed against the damaged portico. Green lightning slashed across the front of the house. Miniature suns—balls of pure energy—followed from Aleks, blowing holes in the stone walls. Bursts of elven battle magik battered the house.
We made it to the limo, and everyone piled inside. Before I got in, I switched my laser rifle to full power and destroyed the last large magitek lightning generator on the roof of the house.
Without any delay, I jumped into the car and started the engine, then threw the car into reverse, and stomped on the accelerator. Fifty feet back down the driveway, I spun the wheel, put the car in a forward gear, and roared off. Halfway to the road leading out of the estate, I sketched the rune and took to the air. I didn’t really feel safe, though, until we were out over Chesapeake Bay, making a very long, wide turn that would take us to Loch Raven.
As I settled into a cruising speed, Whittaker contacted me through my implant.
“How’s it going?”
“We have Karolyn Moncrieff, and we’ve destroyed the command center where Hiroku was directing their operations. Last I saw, your forces were taking command at Elk Neck. How about the rest of the world?”
“Akiyama just tried to land their planes at the airport. Your plan worked just like you said it would. Thought you’d like to know. Where are you now?”
“Headed to Loch Raven. We’ll probably spend the night there.”
“Party pooper. Things are just getting interesting around here.”
“We’ve already done interesting, and no casualties. I’ll take that as a win.”
“Have a good night, Dani. Call me in the morning.”
I had told Whittaker and the others that they didn’t need magiteks to deal with Akiyama’s troop planes. All they had to do was erect poles on either side of the runways. A circle of witches could cast a ward using the poles as anchors. When a plane going two hundred
miles an hour hit the ward, the plane would lose. The witches had agreed with me. Another circle of witches cast an illusion so that the planes following the first one would see a clear, unimpeded runway. I was looking forward to seeing the video.
Chapter 45
The sun on my face woke me up. That seemed a little strange—since my room didn’t face east—until I remembered that I had brought a lot of people home with me. The house didn’t have a problem reconfiguring itself, but it still had to deal with some of the laws of physics, and adding multiple rooms had evidently twisted my room into a different orientation.
The man sleeping beside me was familiar, though. I studied his face relaxed in sleep. I never got tired of looking at him. Purposefully, I avoided accessing my implant. If the world was falling apart, or someone needed saving, I didn’t want to know about it yet.
Kirsten and Mychal were in another room, while Karolyn and Carmelita had rooms of their own. The elves had their own beds someplace, and I was sure the woman who had guarded over Karolyn was glad to be in hers. The other limo—land bound—arrived two hours after we landed at Loch Raven.
After a while, I did send a message to Olivia, telling her that Karolyn was safe and we would send her along as soon as we could. I figured Beatrice would welcome that news.
The sheer savagery of Karolyn’s outburst the previous evening erased any doubts I might have had about her sincerity. I was also glad I had never pissed her off enough to attack me. The reports I received from Whittaker’s men after we left said they had little resistance after that.
They hadn’t found Hiroku or any of the Akiyama generals Karolyn said were at the estate. Karl Rudolf was also missing.
My inherited sense of smell—a blessing or a curse depending on the scent—told me that my mother was in the kitchen. That was an event not to be missed. I prodded Aleks awake.
“My mother is fixing breakfast,” I said.
He cracked an eye. “I don’t care.”
“Suit yourself.” I crawled out of bed and hit the shower. I was barely wet when he joined me.
We made our way down to the kitchen and found a table set with crepes, egg bread, eclairs with a divine custard filling, and a selection of fresh fruit. The smell of espresso laid a soft blanket over everything. It was December, and fresh berries and peaches would have been difficult to find on Olivia’s table that time of year.
“I was feeling French this morning,” Mom said. Her mother was French, but Mom never talked about her.
Far be it from me to object if she wanted to stuff me full of sweets instead of feeding me healthy—although everything was whole grains, honey, and other natural ingredients.
Kirsten and Mychal were already there, of course. Among the more obnoxious things they had in common was a tendency to rise with the sun. Carmelita showed up about when Aleks and I did, but Karolyn was a no-show.
“She’s all right,” Mom said when she caught me glancing at the stairway. “I don’t know what went on last night, but her energy levels were severely depleted when she showed up here. The sleep will do her good.”
“She threw a tantrum,” Aleks said, reaching for another helping of egg bread. “I hope she never gets that angry at me. Damned near blew the front off the house.”
Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “Moncrief House?”
I nodded. “Yeah. She may not be a full-powered storm mage, but she’s still impressive. Whipped up a mini-tornado out of a clear sky. I think she was a little miffed at the way her mother and her lover have been treating her.”
“He’s not my lover. Not anymore, the sorry bastard,” Karolyn’s voice came from behind me. “Are those eclairs?”
She took a seat at the table and poured herself a cup of coffee to go with three eclairs. “A girl has a right to throw a tantrum occasionally,” she said between bites. “Besides, it’s my house, and if I want to do a little redecorating, that’s my prerogative.” She glanced up. “My father built that estate, and my mother has forfeited all rights to it.”
“Where is William?” I asked about Karolyn’s illegitimate son with Karl Rudolf.
“Mom is holding him at Findlay in exchange for my good behavior. She won’t hurt him, though. He’s her great hope for merging the Moncrieff and Findlay Families and ruling the world.”
After breakfast, stuffed to the gills and feeling like a beached whale, I lay back in the sunroom and accessed my implant. In the twelve hours since Akiyama launched their assault, a lot had happened.
Fierce fighting had raged all night. The vampires had gone to bed with sunrise, the demon assaults wound down, and the humans on both sides had stopped to lick their wounds and take stock.
The Moncrieff estate at Elk Neck was in the hands of the Council. The assaults on the Novak and Domingo estates had been repulsed. The force Courtney had sent out from Findlay to join in the assault at Novak had been ambushed and decimated when it passed Loch Raven. Whittaker’s assault on Findlay House had failed, but the estate was surrounded. As a result, the Council controlled the north and had cut off reinforcements from the Akiyama base in Wilmington except by sea or air.
One of the major concerns was the demon horde that had been encamped west of Annapolis all fall. Akiyama’s plan was for them to break out of their containment, join with a force of demons from the Waste, and move on the airport from the south.
In the week before the attack, Whittaker had drawn more than half of his troops from the containment line and positioned them to attack the demons from their flanks once they broke through. That battle stalled without either side holding the upper hand.
Akiyama’s air support—primarily helicopter gunships and troop transports—was ambushed by Whittaker fighter planes on its way south and never joined the battle.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in a series of blitzkrieg attacks, Findlay and its Kennedy and Flanagan allies had overrun the Moncrieff estate in Scotland and taken control of the ports of Glasgow and Leith at Edinburgh. Forces of Butler and Dressler had seized the Moncrieff holdings in England and Wales. Alan Moncrieff had not prepared for an attack, evidently considering the spat between Akiyama and the Council as being a North American problem. For all practical purposes, Family Moncrieff had ceased to exist as a major player on the world stage.
“Have you seen the news?” Kirsten asked as she plopped down in the chair beside me.
“Nope.”
She turned the screen of her laptop so I could see it. The news announcer was warning everyone of a general lockdown across the Metroplex. All businesses were closed, and everyone was warned to stay in their homes. There was a number to call if someone needed medicine, a hospital, or food help.
There were snatches of video showing fighting near the airport, and also of looting in various commercial areas of the Metroplex.
Deciding I should get off my butt and do something, I called Whittaker.
“I hope you enjoyed your beauty sleep,” he said when he answered the phone.
“Hey, I was up working all night, putting my ass on the line. What were you doing? Strutting around and issuing orders and drinking coffee.”
He chuckled. “What do you plan to do with Karolyn Moncrieff?”
“Keep her here at Loch Raven until it’s safe to fly her to Ireland. How long until you clear the runways?”
“We still have two operational, but we’re using those for our warplanes. They aren’t really long enough for long-haul aircraft. But you’re right, the skies aren’t safe right now.” He shifted gears. “I could use your team in the city. In addition to our normal law and order problems, we seem to have saboteurs infiltrating and causing mischief.”
“Okay. We can be down there in about an hour.”
I rounded up Mychal and Carmelita. Kirsten was fretting about her shop and also wanted to go back to town, and Aleks tagged along, so I had a full car. Our elven bodyguards took their own vehicles, of course, and followed us. Because of that, and being mindful of Whittaker’s warning, I kept
the car on the ground.
Our route took us through the area where the elves had ambushed Courtney’s forces earlier that morning. There were a lot of destroyed vehicles, and the authorities were still dealing with bodies. Only my police credentials got us through, and we discovered that going around wouldn’t have been an option either. I was told that southbound traffic was being diverted through West Virginia.
The general lockdown meant there was no traffic south of the beltway, so I made good time. The wards on Kirsten’s shop were holding, but there was a lot of damage downtown. Since that was well within the areas where the fighting had occurred, I understood why Whittaker had cancelled all leave and days off, and ordered all cops to report for duty.
I had officially deputized Kirsten and Aleks for the operation the night before, so I used their temporary credentials to get them inside Police Headquarters.
After a meeting of all personnel under my command, I made assignments, ordered a third of the people to bed in the basement dorms, and headed out with Carmelita to patrol a section of the Inner Harbor area. The elves followed us when we left the building.
Chapter 46
We dropped Kirsten and Aleks off at his apartment. She wanted to stay close to her shop, and with her elven bodyguards, I couldn’t imagine anywhere she’d be safer. I tried to tell my bodyguards not to follow me, but they pretended to be deaf, and when Carmelita and I pulled away from the curb, an armored car disguised as a sports car fell in behind us.
Most business owners downtown had taken the hint after the Rifter riots earlier in the fall and paid witches to cast wards protecting their stores. It was readily apparent who had not. We drove by a place that sold cute dresses to younger women. Its windows were broken, the front door was missing, and the inside looked like a tornado had hit it.
The jewelry store next door was untouched.
One thing that we immediately discovered was the lack of any places to get any food or even a cup of coffee.
War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2) Page 26