Power Game

by Brad Magnarella

  But how?

  As quickly and painlessly as possible.

  Touching my staff to her head, I uttered a precursor to a healing spell. The fluttering of her eyelids told me her endorphins were releasing. I caught her around the waist as her legs gave out and her sidearm thudded to the floor. I lowered her until she was propped against my thigh. She moaned in protest, but semi-consciously.

  I drew the neutralizing potion from my pocket, activated it, and squeezed Vega’s cheeks to open her mouth. With another invocation, I created a shield in the shape of a funnel. I inserted it into her mouth until I was as certain as I could be that it was down her throat and not her windpipe. Taking a deep breath, I tipped the potion over the funnel.

  “Down the hatch,” I whispered.

  Her gag reflex kicked in at first contact, then relaxed. When the entire potion had gone in, I tossed the vial aside, dissolved the funnel, and slowly sat her up all the way. In my wizard’s senses, I could feel the magic working on her.

  “Destare,” I whispered.

  With the gentle awakening invocation, Vega opened her eyes. She looked at me perplexed, then shot her gaze past my shoulder. Behind me, Bree-Yark had secured Tabitha to one of the conference room chairs. She stood with her back arched, trying to gag up the potion he had apparently forced into her—the sides of her mouth were green with it—but Bree-Yark himself was nowhere to be seen.

  When Vega tried to talk, she coughed. She hacked into her fist and tried again.

  “What the fuck is going on?” she rasped. “You’re not…? Where are the creatures?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “The creatures, everything you saw—it was all an illusion.”

  “An illusion?”

  She peered back at the group still cowering in the corner.

  “A powerful fae illusion,” I explained. “There was no attack.”

  Her next cough cleared her voice. “So, everyone’s all right?”

  “That remains to be seen, but there was no monster massacre.”

  Vega’s dilated eyes cut around again, some primitive corner of her brain still convinced the danger remained and the monsters could reappear at any moment. When none did, she looked back at me.

  I didn’t know what she thought she’d seen happen to me, and I didn’t ask. Judging by her eyes, it was horrible. She pulled me forward by the lapels of my coat and wrapped her arms around my neck, the side of her head pressed firmly to mine. It wasn’t a tender embrace. It was to ensure I was as material, as real, as I could be. I squeezed and pressed back, a part of me still needing the same reassurance.

  Our private celebration of the other’s return didn’t last long, though. The neutralizing potions might have restored our senses, but there were still thousands of people inside the enchantment’s misty embrace who were seeing monsters. And the only way to end their nightmare was to find the caster.

  When Vega and I separated, she began looking for her sidearm. I retrieved it from the floor and handed it to her. She smiled and wiped her eyes as she accepted it. While she checked the chamber I considered saying something about how she had left the coin pendant with Tony, but now wasn’t the time.

  A look of surprise came over Vega’s face as she patted her jacket pockets. “I thought I was out of ammo, but I have all my spare mags.” She ejected the magazine from her sidearm. “And this is still half full.”

  “Such an optimist,” I joked. The fact I could joke with someone who I had believed gone only minutes earlier felt amazingly surreal. So much so that I had to stifle a stupid grin. “No, that’s how a lot of these enchantments work. They not only make you believe what you’re seeing, but what you’re touching, hearing, doing.” I began digging into a coat pocket. “In fact…” I was wondering whether my two encounters in the hotel that day had been actual encounters or just precursors to this grand finale. I pulled out the vial into which I’d scooped the frog-beast’s gunk. It was still full, telling me that sucker, and probably the lizards, had been real.

  “You mentioned fae,” Vega said, slotting a fresh mag into her pistol.

  Before I could answer, Bree-Yark rushed back into the room.

  “I saw one of ’em!” he shouted.

  “The lunar fae?” I asked.

  “Yeah, looking down from one level up. He took off when he saw I’d spotted him. Must’ve been acting as sentry.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, moving toward the door. “Tabitha, hang tight.”

  “Seriously?” she said above the screams.

  “Are we just going to leave them here?” Vega asked, gesturing to the group of a hundred-odd, who still thought they were under attack. Mae’s prayerful voice continued to weave in and out of the din.

  “I don’t like it, but yeah,” I said.

  Before Vega could offer to stay behind, I waved her on.

  I wasn’t going to leave her alone again, especially without the coin pendant.

  Not after seeing what could happen.

  As we left the conference room at a run, I cast a shield around everyone and reinforced my own.

  “He was right up there,” Bree-Yark panted, pointing with his M16. “Then he bugged off that way.”

  “You two take the stairs,” I said. “If you see him, take a shot. But stay together,” I stressed.

  “Where are you going?” Vega asked.

  “Short cut.”

  Aiming my staff at the ground, I shouted, “Forza dura!”

  The explosive force sent me airborne and through the opening to the second floor, where Bree-Yark had seen the fae a moment before. I’d calibrated the invocation just right, my left foot landing on the three-foot-tall railing that ran around the opening. Momentum carried me down to a stone planter and then to the carpeted floor. I noted the improvement in my control. A few months ago I would have fallen on my face.

  I jogged to a stop and peered around. No sign of the fae. I switched to my wizard’s senses. Fae used glamours to alter their appearances as well as to hide their auras, but with the neutralizing spell in my system, maybe…

  Bingo!

  A misty plum-colored trail led to a women’s bathroom. I ran toward it, noticing a piece of paper taped to the door. It read “Out of Order,” the fae likely having glamoured the handwritten sign to appear more official. I pulled up a mental map of the hotel. The bathroom was smack dab in the middle of the second floor, making it the perfect place from which to cast a circumferential enchantment.

  Dollars to donuts, the caster’s inside.

  Behind me, I could hear Bree-Yark and Vega arriving on the floor.

  Still running, I waved them toward the bathroom. Ten feet from the door, I aimed my cane and shouted, “Vigore!” The force invocation smashed the lock. I took the same invocation, wrapped it around the door, and pulled it open.

  The fae were good at concealing their emotions, which made the surprise on this one’s face that much sweeter. He was standing in the center of the bathroom as I broke in, a line of stalls to his left and sinks to his right. My arrival sent him stumbling into a backpedal across the tiles on a pair of pointy leather shoes.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Didn’t you see the sign? Bathroom’s out of order.”

  Eyes wide, he threw his delicate hands forward and spoke a fae enchantment. Unfortunately for him, the potion still warming my stomach negated its effect. As I stalked nearer, his words became a frenetic babble.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Even without a glamour, the fae appeared immaculate in his slender white pants, silver buckle, and designer jacket. And he was handsome in a starved runway model kind of way. Which made what I was about to do even more of a shame. My right fist caught him in the porcelain-looking jaw. Like porcelain, it broke cleanly.

  The fae grunted and fell against the far wall. Before I could land a follow-up blow, he covered his head and shrank to the floor.

  “Don’t hurt me!”

  “Who’s casting the
enchantments?” I demanded.

  I expected a lengthy back and forth, but with his arms still shielding his head, he pointed a finger toward the handicap stall. Vega and Bree-Yark entered the bathroom behind me, their footfalls slowing to a stop. A part of me wanted to toss dragon sand into the stall the fae had indicated and be done with it—I was still that pissed for being made to believe Vega had been slain—but if the caster was Sefu, I would need to get the son of a bitch to safety. When a third set of footsteps entered the bathroom, we all turned.

  It was the other male lunar fae, who had probably been on lookout too.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here!” he cried, clearly perplexed that we weren’t under the influence of the enchantment. “Get out!”

  Vega answered him with a gunshot. The iron round nailed him in the shoulder, spinning him halfway around and dropping him to the floor. Vega met my surprised look with a stiff expression that suggested the shot had been payback for the twenty minutes of hell the fae had put her through. Not to mention that she was the only one who was really supposed to be in the women’s bathroom, anatomically speaking.

  I gave her a thumb’s up.

  Using a force invocation, I dragged the wounded fae beside the other one and bound them with magic.

  Now for the caster…

  I summoned a shield around the inside of the stall, shrinking it until I felt a fae’s aura. I tried the door, but the latch was down. I signaled for Vega to cover the two male fae, then pointed to Bree-Yark’s foot and the door in turn. He got the message. I drew the iron amulet from my pocket and positioned myself for the breach. With a grunt, Bree-Yark drove his foot into the door. It banged open, and I thrust myself inside.

  The female fae was sitting cross-legged in the center of the bathroom. I was half amused to see she’d papered the floor with toilet seat covers so she wouldn’t have to come into direct contact with the tiles. The fae were notorious germaphobes.

  She was staring straight ahead, eyes the same color as the mist that surrounded and permeated the hotel. The power emanating from her in waves stirred her preternaturally straight hair. She was so absorbed in weaving the enchantment, she hadn’t even flinched at the sound of the door smashing open. Evidently, her accomplices’ job had been to keep anyone from finding her. Her accomplices had screwed the pooch.

  Aiming the amulet, I bellowed, “Disfare!”

  Whether this was Sefu or not, I didn’t hold back. Not after what she’d put us through. The beam that shot from the cold iron smashed through her enchantment and flung her against the stall wall. Toilet-seat covers fluttered in every direction. She landed hard on her right shoulder, then flopped onto her back. The mist dissolved from her eyes, and she looked around in startlement until her gaze fixed on mine.

  “Yeah, sorry to break up your little monster mash,” I said. “But it ends here.”

  When her brow tensed and her irises began to do strange things, I cast through the amulet again, this time trapping her in a cone of blue light. The fae grimaced and writhed under the projection from the cold iron.

  I started with the obvious question. “Are you Sefu?”

  I hadn’t been expecting a woman, but that was the problem with assumptions.

  Despite her obvious pain, she spat back, “I am no one of your concern.”

  “Yeah, well, when you mind-hump my friends and me, it sort of makes it my concern. Now I’ll ask you again, are you Sefu?”

  I upped the power until she was really writhing. Unlike the runway twins, who had folded like a pair of cheap suits, she showed impressive resistance. The muscles in her temples strained, as if trying to keep her secrets locked inside her, but at last she raised a hand to tell me she was ready to talk.

  I backed off the power.

  “I am not Sefu,” she gasped, steam rising from her body. “My name is Lialla.”

  I looked over at Bree-Yark, who had entered the stall too. He was holding his M16 on her. “It’s a common enough name among the lunar fae,” he said. “She’s not court level, though, or I’d’ve recognized her.”

  That would explain how I had been able to negate her magic and take her down with relative ease. I was becoming a stronger wizard—I wanted to think that was part of it—but she also wasn’t anything approaching a fae lord. Which made it unlikely she was the vessel in question.

  “But she’s telling the truth?” I asked anyway.

  Bree-Yark’s squat nose flared a few times. “Far as I can tell.”

  “Why the enchantment?” I asked her. “What are you guys up to?”

  I remembered what Stan had said when he banned me from the conference. He’d asked if I was in league with the fae, suggesting there might be bad blood between them. But I didn’t want to tip Lialla off. Fae were good at picking up on what you wanted to hear and then giving you more of the same. I caught Lialla searching my face as if for some tell, but I maintained a poker-stiff expression.

  “It’s not your concern,” she said finally.

  “Oh, so we’re back to that?” I was raising the amulet again when someone else came running into the bathroom.

  Who now? I thought in exasperation.

  “What the hell is going on in here?”

  Well, speak of the devil—the voice belonged to Stan Burke, the conference organizer.

  Lialla got my attention and looked at me meaningfully.

  “We’re working for him,” she whispered.

  26

  “Working for Stan Burke?” I whispered back, to make sure we were talking about the same person.

  Lialla nodded.

  Though the fae rarely told outright lies, they were master manipulators, often using the nuances of language for the very purpose. Lialla could have meant one thing, and I could have heard another—which was exactly how they operated. Getting to the actual meaning was a skill in itself, and even then it could take hours.

  More likely, Lialla was trying to save their skin.

  “Hey, you’re that detective,” Stan said to Vega. “What the hell’s happening in here?”

  I signaled for Bree-Yark to keep his weapon on Lialla, who was still suffering the effects of the cold iron, and stepped from the stall. Stan had stopped in the middle of the bathroom, hands clenched into fists. He was looking from Vega to the two fae on the floor, his gray hair tossed everywhere as if he’d arrived in a sprint. When I stepped into his field of view, his eyes cut over sharply.

  “I thought I told you to stay the hell out of my con!”

  “I called him back,” Vega said sternly. “Your con was under attack, or did you miss that?”

  “No, I didn’t miss that. And the first person I thought of was this joker.”

  “Watch your tone,” Vega said.

  “Oh, you’re the tenor police now? I have an order.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the piece of paper—a faxed copy from the looks of it—with my temporary restraining order. “See?” He flapped it a few times. “Now get him out of here!”

  For someone who had seemed so stoner chill when I’d first seen him, Stan was proving to be a hysterical ass.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” Vega said. “Do you know them?”

  Using a force invocation, I dragged Lialla from the stall and set her beside the other two fae.

  “Should I?” Stan said after looking them over. “I mean, I might have seen them around the con. Wait a minute—they’re fae aren’t they?” He looked sharply back at me. “See, I knew you were in cahoots!”

  I gave him a dry stare. “Does this really look to you like the picture of two parties in cahoots?”

  A lump stuck out from the left side of Fae One’s jaw where I’d punched him, while Fae Two lay curled on his side, a hand pressed to his gunshot wound. For her part, Lialla looked vaguely ill from the effects of the amulet. She was staring down at her knees, which she’d pulled in to her chest.

  I was eyeing Stan for his reaction, but he just looked agitated.

 
; “They were the ones behind the attack,” Bree-Yark barked as he emerged from the stall, M16 propped against his shoulder. “Or imaginary attack. They cast an illusion around the whole show. Everson stopped them. You should be kissing his feet.”

  “I thought I ordered you out of here too!” Stan said, craning his neck to see if anyone else was going to emerge from the stall.

  “Forget about them for a second,” Vega said. “Why would the fae want to attack your con?”

  Stan gathered his hair like he was going to secure it in a ponytail, then shook it loose again. “Because we banned them back in ’05. Yeah, a group of them showed up with their little enchantments and glamours. Next thing we know, the convention’s descending into a bacchanal of drinking, stripping, and costumed orgies.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Sounded like the darker side of faedom all right. Might have also explained why Stan was so on edge. He had a lot riding on this con.

  “You want to know where that whole furry thing went mainstream?” Stan asked, jabbing a finger toward the floor. “Right here. And that’s not what Epic Con is about. The fae tried to bribe us to let them back in—oh, they’d thought the whole thing was a riot—but we didn’t budge. They even offered to fund the con the years we had to go dark. When we said no, that’s when they turned nasty. Threatened to get even with us. At first I thought they’d sent Everson in to do their dirty work. But if they’re here…”

  Vega sidled up to me and muttered, “What do you think?”

  “Actually makes sense,” I whispered back. “And it won’t be hard to learn whether his story about ’05 checks out.”

  Vega nodded, drew out her phone, and called the officer in charge. While she spoke with him, Stan came over. “Hey, sorry for jumping to conclusions,” he said, his attitude completely changed from just a moment before. He sounded like an aging stoner again. “I didn’t think they’d just show up like that.”