half-lich 02 - void weaver (25 page)

“Not as much as I am.”

Alice killed the call, stuffed the phone into her pocket, and ran her hands through her hair. A thin film of sweat had developed on her brow and behind her neck, but the air out here was cool and fresh on her skin.

“Well?” Isaac asked.

“We need to go,” Alice said, before turning and walking toward the Mustang.

“What’s this about a graveyard?” Jim asked, following Alice, and now Isaac too.

“They have Cameron, and they’ve threatened to kill him.”

“Kill?” Isaac asked, “That’s insane. He’s out of his mind!”

“We knew this before, Isaac. He attacked you while you were in prison, and then he came here and kidnapped Cameron. The man is a loose cannon, and he runs your
police
department? There’s a reason why we kicked him out of ours, you know.”

“He’s baiting us,” Isaac said, “And we’re going for it.”

“I know we are.”

“Then we need to prepare.”

“We can’t prepare, Isaac. You need to learn that there isn’t always going to be time to compute the variables.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either, but we don’t have a choice. Cameron risked his neck to save my life and now I’m going to do the same for him. I don’t care if I’m being baited, I’m not about to sit here and try to figure out another course of action. Remember what I said about being fast or being careful? I tried to do both this time. so you’re just going to have to trust me.”

Isaac fell silent. Jim too.

They walked up to the car in silence, stepped in without saying a word, and for a moment seemed to be having some kind of telepathic conversation Alice hadn’t been invited to. They had their heads down, their brows were furrowed, and both men had their hands clasped in front of their mouths.

“Jesus, you’re like twins,” Alice said.

They both looked at her, puzzled.

“Why are you silent?” she asked.

“I’m trying to figure out how all of this happened,” Isaac said. “But the only thing I can come up with is the idea that Logan has somehow become obsessed with finding out the truth about you, a truth I tried to hide from the magistrate as soon as they brought me in for questioning.”

“I don’t think any of us know whether that’s true or it isn’t,” Jim said, “But the fact is that this man is clearly willing to do anything to try and get to Miss Werner here, and as long as that’s the case, Cameron won’t be harmed.”

“Is this normal?” Alice asked, “Do mages often go around kidnapping and killing other mages?”

Jim and Isaac exchanged a knowing glance. “Yes and no,” Jim said, “Mages are megalomaniacs at heart; we’re obsessed with knowledge and the pursuit for power, and when someone has more of it than someone else, friction ensues. A thousand, probably even a hundred years ago, the kind of overtures we have seen today would have been commonplace—just part of the everyday game of being a mage. But we have rules now, and these rules are rarely broken to this extent. And much less by a legionnaire, whose job it is to enforce our rules.”

“Let me guess—the legionnaires were formed to keep infighting to a minimum?”

“No, infighting and heresy are handled by our inquisitorial branch. The legionnaires were formed to fight our wars and protect our borders from invasion. But ever since the inquisition crumbled, the legionnaires have been doing both jobs.”

“Invasion?” Alice asked. This was the word that had interested her the most. “Invasion by who?”

“Not by who,” Isaac said, “But by what. When your kind holds the keys to the world of magic, you make a lot of enemies. Entire species of them.”

“And when somebody else holds new keys you decide you want, you send the legionnaires after them. Yeah, you guys are really enlightened.”

Alice turned the key in the ignition and the Mustang rumbled to life. She peeled back, and then pulled the car out of the dusty parking lot, drove it across the dirt road, and back onto the highway. She was glad to slip onto smooth asphalt. The dirt under the car was probably getting everywhere and in everything. It had already turned her shiny, chrome car a dull brown.

“How far is the graveyard?” Isaac asked.

“Just a couple of miles down,” Alice said.

“We won’t have the element of surprise. They heard us all talking, so they know Jim is here. This won’t be easy.”

“I know.” Alice gripped the steering wheel more tightly and slowed down to a steady cruising speed, allowing her nerves a moment to settle. “I’m not expecting it’ll be easy, but we
do
have the element of surprise.”

“How?” Jim asked. “There’s three of us travelling down a relatively quiet highway in a car that isn’t inconspicuous. We’re also going to be the only ones turning into the graveyard, so if they have spotters they’ll see us coming quite literally from a mile away.”

“It’s the whole reason why I picked a graveyard. They may know what you’re capable of, but they have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“This would be a bad time to ask exactly what you mean, wouldn’t it?” Jim asked.

“It would. You’re just going to have to trust me too. If you don’t know what to expect, then neither does Logan, and that gives us an edge. But if he’s the Logan Hodges I remember, that still may not be enough.”

“What do you know of him?”

“You know the legionnaire, but I knew the man underneath all of that. I didn’t know who he was at first, but it clicked when we were talking over the phone. He worked for the Ashwood PD, but before that he served a tour in Afghanistan.”

“He was military?” Jim asked, “That explains a few things.”

“Logan was an alcoholic, too. Still might be, I don’t know. His drinking is what got him kicked off the force. He was drunk the night he tried to put a plant on someone. If he hadn’t been drunk he would have gotten away with it, because the police look after their own kind in this city. When it’s a cop’s word against a perp, the cop’s word is always the one that wins. But the beating he gave the guy was severe, as was the inquiry that followed. One officer suspected he had been drinking so they gave him the breathalyzer and he failed.”

Isaac’s eyes narrowed and he scanned the landscape of Alice’s face. “There’s more,” he said, “Isn’t there?”

She nodded.

“What is it?”

“I was the officer who thought he had been drinking. I didn’t know him personally, but I knew
of
him. On the night he entered the station, after the beating, I thought I smelled booze on his breath so I told my superior.”

“So when Logan discovered who you were…”

“Yeah. It’s personal
.
”

“How long ago was it since that happened?”

“This was a little over two years ago, a few months before I left.”

“He’s been Legio Prime for over
three
years,” Jim said.

“Christ, and nobody knew about this?” Alice said.

“That he’s an alcoholic who got kicked off the police force because he put a plant on someone? No. We have a vetting process when selecting our officials, but he was hand-picked due to his skills as a tactician so he bypassed the usual interview.”

“That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that he’ll get there before we do,” Isaac said. “I’m almost sure of it.”

“And he’ll set wards up,” Jim added. “Our magic will be useless.”

“Theirs too, though, right?” Alice asked.

“Not necessarily. It depends on how much time they have to set the wards up. If they have enough time, they’ll be able to make themselves exempt from the wards’ power and they’ll be able to use magic.”

Alice put her foot on the gas and watched the tachometer quickly start to climb. The Mustang purred smoothly along the asphalt like a train on a track. If Logan’s priority was to beat Alice to the graveyard, then she would make sure he had to focus on beating her and not on preparing his defenses.

“It won’t be enough,” Jim said, “Wards or not, we’re outmatched here. You’re forgetting that he won’t be alone.”

“I’m not forgetting anything,” Alice said, “I’m just trying to even our odds.”

“We’re going to have to try harder than that. Isaac, you have to agree with me on this.”

“What is it exactly you’re proposing?”

Jim gave Alice a glance in the mirror, and then looked at Isaac. “We need to bring in the magistrate.”

“Absolutely not,” Isaac said.

“Isaac, we’re running blindly into a trap we know is waiting for us, and I know jumping headfirst into a risky situation without a plan isn’t your style.”

“It isn’t, but I will not risk involving the magistrate in this. We deal with Logan alone.”

“No,” Alice said.

For a moment she couldn’t believe she had said it, but the words had left her lips. She could tell by the way Isaac and Jim had shut up. In the few seconds of silence that followed, Alice had a chance to think about what it was she had just objected to. What she had said hadn’t been a delayed reaction to Jim’s suggestion of involving the magistrate. It had been an objection to Isaac’s decision to
not
involve them.

Jim was right. They needed backup.
Cameron
needed backup, and the three of them would not be enough.

“Alice?” Isaac asked.

“We need to get your people here, Isaac,” she said, “Your dog has gone mad, and he needs to get picked up by his masters. Logan may see us coming and he may get a chance to state the terms of the engagement, but he would never expect us to bring down the magistrate on him. Not from what you’ve told me about him and what he said over the phone. This is personal to him, remember?”

“You realize what you’re saying,” Isaac said, “What you’re agreeing to by suggesting we involve the very same people who imprisoned me.”

“I do. They’re gonna come down here with the swift hammer of justice and they’re gonna chew you out for escaping, but Logan won’t get away with what he’s about to do and Cameron has a better shot at coming out of this in one piece.”

“Alice,” he said, “I can’t do this. They will take you away from me if they can.”

“Then we won’t let them.”

“Isaac,” Jim said. He put a hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I won’t let them take Alice either. I’ll do the best that I can to keep them away from her.”

Isaac swallowed whatever apprehension he had and nodded. “I should make the call,” he said. “They’ll come if I tell them to. I’m a fugitive after all.”

Alice took Isaac’s hand and squeezed it gently, but she kept her eyes on the road. “It’ll be okay,” she said, “It’s about time I took one for the team anyway.”

Jim handed Isaac his phone, and Isaac took it. “The moment I hang up, they’ll prepare teleportation spells,” he said. “I’ll throw their magic off for as long as I can, but we’ll have ten minutes at the most to do what we have to do.”

“We’ll have to take the wards down in order to let the magistrate in,” Jim said.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Alice gripped the steering wheel with both hands, gunned the engine a little harder, and said, “Call in the cavalry.”

CHAPTER 26

Awaken

Alice pulled the Mustang off the highway and onto a side road which led to the Crescent Hills Cemetery. The wrought iron gate lay open, and Alice drove beyond it and into the graveyard itself. A paved driveway wound between graves, allowing for quick transportation across the many acres of land the graveyard occupied. The moon was high, and its pale, translucent light touched the tips of headstones which stood proudly, maintaining their duties to display the messages they bore despite the passage of time.

As Alice cruised along the path, taking in the smell of wet earth and cut grass, she became aware of an almost constant
buzzing
sensation in her chest; a feeling which intensified as they reached the center of the labyrinthine web of tombstones and trees. But the buzzing soon transformed into goose bumps that radiated into her arms and back. The feeling was faint, and it came in pulses, but she had to admit it was causing the scars to tingle almost painfully.

“I don’t like this,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

“Let’s just keep our eyes open,” Jim said.

“I don’t think we will need to look very hard for them,” Isaac said, “We will find them easily enough.”

A crow cawed from a nearby tree, and when Alice looked up she saw a whole murder of them sitting on its many branches, looking down at her, following the movement of her car as it rolled along, their eyes gleaming with cold intelligence. One of them shrugged, dropped from the tree, and took flight, cawing as it went and melting into the night. A moment later she saw it land on the head of a decapitated angel sitting atop a mausoleum, but it wasn’t the mausoleum the crow had wanted her to see—it was the figures standing just beyond it, at the crest of a hill. She counted seven people, all wearing dark clothes and dusters.

“Over there,” she said as she pointed.

Isaac nodded. “I see them,” he said.

Jim leaned closer to the window, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and narrowed his eyes. “Yep,” he said, “The mausoleum. Look at it, Isaac. Can you see the runes? They’ve set wards up using the structure as a center point.

“So they’re broadcasting an area of anti-magic as opposed to using a confined space?”

“Looks like it. The runes are crude, too; they were set up in a rush.”

“Good. That makes the wards easier to take down.”

“There’s still the issue that, as soon as we get close enough, our magic will be useless.”

“Not mine,” Alice said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Jim said, “But I don’t think you know how to dismantle another mage’s spell, do you?”

“She doesn’t,” Isaac said, “But I do, and my magic will work.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Isaac closed his eyes, took a deep, calming breath, and sent a call into the Tempest. From its home on that storm-ravaged island, the Good Doctor tipped its head up to the furious sky, nodded, and then dispersed into a cloud of shadow that spread through the sky like ink in water. When Isaac opened his eyes, the backseat was filled not only with Jim, but also the Good Doctor. It nodded, and Isaac nodded in return.