Maker

Chapter: 12-4

“Bat.” Neka sighed.

“Maker, have you ever seen a five-foot bat with a fourteen-foot wingspan?”

“Uhh… No. What does that have to do with—”

“Right! So, big flying mouse.” She said, looking at Neka who just sighed again. “There wasn’t any more activity until two days ago. I still don’t know how they were getting their orders. I stuck a sensor in the house while they were all asleep. The place had a threshold, and it wasn’t the best sound but…”

“Wait, it had a threshold?”

“Monsters don’t get a threshold. Yes, Maker, I know the rules. These were just people. Transients, probably, and I already checked out the house. It belongs to Marian Rogan LLC. Marian is a nice lady in Cincinnati who has a son named Robert who attends college at NC State. I checked the county tax records, called her, and stalked her on f*******:; she doesn’t even know he’s dead. I assume the business is something she set up just to gain some tax advantage in buying the house her son lived in for college. There were a couple of other college age kids in the pack too, so I’m assuming more than one of them lived there. There was a strong enough threshold even after I cut his lungs open. Nothing for it.” She shrugged.

“Damn! I was hoping there would be a lead there.” It also meant the shapeshifters I’d killed were technically humans. Gomez tended to overlook warlocks, but I wasn’t gonna risk my life by telling him this.

“So did I. No dice. Sensors were worthless too. They hardly even spoke, just laid around on cots groaning all day. Nothing happened then but waiting and legwork. Checked out the house and all the license plates. Rollo helped with that bit; still got nowhere. The next time they left was two days ago. There were only nine people left in the house. This time they went out in force. I followed them and left Neka to scout the place.”

“I went in and took another look.” The big man said, without missing a beat. “Found nothing. The house didn’t have power. There were a few flashlights and burned down candles. No phone, not even a phone charger,” and the eyes closed again.

“When Neka caught up, I decided to take as many alive as we could and interrogate them. We were in the middle of making that happen when the old b***h from the garage showed up.”

“I named her Firehag,” I said.

“Ha! Apt. She was swimming in evocation. What’d you name the others?” She asked.

“Executive, Bombshell, Hawknose, Firehag, Shroud, and Happy the Peanut.” They both raised their eyebrows at the last. “It’s a long story,” I added. I wished Neka would open his eyes more often. For some reason, I was finding it a little unnerving to talk to someone who had their eyes closed.

“I’d just filleted the giant fish girl and the rest weren’t looking on their game. They aren’t fanatics, Maker. Not like those guys last year. They may have even given up. I was about to offer when Firehag came out of nowhere. One of them turned into a bear and went at it with Neka. Hagbitch threw lightning, fire, mud, shattered a concrete wall and sent that at me. More lightning, acid, wind, ice, and wind with ice in it. Not to mention the oil, needles, wooden shards, and the cotton from her robe which turned into a blade, blocking the only strike I got close enough to get. The f*****g b***h didn’t even break a sweat.” Zora did not enjoy being weaker than the monsters. She growled and stared at the floor as if she could somehow will her way back into that fight. Neka took this as his cue.

“While all that was going on, I was busy with the others. The bear and the wolf were fairly strong. The other six changed when the… Firehag appeared, but they didn’t do much besides cower and nip at me when my back was turned. We kept getting hit with things from Zora’s fight. It was a small space. Firehag kept throwing mental attacks at me. I assume that’s why she didn’t use those spells on Zora. Also, since Zora was really—”

“Shut up.” Zora growled. The big man stopped like someone had shut off a faucet. His eyes stayed open this time; fixed on Zora like he was waiting for her to attack. “Anyway, Neka thought Firehag was gonna mop the floor with us and yelled for me to open a wall. After I sliced a hole he grabbed me and jumped through. He turned into some giant flying thing with feathers—”

“Eagle,” he offered weakly.

“…and we flew away. We went back after a bit of arguing.”

“She said she was going back and threatened to kill me in my sleep if I didn’t go with her,” he said, pointing at Zora as if I didn’t know who he was talking about. He took a deep breath, and his shoulders dropped a bit. I was well versed in taking a deep breath to relax and recognized it right away.

“I was having a bad day.” She smiled in a predatory way at the man. I was trying to hold in a laugh. Neka looked moderately cowed.

“We went back because I value my life,” he continued. “There was no trail to follow. They used magic to wipe out the scent. The home in Garner was deserted after that. They didn’t hit the labs again. Then you returned.”

I was not relishing cleaning up my labs after all this. I was glad of the spring weather. Transients would happily sleep somewhere else for a while.

“I left a sensor on the front door of the house and the next two nights we hunted. I checked in a few of our favorite dark alleys again. What people know about Blackstar won’t fill a thimble. Everyone is too scared to know anything. They just go hide behind a threshold before sundown. As if that would help against a warlock.”

I sat back and exhaled. Nine days, almost eleven now. They’d kept Blackstar busy for that long. Gomez would be here with backup in a couple weeks.

As angry as I was, I knew I couldn’t win. I could run a few more sabotage missions, but I knew if I found Blackstar in a ditch tomorrow I would be far more relieved that he was dead than upset I didn’t get to do it myself. Emotions demanded one thing; logic suggested another. I had a rule in this situation. Do the logical thing. Emotions are background noise, no matter how loud they get.

“All that doesn’t change much.” I said. “I think we’ve at least set them back a week. They’ll have to recruit some new people, and the summoning circle is still trashed. New plan is the same as the old plan. Lay low, locate their latest hidey hole, and point at it with a bright neon sign once the cavalry shows up.”

“That’s a great plan Maker. Really. I mean, absolutely top-notch strategy. Now the bad news.” I groaned as she spoke.

“I didn’t authorize any bad news.” I said.

“Yeah, I’m not sure the world cares.” She smiled.

“Fine.” I said. “ Gimmie the good news first.”

“There isn’t any.” She laughed.

“Then I shall leave it to you to make some up,” I said, putting my face in my hands. Damn, I was on edge.

“Fine, you’re alive, awake, and two days early to engage in our time honored tradition of robbing vampires. They have a large shipment coming. I don’t know everything in it, but I think Blackstar does. He’s planning to rob it.”

I groaned again. “Must be what the guns were for—to outfit his non-magical people.” I said. It made sense at least.

“And I have another surprise for you.” She said.

“I’m assuming it’s not that the vamps are on to Blackstar, know he’s coming and have laid a trap that’s sure to kill him?”

“That would be convenient, but no.” She smiled. “Behind door number two, Brendan from the docks called the other night. The shipment has ritual artifacts. There’s an ankh that’s supposed to be the real deal; a tooth from a dragon. Smaug’s I think, some other powerful things I’ve never heard of, a new car, and lovely edition of our home game. Seriously, I have no idea how they’ve kept it quiet this long.”

“Oh, great!” I said. This backed me into yet another corner.

Neka looked from me to Zora with a squinted brow and a slightly slack jaw. I didn’t trust him, of course, but Zora did. He’d proven himself to her. While I was the slightly paranoid type, the reality was if he fooled Zora, he would certainly fool me. Zora trusted Miles and I. Everyone else was suspect.

I was far too trusting at times. Still entertaining some ludicrous faith that people would start making sense one day. I was young by most standards, yet already thought like a jaded old man. A man had to know himself—know his biases—so he can know when they’re leading him astray. I suspected my inability to trust most people was doing that now.

“An ankh is a religious artifact from ancient Egypt,” I explained. “They are said to have trapped in them the first angels that came to earth. I don’t know exactly how many there are, but it’s not many. Apparently, angels can repent, and if they do, maybe they get let out of the ankh. Think of it as a portable high-security prison for the supernatural. Even if there is no angel in it, any creature can be imprisoned and left to whatever unspeakable horrors that entails.” What I didn’t tell him is that I suspected the vamps wouldn’t bother with an ankh that didn’t have an angel in it.

They were rare enough to deal in, but as the foremost authority in having powerful things that make you a target, I would have to call it a bad idea. I had things that made me a target for evil wizards. An ankh made you a target for gods, angels, demons, fairy queens, and elder things. All the worst things that go bump in the night, and not one of them would hesitate to go straight through any mortal that thought of opposing them with it. There was no reason to risk all that for one that didn’t have an angel in it.

“Smaug is the dragon from The Hobbit. We call her that instead of her real name so we never risk getting her attention. Right now, she’s asleep. As far as I know, she’s been asleep for several hundred years. As dragons go, she’s not all that bad, but no one on Earth would be happy if she woke up tomorrow. Having a piece of her allows you to call upon her power. Dragon teeth and scales shed like any other hair or skin. Just happens far less often in dragons than it does for say, you and I. Even so, it’s like having your blood in a way. How much power has dissipated depends on how long it’s been away from the dragon. It’s probably been gone for a long time. On the other hand, that’s a lot of power to dissipate. It could be away from Smaug for a century and still be formidable. Even if it’s completely lost that power, it has another in being one of the strongest materials on the planet.”

“Dragon teeth and scales make diamonds look like bread dough,” Zora added.

Neka nodded. It was clear the big man had more questions. I wish I had answers.

Blackstar hitting the vamps didn’t matter to me in itself. I wouldn’t care if they were having it out over a stick of gum. I couldn’t let either of them get their hands on an ankh. Gomez, Myer, and half the Martinet would show up just in time to be slaughtered. Not only would that plunge the magical world into chaos, but it would also have the relatively unpleasant consequence of killing me.