Gremlin Night Page 8

Tully gave me a little head shake. He obviously thought I’d been in too big of a hurry.

  I pushed myself off the ground. Tully passed me and bent over the man.

  “Sir, are you okay?” he asked.

  The man lay prone, motionless.

  I knelt beside him. He had shoulder-length brown hair. His face was narrow, with a cleft chin. He wore a belted sweater jacket over a turtleneck.

  I reached to help him up.

  “Don’t touch me!” he cried, shoulder-length brown hair swinging as he squirmed away.

  I snatched my hand back. “Sorry,” I said.

  He slowly pushed himself up, looked at Tully and me, his narrow-set eyes widening. “What is going on?” he asked. “Who are you?”

  I whipped out my omni-badge. “Sally Rodriguez, Portland Police.”

  Tully’s eyebrows shot up. Okay, maybe we should just have gone with concerned fellow citizen.

  The man finished standing up. He was a few inches shorter than Tully, so just under six feet tall. His face twitched. For an instant, something other than fear appeared in his eyes. Appraisal, maybe, or maybe it was just the adrenalin talking.

  He looked at Tully, concern in his face. “Who are you?”

  “Phil Jones, Portland Police. What’s your name, sir?” Tully asked, all professional politeness.

  Loud clattering from the direction of the jewelry store interrupted the man’s answer.

  His gaze darted in the direction of the echoing clangor. “Shouldn’t you stop the looting?” he asked, gesturing with his hands. Something heavy crashed in the parking lot, followed by human shouting.

  Tully winced and rubbed his face.

  “Are you all right, Officer?” The man asked Tully.

  We had to move. Why were we talking with this man while gremlins ran amok?

  “He’ll be fine,” I said, tugging at Tully’s sleeve. “Please keep your distance,” I told the frightened man.

  Tully grunted and followed me. I felt the man’s gaze on me as we left. I could have sworn that he had sized me up, but he seemed too scared to give me the creepy look-over that jerk-type men liked to do.

  Tully leaned down to me as we walked. “You should really watch where you’re going,” he said.

  “Thanks, Dad.” Nothing like the rookie lecturing the veteran. “We don’t have time to waste.”

  “But haste makes waste.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Quoting the Academy’s first rule of investigation back at me isn’t a great move,” I said. “I’ve been--" I broke off.

  More looters sauntered from the weed and wine shops, and the electronics store, but continued to ignore the jewelers. The jewelry store was lit by faint silver flashes, so faint I could barely make them out.

  “Why are they ignoring the best looting opportunity in the mall?” I asked.

  Tully peered intently at the store. “There’s a magical concealment barrier.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you study concealment barriers to magical sight at the Academy?” he asked, gaze still laser focused on the jewelers.

  “I must’ve been sick that day.”

  “You’ve got to pulling my leg,” he replied, still staring at the front of the jewelry store.

  “Fine. I know what one is, but it’s Burner magic, not my department.” I shook my head. “So, how is one being cast here? And where’s the caster?”

  Tully slowly turned, scanning the area around us. “I don’t know. Whoever is doing it is very good.”

  I shivered. “It’s rare, but not unheard of.”

  The faint sound of breaking glass came from the jewelry store--maybe. I strained to hear. It was a high-pitched sound, actually more like cracking ice than breaking glass. We had to get inside now.

  I dashed to the door of the jewelers.

  “Marquez, wait!” Tully called behind me, followed by the sound of pounding boots. He sprinted up beside me, looking annoyed. “Let the seer go first.”

  The whole time the looters ignored us, running off into the night with their stolen prizes.

  I stepped to one side, letting him go to the door. He tried the handle. Locked.

  Time to take advantage of the fact that we R.U.N.E. agents came in pairs. “You have a lockpick?” I asked him.

  “Yes.” Tully drew it from inside his duster. That was a nice-looking spindle-style artifact.

  I reached up and plucked it from his hand.

  “Hey!” Tully protested.

  I ignored his objection.

  “Let’s follow standard procedure,” I said.

  “Snatching your partner’s artifact out of their hands isn’t exactly standard procedure,” he pointed out.

  “We’re a team. Share and share alike.”

  He sighed. “Somehow I suspect that only goes one way.”

  I put a hand to my chest. “I resemble that remark.”

  He didn’t laugh at my attempt at humor. Jokes help break the tension for me. Very few of my fellow R.U.N.E. agents seem to feel the same way.

  “You expect me to wait here while you go in the back, assuming there’s a back door.”

  I nodded. “There’s a back door. There’s always a back door.”

  “Not necessarily.” He looked very unhappy at the idea of me leaving him out front.

  The thing was, if the gremlins made a break for it, we needed to know which direction they were headed in. I was the binder.

  I walked around to the rear of the building, Tully’s lockpick trembling in my left hand. This was a new artifact, never used. New artifacts had a different sort of potency than ancient ones. Powerful, but with little stamina. I held the blood amulet in my right hand. Insurance, in case the gremlin chaos magic screwed things up again. Another reason to leave Tully guarding the front door.

  I found a narrow parking lot, empty. Staff doors dotted the back side of the strip mall. Security lights strobed above the doors.

  The jewelry store’s door looked like it was made out of titanium and could stop a tank round without even trying. I peered at the lockpick. It had a simple activation word, in ancient Greek.

  Just as I made out the activation word, the rear door to the jewelers crashed open. Something sleek and low to the ground emerged, moving fluidly.

  I couldn’t make out the manifestation’s features. It was a dark shadowy form, just a purple outline of mana edging it. I backed up, trying to put some distance between me and the thing, my hand gripping the lockpick like it was a wand. If only it was.

  My finger brushed against the spikes of the blood amulet I held in my left hand. Without thinking I jammed my fingertip on a spike, and pain stabbed through me. Latin fell from my lips in a singsong chant.

  I clenched my fist and tendrils of silver magical light shot from my knuckles and ensnared the manifestation.

  The manifestation reared up, becoming visible as my spell took effect. A bullet-shaped head thrust forward, the creature’s shaggy gray fur tinged blue. A boggart. Now that was an old-school manifestation. I hadn’t seen one of those in the wild ever. I’d seen modern versions, but not an ancient one.

  “Freeze,” I commanded in Latin.

  It stood stock still, holding a bag brimming with gold and pearls.

  “Tsk-tsk,” I told it. “You come from a proud lineage and the best you can do is loot a jewelry store. Reveal— “

  Something long and snake-like fell right beside me, crackling and sparking. I jumped away and lost control of the spell. A powerline! My heart drummed in my ears.

  “Hee-hee!” A trio of gremlins chorused from the strip mall’s roof above me.

  The boggart sprinted away, legs moving in a blur. It charged around the corner to the front parking lot.

  I stumbled after it. Tully stood by the front door to the jewelry store. He whirled around as the boggart and I ran past.

  He began to cast a spell, but his wand clattered to the pavement before he could finish.

  Cursed gremlins.

 
Meanwhile, the boggart bounded toward where we’d encountered the frightened bystander. I peered into the night, but there was no sign of the man. He must have run for it, like a sensible ordinary. That was one less thing to worry about. Thanks to the invisibility barrier, he would’ve only seen the looting and the apparent electrical malfunctions. The invisibility ended up being providential. We were lucky.

  We still needed to catch the boggart, but we had to deal with the gremlins first. More maniacal chortling echoed from the rooftop.

  “Wonderful, they’re on the roof.” I reached inside my jacket for my own wand, grasped the wood. The wand was still, inert. Hellfire. It had been drained, probably when I’d had to deal with the gremlins earlier. That was fast, too fast. I gritted my teeth. I must not have been issued a fresh one. It should have had more charges in it. The chaos magic couldn’t have drained it that quickly. Or could it? It didn’t matter now.

  The gremlins capered on the roof, chortlingly manically. The mall sign suddenly began running a cartoon of a dragon falling out of the sky while gremlins laughed from the sidelines.

  “I’ve got to end this,” I muttered.

  “There are two of us, remember?” Tully held a slingshot. He began chanting in Portuguese. He finished the spell and let loose with a trio of magical missiles, silver balls that whistled softly as they flew.

  The balls exploded like liquid fireworks right above the gremlins. The three of them went motionless, frozen in manic poses. A moment later, they dissolved into wisps of mana “smoke” which faded away an instant later.

  I took a step back to look around his muscular bulk to see the other two stores, which were deserted now. I’d have to call Simms soon, once we’d made sure that the manifestations were cleared.

  I let out my breath. That had been tougher than I liked.

  “What’s the mana and magic like?” I asked Tully. I peered around, hoping to see what he saw, but of course I wasn’t a seer.

  “Mana is back to normal levels,” Tully said. “No magic in the vicinity.”

  Not for the first time I wished I’d had his ability. Not instead of my binding sorcery, but along with it. But two sorceries equaled wizardry, and only a very select few of the select few who could use magic could be wizards. Like my mother.

  I pushed the annoying thought away. Focus, Liz, I told myself. Tully was putting me off my game. I wasn’t usually this distractible. Not without provocation at any rate.

  “Okay, let’s check out the jewelers,” I said. Tully nodded. He picked up his wand.

  I eased myself past the shattered door into the jewelry shop. Ceiling panels littered the floor, and the overhead LEDs were dark. I pulled a penlight out of my jacket and flashed the beam around.

  The glass counter tops were cracked. The big wall safe yawned open, and the jewelry trays which had been put away for safe keeping lay empty on the floor.

  Tully quickly went over the various nooks and crannies inside the store, peering carefully at surfaces, edges, opening drawers, looking under chairs, the works. It took him just a few minutes, but it felt like hours. I tapped my toes while I waited, shifting from side to side. I wanted to leave five minutes ago, because we still had the boggart to track down.

  “No sign of any lingering magic, or manifestations,” he said when he had finished.

  I didn’t think there would be, but he had to check. New manifestations, level ones, could appear in the wake of magical turbulence, and cause a cascade effect. We went out the back, closing the steel door behind us.

  I called Simms. “Marquez here. We just dealt with a four-manifestation outbreak.”

  “Great.” He sounded bitter. “I see that there’s a gaggle of police and rescue headed your way.” Right on cue came the sound of sirens. “You’d better have taken care of the supernatural shenanigans.” Okay, he used a shorter word than shenanigans, but like I said, I gave up conventional swearing when I joined R.U.N.E. Words have consequences, and we sorcerer agents needed to stay focused.

  “We did,” I lied. Simms was going to have a serious case of heartburn if I let on that a rogue manifestation was still on the loose, so I didn’t. To be fair, we’d zapped the gremlins. We just need to catch up with the boggart.

  “Why do I think that’s not exactly the case?” Simms said. Definitely heartburn.

  “The gremlins are gone,” I insisted. “We’re vacating the area now.” I hung up.

  I turned to tell Tully, but he was already heading toward the Continental.

  “We have to find that boggart,” I said.

  “I know.” He walked briskly toward our vehicle.

  “Hey, I’m supposed to be the leader,” I said, following. The sirens were louder now. I broke into a sprint.

  “We’re partners,” Tully replied. “There isn’t a leader.” He ran faster.

  We pounded across the parking lot, past where the cowering bystander had been and across the street to our vehicle. Tully was behind the wheel and starting the car before I’d reached it.

  I yanked open the door and hopped in. The Lincoln pulled away from the curb with a deep rumble. I yanked on the door to close it. It shut with a heavy sounding clunk.

  I buckled my seat belt as we sped off. “What happened to assessing the situation before diving in?” I mean, come on, being reckless is my thing.

  “I spotted a new mana trail. Has to be our boggart,” he said. Muscles worked in his jaw. He was not a happy man. “Besides, we should be out of the area before law enforcement arrives.”

  “You still have your omni-badge. Mine has more one use for today. Besides, I told Simms—”

  “I heard you. You lied to Simms. Please stop playing around and act professional.”

  Tully suddenly reminded me of my Uncle Robert, who’d also served in the army. That was a cut-the-nonsense tone if I’d ever heard one.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just the way I handle things.”

  “This isn’t the time for banter,” he said. His stern expression eased and his tone turned puzzled.

  The Continental’s engine sputtered and died.

  “Daylight burns,” Tully swore. I blinked.

  He managed to get our battleship of a sedan to coast to the curb, the tires thumping against the concrete.

  “Gremlins?” I looked frantically around, craning my neck to see where the little annoyances were. Nothing on the nearest street light or rooftops that I could see.”

  “No sign of them,” Tully said.

  Headlights flared in our windshield, and I threw up my hands, shielding my eyes. The lights dimmed and a black SUV with tinted windows stopped, facing us.

  The doors opened and a slim blond woman in pantsuit and heels stepped down to the street.

  I groaned. I knew that woman. Dara Kind.

  My nemesis had just arrived.

  8

  I swear, her lip curled when she saw me. Dara Kind was an operative for the Arcane Security Agency. A multinational, extra-governmental agency of black ops types who thought they knew best about the supernatural. They had signed the Compact, but that only meant that they technically followed the laws of magic.

  How they applied those laws varied. They were all about getting as much knowledge and mana as they could.

  I suspected that meant breaking the Compact, but good luck catching them in the act.

  Dara tapped a manicured fingernail against a manicured thumbnail. “You’re back in the field, Marquez.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, with an extra helping of implied scorn.

  “Yup, sure am.” The grin I forced out hurt my face.

  I nodded at the red-haired man in the off-the-rack suit, who looked like a reject for the presidential secret service. “Who’s your pal?”

  “Riley,” the man said, giving me a hard stare. Oh, one of those types.

  “Marquez,” I replied.

  “We already know that!” he snapped.

  My grin widened. Riley was all too easy to rile up.

&n
bsp; “Just wanted to make sure you could follow along,” I said.

  Tully emerged from the car.

  “My partner, Tully,” I said.

  Dara nodded. “John Lincoln Tully, formerly of the United States Army. The offer still stands.”

  My eyes widened. She knew him?

  Tully frowned. “I told Operative Fitzpatrick I wasn’t interested. That still stands. I don’t know you or Riley, but nothing has changed.”

  “Pity,” Dara said, and sounded like she meant it.

  I waved my arms. “Hey, Tully and I have places to go. So, if you don’t mind, we’ll do that.”

  “As soon as you fix your engine.” She snickered.

  I narrowed my eyes. “That was you? You’ve crossed the line, lady.” I put my hands on my hips. “Where do you get off spell-killing our transport? We’re on official R.U.N.E. business.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you mean that joke of an op just now at the strip mall. The one featuring gremlins and a boggart? The boggart that got away from you?”

  I jabbed a finger at her. “Listen, if you hadn’t killed our engine we’d be on top of that boggart right now. You interfered in another supernatural organization’s business, Kind. You won’t be happy when this stinking mess hits the magical rotating oscillator.”

  “Oh, quaint euphemism for shit hitting the fan,” she retorted. “Your mother isn’t going to save you this time.”

  Tully joined me, looming like a mountain. He was a man-mountain, compared to me.

  “You are hindering our assignment.” He kept his voice level.

  She brightened at that. “Well, that’s what you get for working with Elizabeth.” She wrinkled her nose when she said my name, like she smelled something nasty. “The fact is, Marquez is up to no good and you’re stuck with her. An understandable mistake for a rookie. But still a mistake.”

  If there had been any kind of manifestation in the vicinity, I would have cast a binding on it and sent it after Miss High-and-Mighty A.S.A. operative. I can be as petty as the next sorcerer, so sue me. But, there weren’t any manifestations handy.

  I opened my mouth to tell her to move, but she raised a hand and began gesturing. Dara was an Invoker; she converted mana directly into spells.