Power Mage 5

by Hondo Jinx

  “Got it,” Ramrod said, and relayed the message to his troops.

  The driver reached out tentatively then staggered backward when his fingers passed straight through one of the boulders blocking his path.

  Take the shot, Brawley told Tessa.

  Tessa’s hand came into view as she extended her arm. With a blinding flash and a loud crack, lightning shot from her hand like a rocket.

  The sizzling bolt slammed loudly into the cow’s face painted at the center of the silver tanker, which flipped onto its side.

  A web of bright white electricity crackled over the toppled tanker, sparking and sizzling and lighting up the night for several seconds.

  The trucker lay on the ground, covering his head with his arms.

  Ramrod and his road pirates raced forward, lighting up the darkness with muzzle flashes.

  A small detachment of bikers captured the trucker, who provided no resistance.

  Other Scars encircled the truck, creating a 360-degree defensive perimeter.

  A small crew scaled the tanker, planted explosives, and retreated.

  Ten seconds later, a tremendous explosion rocked the mountain pass. Flames billowed up from the tanker which now lay in two halves upon the road.

  Milk rushed from the broken tank, draining downhill in a pale flood.

  But that was all.

  Brawley saw no machine. No cargo. Nothing. Just a broken tanker and a shit ton of spilled milk.

  Scars rushed forward to investigate the broken tanker. Ramrod relayed their findings.

  “Empty. Just milk.”

  “Check the cab,” Brawley said, but his intuition told him he was barking up the wrong tree. They wouldn’t find a machine. Not in the tanker, not in the cab, not in the fuggle driver’s pocket.

  Because there was no machine. Not in the truck, anyway.

  Before he could consider the implications, Jamaal’s voice spoke in his ear.

  “Here we go. Latticework’s lighting up. Central’s on it. And there it is. Gatlinburg has launched. I repeat, Gatlinburg has launched.

  “Get out of there,” Brawley told Tessa and Ramrod. “The Order is on its way.”

  He wanted to stay with them in case they needed help, but he couldn’t.

  It was go time.

  “Green light,” he announced to his wives and the two hundred Scars ready to assault the Chop Shop.

  26

  Brawley drove the RV slowly forward, breaking from the edge of the mobile cloaker, which stayed behind him with the Scars.

  Two men came out of the guardhouse. They held rifles but didn’t point them in Brawley’s direction.

  Of course, thanks to Brawley’s cloak, they were seeing a battered old RV covered in bumper stickers.

  The closer man, a fifty-something in gray fatigues, stepped forward and raised a palm.

  Brawley stopped the RV. Focusing on the man, he found the tone of his thoughts.

  The guard might not be pointing the weapon, but the guy was taking this seriously.

  Latching onto the man’s mind, Brawley beamed telepathic notions.

  These people are lost. Help them find their way.

  “Hey,” Brawley said, leaning from his window and waving at the man. “Um—sorry. Guess we took a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “This is a government facility,” the man replied. “Please turn around and leave, sir.”

  “Sure,” Brawley said, and hit the guy with another help-these-people telepathic blast. “Could you fellas tell us how to get to Asheville?”

  A third man emerged from the gatehouse and shouted at the others.

  The nearest guard ignored his shouting colleague and started giving directions.

  Brawley smiled and nodded, pretending to listen. Out of the corner of his mouth, he whispered, “Do your thing, darlin.”

  Thanks to his Gearhead awareness, he felt the gatehouse comm lines die.

  The gate buzzed and started sliding open.

  The guards shouted in confusion.

  The man who had come out last keyed a hand radio strapped to his upper arm and turned his mouth in that direction.

  His head jerked violently, shattered by a silent telekinetic round.

  The other two guards started to lift their weapons.

  Brawley blinked twice, and both men were down, two uniformed cadavers with heads like kicked-in pumpkins.

  The fourth and final guard knelt behind the guardhouse and opened fire.

  Brawley drove through the open gate.

  Rounds clacked off the bulletproof glass and pinged along the bio-plate.

  As the RV rolled forward, Brawley brought the camera around. He pinned his crosshairs on the offending muzzle flash and fired an extended burst, swiveling the turret side to side.

  Then Brawley was rolling across the compound. Two hundred Scars followed. Behind them, the man who’d dared fire on Brawley was now spread on the ground beside the guardhouse, literally sawn in half by the sweeping minigun.

  They passed the first spike strip without incident. No one had raised the tire killer.

  Invisible once more within the mobile cloaker, Brawley stopped and launched two drones, which zoomed off in opposite directions.

  Both machines raced uphill and hovered directly over a camouflaged sniper nest.

  Braxton’s sniper killers dismounted and raced uphill toward the hovering drones in a blur of speed.

  A minute later, both snipers were dispatched, and Brawley was rolling again, his ladies buckled into place around him.

  “Time for shock and awe,” Brawley announced over the general frequency.

  As his team leaders’ roar of approval filled his ears, he stomped the accelerator.

  They raced around a long curve, headlights flashing across a picket of tree trunks flanking the road. Then the road straightened, and they broke from the trees onto a flat, level stretch.

  In the distance, an electrified fence topped in razor wire surrounded the main compound. A tall guard tower defined each corner. Shorter towers stood to either side of the main gate.

  “Cut the comm,” Brawley told Frankie. “Kill the power just before we hit the fence.” And he buried the gas and roared toward the gate.

  Of course, the guards manning the gate and tower would see and hear nothing.

  “Comm lines cut,” Frankie said.

  At that moment, a fist of pure dread sucker punched Brawley square in the chest so hard it knocked the wind out of him.

  There was no need to guess at its source, because his consciousness reflexively flicked to Tessa’s psi sensor.

  It was like throwing open the back door to hell.

  Everything was lightning and screaming. Corpses danced, impaled on skewers of purple lightning.

  A Cosmic portal crackled overhead.

  That was not an Order portal.

  And the levitating individual directing the carnage was not a rapid response team.

  The Tiger Mage’s roar boomed like thunder. He whipped his arms back and forth, frying Scars.

  At the same instant, Tessa’s arm thrust into view. A bolt of white lightning leapt away from her hand and struck the Tiger Mage center mass.

  Brawley felt a short-lived thrill. But the lightning plunged into the Tiger Mage, doing no harm.

  The Tiger Mage turned in Tessa’s direction and roared, a terrible sound, loud as the blast of an onrushing train.

  Tessa stopped attacking.

  Brawley expected her to run, but she just stood there.

  Go! He shouted at her mind. Get out of there!

  But she merely lowered her casting hand and stood there.

  What the hell was Tessa doing?

  The next thing Brawley knew, Tessa was raising the pistol he had given her.

  It’s no good, Tessa. You can’t hurt him. Just run!

  Then he realized that she wasn’t pointing the pistol at the Tiger Mage, who watched her with an amused expression.

  “Only way out,” Tessa mumbled. �
��Only way out. Only way out.” And she turned the pistol toward herself.

  Brawley hollered telepathically, watching in horror until the muzzle closed over the psi sensor he had placed on her forehead.

  No! Tessa, don’t!

  There was a loud explosion, and everything went black.

  Brawley hissed, sickened by what he’d just witnessed.

  Beside him, Frankie said, “I cut the power. I’m taking over the turrets now.”

  The miniguns roared to life, rousing Brawley from his shocked state, and the RV’s bio-plate battering ram punched through the chain-link gate.

  Tessa was dead. So were Yolanda, Ramrod, and nearly one hundred scars.

  All dead at the hands of the Tiger Mage.

  The tragedy rocked Brawley.

  But this was not the time to mourn.

  It was time to kill.

  Time to kill and time to rescue his sister-in-law.

  The gunfire overhead cut, and Frankie screamed, anticipating impact.

  Brawley pumped the brakes. The bio-plate cow catcher and chassis would absorb most of the shock, and the seats were outfitted with impact harnesses, but he didn’t want to hurt Frankie or Callie.

  The RV’s battering ram hit the Chop Shop doors with a tremendous boom.

  The RV jerked with impact but plowed forward, wrenching the doors and their metal frame from the masonry and pitching the twisted assembly across the lobby, which disappeared in a cloud of powdered debris.

  Brawley shifted into reverse and pounded the accelerator.

  The war wagon roared and shuddered, jammed tightly into the hole it had punched through the building.

  “Juice!” Frankie said.

  Brawley gave the RV a wallop of Gearhead juice. The engine roared with new power and pulled free of the shattered wall.

  Brawley unstrapped himself, slung an MDR over one shoulder, grabbed the AA-12, and kicked open the door.

  He charged through the smoke and into the darkness, which was illuminated only by the RV’s headlights and a band of rapidly shrinking light glowing at the center of the chaos.

  The hub was dropping its shields.

  Brawley didn’t have the time to try hacking central command’s power, so he snapped off a telekinetic blast, blowing through the hub’s thick glass window.

  Inside the hub, guards jerked and twisted, coming apart with the deadly force that blew through the imploding window.

  Brawley’s flicker of triumph died when the blast shields closed over the broken glass and slammed shut.

  He hoped to hell he’d killed all the command center guards. Otherwise, survivors would call the national guard, and that would be a major fucking problem, especially because Brawley didn’t feel like wasting a company of innocent fuggles just doing their job.

  Remi slammed into the control center, hammering at the shield with her fists and boots and buttstock, but it was a waste of time.

  A constellation of muzzle flashes lit up the swirling mists, and deafening gunfire filled the lobby.

  A bullet snapped past Brawley’s head, flicking his ear, spritzing his face with warm blood, and pissing him off.

  He released a wallop of telekinetic force, slashing it from left to right like the blade of a scythe.

  Within the cloudy darkness cloaking the attackers, he saw bodies jerk and shatter, shadowy pieces leaping away as torsos burst.

  Rage was on him now. Not that wild, red rage that makes men stupid, but its cold, controlled cousin that during extreme moments settles over the deadliest men like a killing frost.

  A motorcycle roared past, its headlight slicing through the darkness. Braxton sneered, clutching the ape hangers. Behind him, Talia howled like a banshee, brandishing a sawed-off shotgun in one hand and a tomahawk in the other.

  Mama had come for her baby, and woe to those who had taken her.

  Braxton wove around a large chunk of rubble.

  A man in uniform popped up, lifting a pistol, and froze in place when Talia buried her tomahawk in his forehead.

  Scars streaked past on foot, baying like wolves and firing into the gloom.

  Braxton shouted commands, pointing first one way and then next. The river of bloodthirsty Carnals split and split again, portions flooding each corridor while other detachments poured into the stairwells to take the lab below.

  They would secure the upper floors in no time.

  But what really mattered was far, far below in the subbasement.

  Flanked by Remi and Callie, Brawley rushed forward to where Braxton and Talia slid to a stop beside the burnished silver doors of the oversized elevator.

  Braxton slapped the elevator button, but nothing happened.

  Remi tore a swipe card from a nearby corpse, but Brawley held up a hand.

  He could feel the problem. The elevator was dead. With a squeeze of Gearhead juice, he traced the problem out a conduit to the hub.

  Somewhere behind that impenetrable armor was a kill switch.

  He slipped into overhead wires and tried to penetrate the hub with his mind, but the command center was shuttered up behind an impenetrable firewall. The FPI had learned from its prisoners.

  When he explained the situation, Talia smashed a fist into the elevator doors, denting them. “We’ll pry the doors open and slide down the wires.”

  “It’s over three hundred feet down to the bottom,” Brawley said. “How are you going to get Winnie back to the top?”

  “We’ll blow the hub open,” Braxton said.

  Brawley shook his head. “The blast shield is too strong.”

  “Besides,” Callie said, “an explosion that powerful would destroy this whole floor. Including the elevator.”

  “How much rope do we have?” Brawley said. “We might could drop a harness and haul people up.”

  He always carried a hundred feet in the RV, but they needed a lot more than that now. He was kicking himself for not thinking of that sooner.

  How the hell were they going to reach Winnie?

  27

  Then a high-pitched voice squeaked in Brawley’s mind. How do I open this thing?

  He responded telepathically. Luna?

  Yes, the mouse girl squeaked. I slipped in here just before the blast shields closed.

  New hope surged in Brawley. You’re beautiful, darlin.

  I’m stuck in here. There are a whole bunch of buttons and cameras, and I don’t know what to do.

  He could hear the panic in her voice.

  First of all, he told her, releasing some calming Seeker juice, you’re all right. Take a deep breath.

  He waited. Okay?

  Yeah. I just…

  It’s going to be okay, he assured her. Can you see the controls?

  Some of them. I’m on the floor. Some of the controls are… messy.

  Gotcha, Brawley replied, remembering the way the guards’ bodies had shattered along with the windows. I know this is rougher than hell, but you can push through this, darlin.

  He slid into Luna’s psi sensor and saw the interior of the command center from her perspective. She was down on the floor, perched on an island of tile and shattered glass, surrounded by a sea of gore. What was left of the guards was spread across the floor and splashed across the control boards.

  From down there, she couldn’t see the controls, so neither could he.

  Climb on up for a closer look, he told her.

  He felt her resistance even before she confessed her fear. It’s all covered in… them. She moaned, clearly paralyzed by revulsion.

  Brawley needed Luna to pull it together. She was their only hope now.

  He wished he’d had more time to train with Tammy. Wielding his new strand, he felt like a chimp with an AK.

  So fucking be it. Even a chimp with an AK hits the target if it blows through enough ammo.

  Brawley lowered his telepathic voice, filling it with command, and fortified the message with a shot of Seeker juice. Luna, you are feeling better and will now do what you have t
o do.

  Okay, Luna responded. I’ll do it.

  Brawley could feel the young Beastie’s revulsion as her little mouse feet scampered across the gore-slicked floor.

  He cuddled Luna’s mind, soothing and reassuring her. Using a combination of telepathy and Seeker juice, he located her fear center and wrapped it in a shroud of temporary bravery.

  Stay strong, darlin. These people need you.

  Okay, Luna thought-said, her high-pitched voice sounding mousier than ever.

  She skidded to a stop beside a chair, reeling from the sticky warmth of the bloody matter clinging to her fur.

  Brawley doubled down on the soothing energies.

  That’s it, darlin. That’s it. Now get up there so I can see the control panel.

  Luna climbed up the chair, found a patch not covered in blood, and shuddered with disgust.

  Brawley scanned the board in front of her. Lots of buttons and dials and switches. He called on his Gearhead and Seeker strands to pump up his mechanical intuition.

  Nothing seemed right.

  Look behind you, he told Luna.

  She spun on the chair.

  An instant later, Brawley’s mechanical intuition revved like a Mustang Boss.

  That heavy switch, he told her. The one with a handle like a shovel. You need to shove that up again.

  I see it, Luna squeaked, and he felt her excitement. But I’m not strong enough like this. I’m going to have to shift.

  Do it, darlin, he said, even though he knew he’d lose his psi sensor when she shifted.

  This had to work, or he’d be blind.

  Okay, Luna said, and shifted.

  The psi sensor wobbled and went dark.

  Brawley filled in his wives and in-laws.

  For a few seconds, they could only wait.

  Rips of gunfire echoed in the corridors. Down below in the lab, a grenade exploded, the sound muffled as a cough through the concrete and rebar.

  There was a loud clang, and the blast shields groaned open. Through the shattered windows, a tiny girl hopped up and down, cheering triumphantly.

  Brawley had never seen Luna naked before. She was just a spindly little thing. Her breasts were little more than puffy nipples. Her arms and legs were skinny and lacked the toned muscles of Callie’s limbs. A tiny patch of mouse-brown fur carpeted the wide gap between her thighs.