by T. G. Ayer
All too often, supernaturals succeeded extremely well at living below the radar, and even mages often went with their talents latent and untapped. Though curious, I didn’t have time to linger and study the aural feedback of each of the cops who watched the silent procession.
I made a mental note to whisper a word or two in the Chief’s ear; it would pay to somehow have the department screened, especially now with Division 7 seemingly with its hands elbow-deep in all the wrong supernatural honey-pots.
I kept watch, following the exiting party outside the building toward a rear garage facility where the security van had been backed up to the bay, rear doors open. Murdoch hovered as the officers walked Cassie into the back of the van that would take her to the high-security facility outside of Chicago.
Chief Murdoch’s expression was dark, the muscles in his jaw tight. He didn’t like it one bit, that much was clear—which was comforting. It meant he’d be doing everything in his power to ensure things went according to the plan, which included Cassie’s mysterious disappearance after being signed over to the prison’s security.
Soon, doors slammed shut, and the van’s engine rumbled, and then the officers drove off, taking Cassie away without incident. I let out a silent breath of relief, still a little unsure of what I’d been expecting to happen. As the van made a left at the intersection beyond the CPD garage, I projected into the back of the vehicle, and hovered beside the ShapeChanger.
She wouldn’t know I was there, not unless I found a way to let her know.
I drew closer and moved myself partly from the astral plane, projecting a physical manifestation of my hand, which I used to gently tug on her sleeve.
Cassie glanced slowly down at her wrist where my fingers and wrist were still visible. Thankfully, she refrained from freaking out. She shifted in her seat and smiled, the expression grateful and relieved.
I curled my fingers around her wrist and gave her hand a brief squeeze.
Hang in there, Cassie.
With everything regarding Fake-Kai’s transport to prison appearing to be in order, I gave Cassie’s hand a second squeeze, then retreated from the van to leave her to complete her part of the ruse.
Chapter 4
Satisfied that Cassie was okay and that the plan was going off without a hitch—so far—I returned to join Kai in the back of her minivan.
By now, the van had made it to the outskirts of the city, and I didn’t have to be outside of the vehicle to know where we were. Though the driver had kept a safe distance from the area, the sensation of nothingness still permeated the Chicago air. And it reached into the astral plane with hungry grasping fingers, almost as though it ached to share its immense vacuum of power.
The Dead Zone.
A neighborhood in the Eastern Sector of the city, the Dead Zone was noted for being a nexus of non-power.
Which was somewhat of a running joke among the supernaturals.
Where a nexus was usually a conflagration of immense power, usually existing along a ley line, the Dead Zone was true to its name—impressively dead.
The neighborhood was said to have been one of the Conflagration locations around the Earth-World where the blackest most poisonous of magical power had accumulated and simply exploded its way through the Veil into the Earth-World.
Nothing worked there, no electrical device, no magic, no energy whatsoever. The utter emptiness of the zone appeared to have a repulsive effect on non-supernaturals, and it wasn’t surprising that many magical and ethereal beings hid out there, in a place where they would be safe, even from their own magic.
The area around the Dead Zone also received a thick blanket of a secondary vacuum. Though not as strong as the non-energy of the Zone itself, it tended to interfere with smaller devices and low-level magic. The officer up front had given the area a sufficiently wide berth for good reason.
I settled in beside Kai, waiting for her first communication. She held the notepad I’d given her, her tight-fisted grip covering the paper and making it impossible for me to initiate a message.
Other than that, she sat very still, staring straight ahead into the shadows. Her aura was calm, cool, which I supposed was a clue to her alpha heritage, the ability to remain ultra-calm under pressure. She’d make a fortune if she bottled and sold that ability—I’d be elbowing my way to get to the front of the line.
I smiled to myself as I thought about mentioning the potential cash cow to Kai. Then, for a moment, I considered using the same method I’d employed to tell Cassie I was with her.
But, almost as if on cue, Kai glanced down at the notepad in her grip. She released it slowly and flipped it open, scribbling a message with the little pen.
The letters were a little too large for my liking, but there was no way to tell her to keep them small in case someone was able to observe her actions. Instead, I watched the message appear.
Is Cassie doing ok?
I reached around me, into the astral plane, and harnessed some of the pulsing energy that encompassed all of this ethereal dimension. I gripped the energy within my mind, formed it into a rod, honing one end until the energy simmered like a tiny flame.
Directing the rod—or rather my astral pen—toward the notepad, I hovered it close to the surface of the paper. As I ran the harnessed energy along the notepad, ozone filtered around me as the electricity sizzled, and a thin trail of heat singed a single letter onto the paper.
Y.
I snapped a glance around to check on the driver, wanting to be certain he wasn’t paying too close attention to his passenger. But he had his eyes on the road, his aura a complicated web of blues and purples displaying his tension and focus.
Drawing my attention back to Kai, I watched as she scribbled out a second question.
Have they left yet?
Kai’s message made me smile. Even here, holed up inside the back of a getaway minivan, she was still trying to manage everything, still attempting to keep an eye on every step of the mission. I understood that need, and would likely have done the very same had I been in her position.
I repeated my electrically charged method of writing, responding only with a second tiny Y.
Kai responded almost immediately with a rapidly scribbled instruction.
Let me know if anything happens.
Shaking my head at the large letters, I responded with the smallest check mark that I could fashion with my stream of astral energy.
Kai’s smile told me she was at least somewhat relieved that all was going to plan.
I watched as she proceeded to go over her weapons, her bow and the knife in her boot. And then she checked her watch for the time. I knew how she felt—caged, and not in control.
The state of powerlessness wasn’t the easiest thing to deal with.
I was about to retreat into the astral plane and check on Cassandra when my awareness picked up two things.
One, that we’d left the Dead Zone about half a mile behind, and two, a large concentration of electrical energy was surging through the air, heading straight for the minivan.
A sizzling blast of power hit the van broadside, not a few feet from Kai’s face. Even before I could transition to a physical projection, intending to grab hold of Kai, the minivan tipped over in a roll, and she was sent tumbling across the walls of the van, her body slammed around like a puppet in a tornado.
My mind buzzed, an odd electricity pinging my brain as I finally pushed through and formed a physical projection, if only a partial one. I tried to grab a hold of Kai’s arm, but her essence felt slippery against my fingers, against my mind, as though every atom in her body was vibrating at a speed that rendered her no longer in a physical state.
No matter how hard I tried, I just wasn’t able to get a fix on her long enough to grab on. A small part of my brain whispered a second question—was it possible that I too was suffering from that same inability to achieve a solid state?
But the thought flitted away as a pulsing energy surged through my
skull with such unparalleled intensity that I was seriously worried that my brain was about to explode.
Black magic curses and evil demonic spirits had nothing on this electrical torture.
Warm liquid dripped onto my upper lip, and I almost groaned. I’d had about enough nosebleeds to last me a lifetime.
But my physical reaction to this energy posed a real problem. Back on the bed, secure in the room at the Elite HQ, I was bleeding profusely, with no means of stemming the flow.
Unable to latch onto Kai, my only option was to jump my physical form to her and get her out. But there were too many variables. I had no idea what could possibly be messing with her energy so all-encompassing that her physical state had been bypassed.
What was this power that possessed such a level of intensity, that it rendered me near helpless, rendered my astral projection ability null and void?
And even as those thoughts ran through my mind, I quashed them, and my doubts along with them, and shifted my focus in order to pull my physical body along the link toward me.
A normal, run-of-the-mill process that I’d done more than a million times in my life, like blinking or breathing.
But it didn’t work.
Even though I felt the physical pull back on the bed, I knew this was the moment when I’d have teleported right beside Kai, it didn’t work.
With the force of an explosion, electricity surged through the back of the van again, so powerful now that my ears rang and I tasted ozone.
Something unimaginably powerful was outside the van. And whoever they were, they had only one intent—to abduct Kai.
And the sickening cold fear in my gut taunted me—I was damn near powerless to stop them.
Chapter 5
The electric power pulsed within the back of the van, slamming into both Kai and myself, and flinging us in opposite directions. Then, as though an invisible hand had reached out and scooped her up, the force lifted Kai off the floor even as it sent a burst of electricity into her body.
The same voltage coursed through my veins as sparks flared in my vision. The energy tugged at my essence, thrusting me back onto the astral plane and then, just as easily, snatching me back out into the minivan.
White lightning flashes zig-zagged inside the small confined space, the metal around us vibrating so fast that it let off a low thrum. And within that maelstrom of energy, was the woman I was meant to be protecting.
Kai hung within the grip of the energy, but as terrified as I was for her safety, I couldn’t remain focused on her. I stared, horrified, as I raised my fingers in front of me, panicking as they vibrated so fast that my projected form began to dissolve. Kai was still caught inside a web of pulsating energy, but at least she’d now begun to make little movements, a spasm of a finger, a twitch of a lip. She was regaining consciousness which I took to mean she was no longer being electrocuted. Still, she’d be unable to move much else given the effect of thousands of volts of electricity coursing through one’s body; alpha or not, she’d feel like she’d been pulverized.
I hated that I couldn’t just get her out, but I forced myself to put those feelings aside. Unable to help Kai, I had to at least find out what the hell was going on, and now that I was in control of myself, I had to take the chance before our attackers came in for a second strike. I drifted away from Kai and slipped through the metal wall of the minivan, hovering above the overturned vehicle, its wheels still spinning, scorched rubber redolent in the air.
Surprisingly, the street was empty, not a car in sight, no howl of sirens in the distance. The scene of the accident was hidden from view by a three-story abandoned apartment building on one side, and a half-demolished parking garage on the other.
Along the sidewalk, the line of half a dozen street lamps flickered on and off, as though something interfered with their connection to the grid.
Two men had approached the minivan, likely from the vehicle that had T-boned us. When the attackers approached the cop in the front of the vehicle, I made my decision. I had no intention of standing by and watching them get away with Kai. Taking her was their end-game, no doubt about it.
At that moment, Kai let out a low, frustrated moan and I sank back into the minivan and drew close to her. From the dark sparks of her aura, I recognized the signs of some form of inner struggle. Given her panther species, I determined that her panther must be struggling just as much as she was. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the animal side of Kai was stressed out enough to force her way through right this minute.
Which would be a very bad idea.
But the field of electricity was currently holding Kai firmly, the grip on her likely tight enough to keep her feline form in check as well.
The field of sparks pulsed and I shifted through the van and turned my attention to the two men who had approached, one of who held a hand out toward the minivan, almost nonchalantly sending a constant stream of electric energy into the van, and most assuredly into Kai.
Each of the men seemed to be made from a complex amalgamation of shadow and electric energy, like a pair of furious storm-clouds. But there was something inherently strange about them.
I held my breath—as though that would keep me from being spotted—and drifted closer. I was beyond the Veil where neither of the assailants would see me, and yet nothing was going as I’d expected it to. I was forced to accept that I had to be prepared just in case. Just in case these Shadowmen could possible see through the Veil.
I didn’t think it was possible though, ShadowWraiths were elf-demons, a dangerous Dark Elemental hybrid that could control and manipulate the air elements, giving them immense power, the kind of power they’d just wielded moments ago. But not the kind of power that would allow them to control matter and energy within the astral plane. As I drew closer, memories filtered into my drained and foggy mind. I swallowed hard as I accepted that the Shadowmen may not just be after Kai. Not too long ago, during my trip to New Orleans, I’d been attacked by a ShadowWraith, too.
And that was not something I’d take lying down. Well, perhaps I’d be less inclined to care when it came to myself, but the Shadowmen had messed with the people I cared about. Kai was vulnerable now, defenseless against them, her alpha power doing nothing at all in the face of the bolts of electricity.
I drifted toward them, using careful movements just in case. As I closed in, their voices filtered through to me, distorted by the Veil and yet strange, not at all the voices of normal beings.
If I’d had to hazard a guess—especially with little else to go on—I’d have said these men belonged to a strange, and as yet unknown, supernatural species, likely born of ShadowWraiths and perhaps some other Dark Ethereal or supernatural being.
The power they controlled pulsed on a frequency that appeared to react with the astral plane strangely and disconcertingly, keeping me on a constantly uneasy keel.
“How much longer are we going to be doing this shit?” the shorter of the two men grumbled. They were both dressed in dark, military gear, their heads encased in faceless black helmets, reducing them to anonymity.
“Please keep your voice down,” the taller man said, his tone impatient and weary as he glanced briefly over his shoulder as though whoever remained within their vehicle could have overheard his partner’s words. Then he sighed. “Just let’s do as we’re told and get this over with, okay?” he asked, his tone gentler now, as though he cared for his partner—likely they were more than mere coworkers or even friends, judging by the intimacy of his tone.
“This isn’t what we signed up for, Seth,” the other man replied softly now.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Seth replied, casting his glance around the street. “You know as well as I do that it’s not as if we have much choice.” He spoke the words like a man who was well used to repeating himself.
“Yeah. I know. Why couldn’t we have just taken Rita and Neville away? Somewhere these…people wouldn’t be able to find them.”
“Are you crazy?” sai
d Seth, impatient now as he paused to shift his attention to his partner. A strong pulsing of emotion filtered from him. Affection. Concern. Fear. “Look, I know you’re afraid but there isn’t anything else we can do. We’re too deep into it anyway. Even if we run, we just put a target on the kids’ backs. Even Ernestine.”
The words lingered between the pair, the only other sound the spinning of the minivan’s wheels and the crackle of electricity.
“Joey?” Seth said, waiting until his partner looked over and met his gaze. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time. We’ll find a way out. I promise. Just let’s do this job, and we’ll figure something out.”
After sharing a second quick glance filled with emotion, the pair kept going. Maintaining their electrical field as they moved toward the minivan.
I frowned. How interesting.
The electrically charged pair were reluctant participants. And from the sounds of it, being coerced into getting the job done. I gritted my teeth as the edge of the lightning that pulsed from their combined power edged against me. Even in the astral plane, I could feel the voltage.
Which was so not a good sign.
The men closed in on the minivan, Joey heading toward Kai while Seth slowed to maintain the surge of energy around the vehicle.
“Do you have her?” he asked.
“Yes, she’s still conscious,” Joey’s partner answered, his tone terse as though he’d shut down.
“We need to move. Put her out,” came the clipped instruction.
Within a moment, another surge of electricity rammed into the minivan. My heart raced, but I focused and surged from beyond the Veil and aimed my essence straight at Joey. I figured he’d be more malleable given his more sensitive nature, but as I moved, I watched him send a bolt of lightning into Kai’s body, calm as you please.