The guardians he had assigned to protect me were all strong mages, with an assortment of talents. I noted that both shifts included an aeromancer, who were skilled in creating protective shields. The others were either pyromancers or electrokinetics.
I rode over to Findlay House, arriving around twilight. The guards at the gate recognized me, and I sailed right on through. Up the long, curving drive, through the gardens starting to wilt as the season changed to fall, I rode until I reached the huge, sprawling mansion on top of the hill. I had no idea what had been there prior to the wars. Someone told me once it had been a public park, but I hadn’t bothered to check and see if that was correct.
I actually had a suite of rooms set aside for me on the second floor overlooking the back garden. The total space was as large as the house Kirsten and I shared, and far more opulent. When I was ‘in residence,’ there was also a maid assigned to me full time. Even as a child, that made me uncomfortable. One of the noticeable differences between the Ten and the rest of the Hundred was the number of human servants. Only the very rich could afford human servants. The merely wealthy made do with robots. Findlay primarily employed robots in roles that didn’t put them in contact with the family, such as gardening and cleaning.
During my teen years, I spent time at the mansion for human holidays, although I lived with my mother at the dam when I wasn’t away at school. The contrast between the two places was considerable. Mom cared nothing about riches or power, while Grandmother cared about little else—except me. I had never doubted that she loved me, in her iron-willed, inflexible way, and she paid for my schooling at elite institutions. Which is where I met that insanely intelligent, unbelievably gorgeous, absolutely outrageous girl who became my lifelong friend. Two entirely different kinds of outsiders.
But in spite of the fact that I learned to nominally fit into my grandmother’s society, I never felt comfortable there. I always felt like an actress on a stage, reciting my lines and trying to survive until I could escape. I was an outsider, a black sheep, and most of the Findlay Family hated me. They never let me forget that I was a James, the source of all the world’s problems. As if their patriarchal attitudes and avariciousness were so wonderful and the natural order of things.
My relationship with Grandmother Olivia had changed as I matured. I had become more responsible, and she had become more flexible. In a way I never would have predicted, we became comfortable with each other.
We dined in her private dining room, and her cook served my favorites. Fruit salad with some golden elven wine, which I was sure came from my mother, followed by lobster accompanied by drawn butter and lemon wedges with a lovely white Châteauneuf-du-Pape, then tournedos drizzled with Wellington sauce and a pinot noir bursting with cherry and chocolate flavors.
As I sat back and sipped the special cordial she had imported from France, I said, “I’ll have to invite myself to dinner more often.”
She laughed. “Don’t press your luck. I just happened to be in the mood for one of your favorite feasts. So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
I told her about what I’d uncovered concerning the connections between Ashvial and Akiyama and how they tied into Johansson. My grandmother’s expression grew grimmer as I detailed everything I had learned. When I got to Johansson’s involvement with Akiyama’s shipping company, that expression turned to stone.
“So, you think they’re bringing in slaves from the Middle East and Africa?” she asked.
“And parts of Europe. Unloading them in Montreal.” Findlay controlled the ports of Baltimore and Wilmington, and would have noticed such traffic. Montreal was more wide open.
“Makes you wonder what they’re bringing in through Vancouver,” she said. “The question is why? Why get involved in such trade?”
“Money. The very wealthy are willing to pay well, whether for sex toys or domestic servants,” I said. Findlay employed a battalion of servants at their various estates, and paid them handsomely. “Figure the cost of a trained domestic over ten years. Once you’ve recovered the purchase price, their only cost for the next thirty or forty years is room and board.”
“That’s disgusting. They’re human beings.”
“I agree, but not everyone has your values. And what turns my stomach the most is the young girls and boys. Many of them become domestics when they grow too old to serve their original purpose. Olivia, I’ve rescued several hundred children just in the past five years. And that doesn’t even take into account the people sold to demons, many of whom end up crossing the Rift. When children outgrow their use as sex toys, there is a major market selling them to demons. And the demons do whatever with them.”
She shook her head. “As disturbing as that is, what is more disturbing is a potential alliance between a member of the Ten and a demon lord. And I’m not happy about you getting involved with Ashvial.”
“I’m not involved with him!”
“You know him, he knows you. You’re investigating him, and that is a very dangerous position to be in.”
I pulled the charm out and showed it to her. “Kirsten fixed me up with protection.”
“I hope you don’t rely on that thing. Danica, please use some common sense. If things get too uncomfortable, run. Osiris is concerned about increased demonic activity. A lot of them are coming through the Rift, and they’re becoming more active. And if Akiyama is doing business with them, who knows what other Families might be doing. Politically, things are very unstable right now. Our forces have engaged in several pitched battles with various insurgents in different parts of the world—demonic and magikal.”
“Battles over what?” I asked. “Attacking your facilities? Your supply chain?”
“Both, and some attempted assassinations of key people.”
Chapter 33
It was late when I left Findlay House. The drive home took me along semi-rural roads to the freeway and then down into Baltimore City proper. The neighborhood where Kirsten and I lived, with its bungalows and neat little yards, could not have been more different from the grand estate where my grandmother lived.
As soon as I turned off a main road onto a side street a couple of blocks away my house, a fireball came from my right. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and managed to turn the bike enough that it missed me. I felt the heat, though. Ambushed again, and this time by mages instead of vampires.
I applied more throttle, put my foot down, and slid the rear end of the bike around to face my attacker. Another fireball flew toward me. I dove off the bike, hitting the pavement and rolling, then came up to my knees with the Raider in my hand. A lightning bolt hit the motorcycle even as I fired off three rounds in the direction the fireball had come from.
Another lightning bolt shot from the corner of the street toward where the lightning bolt that hit the bike originated. Things got more confusing from there, as a mage battle erupted between my ambushers and Findlay’s guardians. I scrambled out of the street and tried to hide behind a car. My magik wasn’t very helpful in that type of fight.
I did have a magikal weapon in my pocket, but it wouldn’t have helped. The small lightning box my father had given me long before had a range of only about twenty or thirty feet. It would protect me, though. I activated one of its functions, and it covered me with an electromagikal field. It wasn’t as good as an aeromancer’s shield, but it would deflect or diminish a lot of potential harm.
A gout of flame erupted from down the street and engulfed the car I was hiding behind. I looked up and saw a man standing on the sidewalk about fifty yards away, the flame coming from his outstretched hand. Taking careful aim, I pulled the trigger. He went down, and the flame stopped. The car was still on fire, however, and I didn’t want to wait around for the hydrogen cell to explode.
I crawled past the sidewalk and across the lawn toward a large tree. Behind me, the crack of lightning and the whoosh of fireballs continued. I had almost reached the tree when a man stepped out from behind it, ca
rrying a sword bathed in green fire. He took two steps forward and stopped right in front of me, with the sword raised over his head.
I pulled the trigger and blew a hole in his crotch. He fell out of my way, and I finished crawling behind the tree. I ejected the empty magazine from the Raider and inserted a full one. Flipping my helmet visor into electronic scan mode, I used it to look around the tree. The battle was still going on, but the odds seemed more even. Two mages on my side and two attackers.
Suddenly, two men took off running down the street. It looked like they were about to get away, but the one in the lead ran into an invisible barrier. He bounced and landed on the ground. The other man managed to stop short, but when he tried to dodge to his left, it became apparent they’d been enclosed by the barrier. My guardian team’s aeromancer had stepped into the play.
A dark figure came toward me and called out a Findlay passcode. I gave him the countersign and stood up. The sound of sirens in the distance grew louder.
“How many?” I asked.
“I counted seven. Five down, and the two Steph captured.”
“Get the dead and the wounded out of here if you can,” I said. “I’ll handle the cops.”
He shook his head. “There’s only two of us. Marty can take the wounded guy out of the picture.”
“Do it, and take Steph’s prisoners with you.”
“I’ll stay.”
“Jon, I don’t need you to stick around, just call Osiris and tell him what happened. Now git!” At that moment, the hydrogen cell in the burning car exploded, knocking us both off our feet.
When the first cop car showed up, I was standing in the middle of the street with my hands in plain sight, holding my badge. One cop held his gun on me while the other one checked my credentials.
“She’s clean,” he announced. “What happened here? Attempted robbery? Carjacking?” He eyed the burning car.
“An ambush. There are several people dead. Call DC Whittaker, will you?”
Whittaker and Kelly Quinn, the medical examiner, showed up about twenty minutes later.
“You’re supposed to be off duty,” Whittaker said as he strolled up to me.
“That’s what I thought. No rest for the blessed.”
He snorted and wandered off to examine the scene. After a while, he spoke with Quinn, then came back to me.
“Okay, want to tell me what happened?”
“They tried to fry me and my bike. I wasn’t in a receptive mood.”
“Where are your friends.”
“Friends?”
“Unless you have talents I don’t know about, you had some help. Someone killed one of those men with magikal fire, and another one died from what looks like an electric shock.”
“I was going home alone, minding my own business. I don’t know where the good Samaritans came from. You might need to talk to my Uncle George about that.”
“I see.”
With a shrug, I said, “I didn’t ask for any help, but after those vamps ambushed me yesterday, I guess someone got protective.”
The ME came over. “The one on the grass over there is still alive. The EMTs are working on him, and they say he’ll probably live.”
Whittaker brightened like someone had given him a present. I glanced over my shoulder and saw three EMTs gathered around the guy I’d shot by the tree.
“I guess I should have aimed a little higher.”
Quinn’s eyebrows arched, then she gave me a quirky little grin. “He’ll live, but from the damage I saw, he’ll never forget you.”
“Most men I’ve danced with don’t,” I told her, and she laughed.
Forty minutes later, Osiris showed up. He drew Whittaker aside and they talked for a while, and then Osiris approached me. “Come on. My men will take your motorcycle to your house.”
“You can make your statement in the morning,” Whittaker said. “Come to my office when you get in.”
Osiris ushered me into his car and drove me home.
“Get a good night’s sleep,” he said when he dropped me off. “Come by when you get off work tomorrow, and hopefully our prisoners will have imparted some useful information by then.”
Chapter 34
The following morning, I inspected my bike and sadly concluded that it was a total loss. Only the saddle bags and the rear wheel were salvageable. I dreaded the conversation with the insurance company.
It took me an hour to check out my old bike and do some long-neglected maintenance on it, then I went in to take a shower and get ready for work. I also grabbed another magitek weapon, one designed to use in a mage battle.
The ride to the station was thankfully uneventful. My Findlay guardians didn’t even try to be discreet, two of them riding motorcycles with me, and a car following closely behind us. A car with two cops in it brought up the rear. All of that should have made me feel secure, but instead it gave me a massive dose of anxiety.
I gave my statement to Whittaker, who asked very few questions. He avoided asking an obvious one, which was what happened to the rest of the people involved in the battle. I figured his conversation with Osiris had either blunted or satisfied his curiosity. Where the Families were concerned, especially the Ten, the police usually let mages deal with their own problems unless invited.
The press wasn’t as easily influenced, however. The battle had been noisy, and media types had shown up at the scene before Osiris and I left. Mychal showed me a news feed that was running, and I was treated to a video of myself—hair and clothing askew, walking toward and getting into Osiris’s car. That made three appearances for me within a week.
“You’re a star,” Novak told me. “You’re all over social media.”
“Fantastic. Just what I always wanted.”
He grinned. “As far as I can tell, there are three major themes. Some people are saying that you’re an attention hound, and others are calling you a hero that the bad guys are afraid of, so they’re trying to take you out.”
“What’s the third one?”
“Guys who want to get in your pants or marry you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Any of them super wealthy?”
“I didn’t recognize any names in my brief scan. Do you want me to do a detailed analysis?”
I used my middle finger to express my opinion, and he thought my answer was wildly funny.
My call to the insurance company was as painful as I expected. They wanted a police report that proved I wasn’t the instigator of the incident and that my carelessness hadn’t contributed to the destruction of my bike. Whittaker said he would try to expedite the formal filing of the report.
Kirsten called and said the parts for her pump had arrived, so I took off work early to go by and fix it. Working with my hands and my magik to repair the pump was like meditation, and I felt a lot more relaxed when I finished.
“Thank you,” Kirsten said. “Are you going to be home for dinner?”
I shook my head. “I have to go out to Findlay.”
“Okay.” She flashed a wicked grin. “I have a date tonight, and I was going to go out after dinner, but I think I’ll call him up and tell him he needs to feed me.”
“Sounds like a plan. See you later, if you come home.”
She winked at me.
There wasn’t anything wrong with my old bike other than age. It just wasn’t as pretty or powerful as the new one. I told my guardians where we were going, and we rode out to Findlay House. To my relief, we managed to make the trip without any more attacks.
“Any luck?” I asked Osiris when I sat down in his office.
“Yes and no. Unfortunately, the one we really needed to talk to had two large holes in him and took all his secrets to his grave. The cops have his body, so if you can get hold of his phone, maybe we can learn something useful.”
“Okay, I’ll try.”
“We used a truthsayer and some drugs on the two we captured, and their stories match,” he continued. “They say they were hired by a demon.
The thing is, the dead guy was the one who actually dealt with the demon.”
“So, we don’t know if he was lying or not, and if he wasn’t, we don’t know who the demon is.”
He gave me a sardonic grin. “I suspected you might be more than just another pretty face. Exactly correct.”
I ignored him. Osiris had weaved back and forth between teasing me and verbally abusing me since I was a teen. I wondered who he tortured when I wasn’t around.
“But the guys you captured, who are they? What are their affiliations? We’re not talking street muggers. Those guys had power.”
Osiris nodded. “One is a Johansson retainer, the other used to work for the Pereyra Family. He’s been working for a Family in Kuwait the past two years, and just came back a couple of weeks ago. The dead guy was another Johansson man, according to them. We’re not sure yet about the identities of the other men the cops took.”
I thought about that. “But, unless Martin Johansson’s heir paid to have him killed, Johansson shouldn’t have a beef with me. Unless, of course, the heir was privy to his father’s illegal schemes.”
“Either way, Martin’s business partners have an interest in interrupting your investigation into his activities.”
There was something wrong with all of those explanations, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It just didn’t compute. Taking me out wouldn’t stop the investigation. Novak and Whittaker would continue without me, and Whittaker was a far more dangerous cop than I was.
“We’re missing something,” I said. “None of that makes any sense. You stonewall cops, or you discredit them, you don’t kill them. You certainly don’t kill them in such a loud and messy operation as the one last night.”
And whoever heard of a demon hiring mages to do a job? I could see Ashvial possibly being that devious, but what was his motivation? With Johansson dead, I doubted we could put together enough solid evidence to arrest Ashvial, and in his overall scheme of things, I was trivial. So, assuming the story the captives told Osiris was true, who hired the demon who hired the mages?
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