20)

Cassy- At a abandoned paper mill

I left my SUV parked in plain sight in front of the ruined building, it was a field issue Bureau vehicle I had gotten with my promotion and not at all like the type of fancy vehicle my boss liked to be driven around in, or for me to be seen hanging around next to, since I had often been her driver.

Speaking of which, I don’t think I had ever seen her drive, what was going on with that?

Otto and his guys had gotten there a bit before us and had taken the time to set up a few concealed flood lights before heading off out of sight, leaving only Otto himself to greet us.

“How do you want to play this?”

I shrugged. “Kinkade will use the ring to get him here and I'll tell him I'm bringing him in for questioning, if he ends up being difficult, I'll leave it to you. Just make sure you leave the head intact.”

The big man shook his head and pointed over to Kinkade. “Nope, we’ll leave it to her, me and the boys will just keep him in the area.”

Kinkade smirked and looked down at Natalie's ring. “I think I know how to work this.” The metal of the ring began to shine like it was reflecting a deep green light. “Grimaud, you are are needed.”

For a moment she looked a little surprised. “Huh, got a response, not in words, but I think he’s on his way.”

I shrugged “From what I've heard, he isn’t going to just show up in a car, and it isn’t going to take him all that long to get here.”

Kinkade gave me a nod before waving at Otto to follow her inside the building to hide away out of immediate sight.

It ended up only being a few minutes before I could hear the breathless broken whistling the Thibedeau’s fixer seemed to be so fond of.

I had only met the guy a few time when he delivered something to my boss, usually a written note from her father commanding her to come running back to her family home to report to him, since he hated phones.

Picture a pale, gaunt man who always dresses in old suits. Think full on vest, tie, hat and kerchief neatly tucked into his pocket, and not just a old fashioned looking suit, a for real antique one looking slightly worn out and a little too big, as well as insanely uncomfortable looking for the Louisiana heat and humidity.

But not a drop of sweat on him, just a grim look on his face.

He stopped a good twenty feet off and began to talk in a voice like he was a little out of breath all the time. “Agent Varrow...I believe your mentor is expecting me.”

I shook my head. “Not exactly, she instructed me to bring you in for questioning.”

He stared at me for moment. “I’m afraid I would have to hear that from herself, not you.”

Kinkade stepped out into the moonlight, her hand held up in a fist to show off Natalie's ring. “Director Thibedeau has more important things to do then round up her family's errand boy. So just be nice and do what the Agent tells you too.”

The gaunt man looked more curious then concerned. “I’ve walked this earth for over four hundred years in the service of the Thibedeaus witch. My body and soul have been shaped by magics unseen in this age.” He tilted his head. “I stood toe to toe with your grandmother in her prime little girl, so I don’t see a possibly stolen little ring as enough of a reason for me to obey anything a child has to say.”

Kinkade smiled and turned her fist over, lifting up her middle finger. “i would say that indicates a inclination not to cooperation. Lights!”

The flood lights snapped on as what must have been several dozen men and women in a motley assortment of military and hunting gear came roaring up in several trucks or popped out of cover from in or around the old paper mill. Each one aiming a wide variety of rifles, shotguns, crossbows and even one guy holding up a harpoon.

Along with all of this came a whirling noise as Otto came lurching out of the building with the spinning set of gun barrels of a minigun complete with a laser sight and what looked to be a machete somehow attached to it as a over sized bayonet.

I didn’t recognize the model, but the sheen of the metal suggested something commissioned from the dwarves. Guess I know what happens to all of Otto’s money.

After a moment of looking down at the many, many red dots covering his chest, then back and forth at the surrounding mob, Grimaud nodded in appreciation.

“Touche. All of this would be a reason to surrender, for someone else.”

Kinkade smiled. “Let me give you another.”

Order mages like me take the orderax created by the rituals of civilization to power their spells through symbols, we can do just about anything if we know the right ones and put them in the right order.

Witches like Kinkade take their mana from living systems, forests, swamps, deserts, and it shaped their magic with the way they’ve learned to feel the power that comes from their homes.

It can also shape them.

The Kisatchie national forest has a wide verity of wildlife. Foxes, boars, bears, coyotes, even alligators.

What Kinkade turned into seemed to include a bit of all of those and more, all at once.

Martin- sitting in the office of the Party mart.

I looked down at my severed arm lying on the desk in front of me, along with the medical supplies, paper towels, and tools that I had spread out on the desktop, and then I wiggled it’s fingers.

“Well old chum, I have my arm back, now how do I get it reattached.”

Tosser leaned in and looked up at me. “Master has arm.”

I leaned back in the tall backed office chair. “Not very helpful old boy, but since I do have it, and getting it back on may end up being time sensitive, I guess I should be about it.

I rolled up the remains of the sleeve on the stub of my left arm, grasped the severed limb firmly in my right hand and pressed the two ends together.

Nothing.

I twisted it around a bit, and smooshed the two ends together a few more times, felling a bit of pressure on both ends as I tried to squeeze the arm back together, but that’s about it.

“I guess I need to involve a mirror again since that was the cause, logically it should also be the solution.”

There was no sign of any of the...twits from the other side in the mirror of the store toilet, so I bent my arm at the elbow and thrust my entire arm through the mirror, with both ends lined up and pressed firmly together.

My left arm tingled and began to go numb, but so did my right hand which was on the other side of the mirror as well to hold the everything together. I pulled everything back and examined my still unattached limb.

“Alright. Out of ideas other then trying a spell, which for me always just makes thing worst. So, plan B it is.”

Four loop of duct tape around the line of separation, with another four loops figure eighting around my lower arm then up and around my upper arm above the elbow. Stiff as can be, but it held everything together as I bent and turned my arm as far as it would go, as well as when I tried lifting a few light weight objects.

I would not want to try lifting a child or help move a couch, but with the sleeve of a new shirt buttoned at the wrist I should be able to pass for someone still in one piece, and if I ever got out of here I could always get a new arm grown, I lived with someone who knew that trick.

“I’m...I’m alright. I can deal with this. I’ve been hurt worse, at least emotionally.”

Tosser poked at my arm “Master healed.”

I looked down at him. “Not exactly, but close enough”

The imps began to slip into cover, I walked to the front of the store to watch the world change to a neatly landscaped expanse of short grass and decorative trees. Tosser joined me with sunglasses firmly in place covering his eyes.

“If it had been my choice to take a tour of the changing lands, to see so many fantastic places without having to suffer the discomforts and unpleasantries of long distant travel by plane or car, I think I could have enjoyed this.”

I rubbed at my arm. “But this was not my choice, and I am getting tired of all this.”

I checked the time. “As well as tired in general.”

“I’ll wait until morning Auntie, then I calling in my people to end this.”

Donovan – Standing in what remains of the party mart.

The store was repairing itself, just not fast enough for Damia.

“He is going to give me so much shit if he finds me squatting in this wreak!”

She seemed a mite upset, and since she isn’t my girlfriend or family, I decided to just get the hell out of there, the last thing I wanted to do was deal with a demon with daddy issues.

Downstairs was in a little better shape, part of the ceiling was gone as well as the top of the front wall, the big hole heading out in front of the store went farther then I could see and it was so deep I couldn't see the bottom, but it looked to be someone else’s problem.

Shit, I shot a guy who could do that, then cut off his arm. The first he forgave me for since my uncle had done something to me, but cutting off his arm. I’m thinking I should do my best to make sure the guy never saw me again.

Shouldn’t be that hard, I mean I'm stuck in hell, it’s not like anyone would want to come down here just to come looking for me.

“Found you.”

The guy with the spotted skin and the torn up clothes walked out in front of the store, with a happy smile on his face.

I started to turn and run, but this guy had made a big deal about having to be asked in, so maybe I'm good. “I ain’t asking you in Spot, might just want to move along.” I waved him away.

Spot looked up and down at the hole that was the front of the store. “I have to ask to cross a threshold into someone’s home, or else I would have no strength inside, but there is no threshold, just a hole.

He stepped into the store.

The remains of the couch came down hard, just missing him as it landed on one end right next to him and then toppled over and out of the remains of the front of the store, Clarice leaned out over the edge of the hole in the ceiling. “Take it outside Stippler, Donny is off the menu.”

Spot, Strippler or whatever his name was hissed at her, gave me a longing look, and shuffled off. Good riddance.

Clarice watched him go and looked off in the distance. “Ah Damia, daddy’s home.’

Way off in the distance a man sat on a horse at the edge of the big ass hole in the ground, he was dressed up like a cowboy and scratching at his head with his hat in his other hand.

After a moment he put his hat back on and held his hand up in front of him like he was motioning someone to come to stop.

Damia appear at the edge of the hole in the roof. “Oh crap, find something to hold onto to.”

I yelled up “Why, what’s happening?” but she and Clarice had already backed up out of the view, to be replaced by Linda who stood near the edge clapping her hands together in excitement. “Ohhhh, he’s going to do the hand thing.”

Hand thing? I looked out to see the cowboy lifting his hand slowly in the air as a something began to rise up on the horizon, a hand made of stone rising up higher then a building, one of the big ones, tearing it’s way out of the ground until it stood up higher then the clouds.

Then it fell. Right at the store.

The hand of stone began to break up as it fell to fill in the hole in front of it, even as a shimmer of various colored lights began slowly building up up from the bottom of the hole, things had began to appear in those lights, nothing I can describe, more like things about to become something but weren't really there yet.

The mass of stone and earth slammed down leaving behind a seamless natural looking landscape where the hole had once been, and shaking the ground hard enough to launch me and everything in the store if not the store itself a few feet in the air.

By the time I got up and dug my self out from a pile of cheap, knock off, off brand snacks, the cowboy had somehow rode up impossible fast and was tying off something in the shape of a horse but with scales to the bicycle rack.

He gave me a nod. “Howdy son, I’m looking for my little girl. Feller name of Roxir told me she took a shine to this place and the former owner was a mite upset.

Linda waved down from above, having somehow managed to avoid getting knocked off the edge of the hole. “Hi, Mr. Luthor, we cut someone’s arm off and I threw it out the window.”

Cowboy nodded. “Sounds about right.”

Then he turned to me. “Don’t know your story son, but if you don’t want to be stuck here forever, you might want to get the hell out of Hell, cause you ain’t go much time left before it changes you all permanent like.” He shook his head. “This place is just too small and damaged to shield you.”