Intro
First Chapter
Second Chapter
Third Chapter
Fourth Chapter
Fifth Chapter
Sixth Chapter
It took a few hours for Quintus’s nearest cleanup crew to come by and set about scavenging the remains of Fellbrook’s operation. Goblins were rather fond of precious stones and metals, so it was a pretty decent haul for them. Meanwhile, the Helsing called the nearest hospital to report Mr. Oehlert’s “seizure” and settled back into their motel room for the night. Shelley was about to go looking for the cleanup crew and question them about Buchanan when one of them came knocking on the door. Shelley gaped in surprise for a moment after she opened the door to see the two men, one of them with his fist raised to knock. Then she closed her mouth, her gaze turned cold, and she said, “What is it?”
“The boss wants your help,” said the man who had been about to knock--a red haired fellow who wore horn-rimmed glasses, had a sweetly Southern accent, and stood about two inches shorter than Shelley. “There’s a lot of bad folks fled Buchanan before the reclamation forces arrived. The company is going to help catch them.”
“The boss wants your help,” said the man who had been about to knock--a red haired fellow who wore horn-rimmed glasses, had a sweetly Southern accent, and stood about two inches shorter than Shelley. “There’s a lot of bad folks fled Buchanan before the reclamation forces arrived. The company is going to help catch them.”
“The company? Melodramatic much?” asked Shelley. “Anyway, what exactly are you doing to help?”
The redheaded man smirked and said, “We’re setting up blockades at a few key towns. A few other guys are arranging some harmless traffic accidents to make sure that any fiends who pass through here will have to slow down or stop for a bit. We’ve got surveillance of the magical and mundane variety across the town, hitters at key points, and communication with similar squads across the country. Anyway, since your little posse happened to be here already one of my boys thought you might like to help.”
Shelley looked back into the motel room and grimaced. “My ‘posse’ isn’t in such great shape right now,” she said slowly. “I wouldn’t even be in charge except that Ephraim still needs a few more hours to recover from some kind of spiritual transfusion he did earlier. And there’s a healing potion still workin’ on me.”
From where he was sitting against a bed and running through magical exercises Daniel looked up in curiosity. In addition to all the other information that had just been doled out, he had also heard Shelley slip momentarily into a Southern drawl.
“No need to worry ‘bout that,” said the redheaded man. “As I mentioned, a lot of this work is looking to be surveillance. All we need are some extra warm bodies so our attention ain't spread too thin. And it’s likely to go on a few days, so if we do need some assists in the area of bloodsport you lot should be plenty healed up.”
Shelley visibly relaxed. “This crew is mostly just zealots,” she said. “But Ephraim and I will be happy to help in that case. And I’m sure we can all handle some surveillance work for a while. I’ll need to clear it with the captain, though.”
“You can try it,” said the redheaded man. “But don’t be expectin’ anything. I tried to call Ms. Jensen before I dropped by and my phone near burst into flames. There’s been all kinds of power flying round causing all kinds of trouble since the attack. Contact with those other crews I mentioned has been iffy, and they’re mostly close by.”
“I have some other numbers I can try if I can’t reach the keep directly,” said Shelley. “But if they don’t get me anywhere then I’m going to assume the answer is ‘yes.’ Thanks for helping with this, by the way.”
“Ma’am,” said the redhaired man. “Quintus is a stingy, habitually rude jackass and everyone knows it, but he’s as loyal as any man alive and he’s good to his word. And he’s a Jaeger who told the clans he’d be there when if ever they might need him. Our business ties us to the clans inextricably, and most of us are Jaegers by blood anyway. If we didn’t hit the pavement and do everythin’ we could to help out now we’d be deservin’ of any fate that crooked man down under could devise for us.”
A moment later Shelley stepped out to call Fresno, and in the moment her face was angled toward Daniel he could have sworn he saw her wipe away a tear. He considered what she might do if he ever mentioned that detail, and he immediately decided he had been mistaken. When she came back a few minutes later she reported that she hadn’t gotten through and that she was willing to stay for three days so long as Ephraim agreed after he’d recovered. A little less than two hours later Ephraim was awake and after feeding lightly on Shelley he was ready to handle matters again. He quickly agree to work with the redhaired man, whose name turned out to be Tobias, on the condition that he get a look inside him first.
“Is there anything I should know before I start?” asked Ephraim as he took Tobias by the wrists.
“I had to quit huntin’ on account of nerves,” said Tobias. “It took a meltdown and an empath like you for me to learn that my mind just can’t handle the action full-time. It’s how I wound up workin’ for Quintus.”
Then Ephraim began to feed, and Daniel felt a small wave of scorching energy flowing out of the two as if a large rock had just been dropped in a small pond. The exorcist’s spiritual residue began to stir all over again, and immediately Daniel felt his ability to remain conscious groan, splinter, and give way.
* * * * *
When word went out that the Buchanan Estate had been attacked dozens of groups and organizations leapt at the opportunity to send reinforcements. Every knight, centurion, and hunter agreed that the attack was an outrage, an insult to the laws of Gwendolyn, and a dangerous precedent. With both modern technology and paths through the Veil at their disposal, it had taken all of five hours for responders from all across North America to settle four camps surrounding the estate from each point of the compass. From there, they had begun to bombard the estate with explosives, spells, and magical artifacts while changelings and other members skilled in stealth attempted to rescue the survivors and gather intelligence. An archmage had given the scouts talismans to conceal them from the enemy and teleport them back to the camps when they completed their missions, and the bombardment had been planned to create opportunities for them to sneak past the enemy lines. They had not been prepared for the news the scouts brought back.
It had been believed at first that the attackers had all been vampires, but when the scouts got a better look at things they found vargulfen, ogres, goblins, camazotzos, skinwalkers, wendigos, witches, and many other creatures. The witches were of particular interest as they had already lined the walls of the grounds with sigils and talismans and were working on further magical fortifications. The enchantments responded to their concealing magic like barbed wire catching on loose garments, and many of the scouts were killed immediately after entering the grounds. Those that didn’t were able to see the human remains scattered across the estate, the fiends gnawing on spare parts, and the necromancers preparing corpses for reanimation. When they went looking for survivors they found one sealed room that had just recently been broken into, and they witnessed the captives being ritually sacrificed to purchase power. They did manage to return with more survivors saved than sacrificed, but the news was grim nonetheless.
The leaders of the counterattack quickly concluded that the defenses were too great for a direct assault. That turned the battle into an arcane chess match with the spellcasters on either side crafting enchantments, laying down bindings, and performing conjurations to gain the advantage over their opposites while the rest of those assembled either stood watch or else kept up a constant bombardment. That was all well and good except that for the reclamation forces to win the match they would need a circle around the entire estate, and there was no way they would keep up really solid defenses all the way around or even around those drawing the circle while still guarding the camps. Not to mention that many of the materials for such large scale workings were not readily available and were in fact very difficult to come by. The circle would need at least three lines to contain and focus the kind of power in play, and seven points (each of them a circle such as were used in more common and reasonably sized workings) to define and harness the spell.
Holly Esther Haywood, an African American archmage nearly two-hundred years old who was rumored to have been the product of one Southern warlock’s experiments in arcane eugenics, volunteered to make the first circle. In another camp, a Latin American monk named Caliel de Las Casas volunteered to make the second circle using incense and small marble stones inscribed with the names of saints and angels in Atlantean. The last line was more difficult, but Maybeline University (the leading arcane academy of the New World) swore to prepare and deliver a rope bound up around a core of blessed silver with knots containing relics and talismans every few yards. Since the rope would have all the enchantments and blessings already placed and because the doctors had promised to split it into four parts (one for each camp) that would rejoin themselves as soon as they were brought together. So Archmagus Haywood, Abbot de Las Casas, and their respective entourages began the long, long journey round the estate, Haywood dragging a long, thin rod tipped with what looked like luminescent green chalk along the ground behind her as she muttered incantations and the abbot swinging an ancient lantern before him that billowed out scented smoke as other monks tossed pebbles to the ground.
It was not five minutes before the first assault him them and the camps. Four hordes of zombies and revenants charged the camps at inhuman speeds. The estate was surrounded by magical artifacts that absorbed arcane energies and then released their charges in explosive bursts when they detected dark presences passing over them, and most of those that had been bypassed in the original attack were now activated by the undead slaves. Other attackers were shot down by the gunmen and battlemages of the reclamation forces, but whoever had sent the hordes didn’t seem to mind. In fact, the amount of strength the attackers were exerting just to get at their enemies was already tearing many of them apart. A few of the undead drew automatic weapons that shone with sinister markings and opened fire as they approached the barricades. The magical defenses built up on the sandbags and stones that surrounded the camps became visible as they held back those first bursts, but without a really strong foundation they weren’t ready to hold back the hordes that soon slammed against them.
At the western encampment, Shiori Kirihara was so intimidated with the attack that she flinched over the barricade and then flinched her blade into and out of every zombie within her reach. Then Melody jumped up on the sandbags, drew her wand in a motion reminiscent of a ballet, and sent several gouts of flame into the lines of rotting flesh as Vera opened fire from her sniping position in the branches of a nearby oak. A roar went up as the gathered warriors all took the field, and there was a sound like thunder as some of the undead attempted to disrupt Archmagus Haywood. A few less experienced fighters received injuries from the corpses, and there were worse losses where they were allowed to bunch up together and press forward like some foul avalanche, but for the most part the reclamation forces did not suffer much as a result of the first attack.
Which meant it hadn’t been intended to deal serious losses. As the round came to a close, those warriors more experienced in organized warfare, be it large or small, stared suspiciously at the estate. Their defenses had been examined, and soon the real fighting would begin.
* * * * *
When Daniel saw his younger self, he felt as if that was where his true being resided. It was as if her were a puppet and the child was the one pulling the strings and giving him life, even if the child didn’t know it.
He was standing in the middle of an elementary school playground littered with toys. In his peripheral vision he could see children playing, and he could vaguely hear them as well, but when he tried to look directly at them there was nothing to see. There was only him and his own younger self, a child who looked like he couldn’t be any older than seven, in the middle of the playground. And then the tiny wizard began casting.
A basketball caught fire. A toy car began to move and started zipping around the blacktop. A storm drain burst as large frogs fountained out from the hole. Words of power appeared at various spots on the concrete in glowing chalk.
Against his will Daniel felt his gaze being drawn to the many spectacles the child had wrought, and with each image he was hit by a flood of memories. He forced himself to turn his eyes back to the child, his whole body shaking with the experience. The spells had been cast without thought and for no better reasons than a passing whim. Sometimes he had been angry at a classmate, sometimes he had wanted to play a joke, sometimes he had just been bored. Even the benevolent spells (and there had been more than a few of those) had been cast recklessly and had often had unfortunate consequences. No one had ever done due to the child’s power (not to the best of his knowledge at least) but they had resulted in pain and fear nonetheless. And the underlying cause of nearly all of them had been sheer boredom.
Then the child walked toward the chain link fence, and Daniel had no choice but to follow. With a swish of his fingers, the child opened the fence up, stepped out to the street beyond, and left behind everything that made up the life of a normal kid. He had given up on school, family, and everything else out of nothing but sheer and utter boredom. Now he walked down a street lined with shops and apartment buildings, and he seemed to be aging about a month for each step. The playful, careless magic was less common now, but when such spells were cast they were bigger and had much greater effects. Additionally, there was plenty of more practical spells to take their place as the young boy took as he pleased from the crowd as if it were all so much wild foliage. He was becoming colder now, more predatory, and the sights and sounds of his sins were pressing harder against Daniel’s consciousness as they struggled for his attention.
Then came Rosmarus. The child was eleven when the guild came to him in the form of his old mentor and a glimmering, purple and blue lace. The moment the child took the hand of the middle aged mage, the whole dreamscape exploded in images. There was too much for Daniel to take in. The murders were the most prominent sins, but they were complemented by a vast sea of smaller evils. Daniel fell to the pavement and clutched his head in fear and pain as hundreds of memories blasted their way into his consciousness all at once.
“Let them go!” bellowed a familiar voice.
Daniel shook his head. He hated the sins as they were now, but there was too much of himself tied up in them. And there was something bright and hot he could barely sense out there beyond that sea. There was something that they kept him safe from. Not to mention all the little things he knew he might lose.
“God, save me from my depravity, but not just yet,” said the voice of Ephraim. Daniel could feel the knight’s hand on his shoulder as he lay huddled on the pavement. “It’s an old prayer, but it won’t do. Can’t you see this is killing you? Didn’t you see what you were becoming before the guild came? They helped drive out that alleycat thing because they were family and community, but when good things go bad the result is that much worse. Trust me, the seed they planted in you will grow into something far more horrible than that cold urchin ever could have been. Unless you kill it.”
Daniel could barely move, but somehow he managed to shake his head.
“You don’t have to be a saint. You don’t have to stop sinning forever. No one can do that. All you have to do for now is admit that you were wrong. All you have to do is stop pretending that you have a right to do evil. That’s all it takes.”
After what felt like month of inward debate, Daniel lifted his eyes up to the vortex of memories.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m sorry, okay! It was all wrong, it was always wrong and I shouldn’t have done and I did it anyway!”
And then it was gone. There was nothing left but a small park on a misty morning.
“Well, that was quite the spectacle,” said an aged, accented voice.
Daniel looked up and saw two figures together with him in the park. One was an old African man dressed in close-fitting, European semi-formal clothes wrapped in colorful African robes embroidered with Atlantean runes. The man had a gnarled staff nearly as thick as his rather muscular arms, and when Daniel looked into his eyes he saw that they had yellow pupils immersed in pools of orange. The strange wizard sat on a bench, and a few feet behind him, in the shadow of a pine tree, stood a pale woman possessed of such bizarre and transfixing beauty as Daniel had never seen. Her long, curling hair was pitch black, her figure was slender while still seeming more flexible and limber than delicate, her eyes were an inhumanly deep blue bordered by a silver ring, she wore a similarly silver dress that shifted and coiled with each of her movements, and her ears were pointed. Because clearly Daniel hadn’t had enough of faeries already.
“Okay,” said Daniel slowly. “If I’m dreaming, I think I’d like a different scenario. I’ve had enough ominous figures for a while.”
“This is no dream, boy,” said the strange wizard. “Or at least, not just a dream. It is, in truth, and introduction.” He rose from the bench, walked over to Daniel, and extended his hand. “My name is Solomon Aregawi, and the Morrigan and I thought it was time you understand why you are where you are.”
Daniel’s eyes widened as he reflexively took Solomon’s hand, his own grip limp. The Morrigan was the most common name for the Queen of the Lunar Court, the subtlest and most deceptive of the seven faerie courts.
“It is as the wizard says,” said the Morrigan. Her voice was soft with a mostly English accent. “I believe he was attempting to ‘steal my thunder,’ as you might, put it just now. He can be insufferably petty at times.”
“Hold on,” Daniel said. His brain was working at maximum capacity just to keep up with all the information. “What do you mean, ‘why I am where I am’? Are you saying..did you two do...this??”
“Your removal from Rosmarus and your captivity with the knights?” asked the Morrigan. “Indeed. Did you think it was by accident that you were placed in the reach of the Helsing? Or perhaps you imagined that their limited resources and dried up political connections had somehow been sufficient to arrange the whole affair.”
“I hadn’t really thought of it,” Daniel admitted.
Why hadn’t he thought of it? He’d known there was mind magic involved. He’d known more than enough about schemes to realize how huge and unlikely an opportunity that had been for the Helsing. Had he been whammied twice?
“You shouldn’t feel bad about that,” said Solomon. “It took nearly a year for me to set that particular stage, even with her highness’s help. In any event, the thing you really need to know is that all of this has been done to give you a choice.” He leaned forward and his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “There is much that will soon be decided, and Rosmarus is poised to participate in nearly all of it. At the same time it is the role of the Helsing to participate in such matters, though they are not poised to play a major role in much of anything at the moment. And then there is the matter of your own soul; if you had not been taken from Rosmarus as you were quite recently, you would have become entrenched in a life that I doubt anything but the greatest and most jarring of tragedies would have been able to tear you free from. It is for these reasons that I wanted to help you step escape your circumstances, get a different look at your life, and have a clear decision of what to do next.”
There was a long moment in which Daniel processed that. Among other things, he noticed that Solomon had only said those were his motivations. He hadn’t made any effort to include the Morrigan in that explanation.
“So,” said Daniel slowly. “What you’re saying is that you stuck a working in my head and arranged for me to get Stockholm Syndrome because big stuff is happening and you’re really, really worried about the state of my soul?”
A sound like bell chimes and birdsong erupted as Daniel finished speaking.
“Oh, child,” said the Morrigan with a sigh. “You know so little of what sways your heart. You think what’s happened has been a survival mechanism? No, no, it is much more than that. It is the simple matter of living with another. You eat with them, face problems with them, learn what makes one person different from another. Whatever affection you have for those others emerges entirely from the fact that for a little while you were treated as one of their own and you were put in situations in which you did the same. Perhaps when you have thirty more years of experience you will have begun to appreciate the power of the little things of life. They are the deadliest blades in my armoury.”
Before a proper chill could run through Daniel’s spine, Solomon waved a dismissive hand and said, “Yes, yes, that’s all true. However, I’d also like to mention that it wasn’t just for you. I am indebted to certain paladins of Helsing, and even apart from that they are an order that I would see restored. That doesn’t mean your spiritual wellbeing wasn’t a goal, but I won’t pretend it was all I was interested in.” Then he took a few steps back and said, “I’m afraid I don’t have much to say besides that. All that’s left for you to know is that you will have to make that choice soon, although that is so obvious it is hardly worth saying.”
“Wait!” shouted Daniel. “I’ve got a question for the lady before this ends.”
“Then ask, child,” said the Morrigan.
“If you’re such a legendary webweaver,” said Daniel. “Then why are you even letting me know who you are and that you’re involved?”
“Because you happen to be a somewhat clever lad,” said the Morrigan with the sweetest smile Daniel had ever seen. “And the best way to get the better of a clever person is to let them think they know everything. Hide a trap from them and they might be alerted by some small detail or avoid it through some standard precaution. But if you tell a clever person that there is a trap and where to find it they will walk right into it simply to prove they are better at disarming the mechanism than you are at laying it.”
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