Chapter 174
The thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve. Bright and early, four in the morning. Even Nadia was going to have to help them today by taking care of Laila so both her parents could work.
As soon as they were awake, they split up. Anton, Saracen and Erskine were one unit and took on the brunt of the 'bad' work, mostly to do with larger groups and genuinely world-ending problems. They were a good unit as Saracen could give them an idea of what to do, Anton usually scared enough of them to make them hesitate, and Erskine was more than competent at fighting as well as using his control of air to break them into anywhere they needed.
The issue of Anton's gist still hadn't been sorted or even properly spoken about. None of the family spoke about it without Anton as it felt wrong, and Anton shut down any conversation that even vaguely suggested they might start asking him about the gist. It would have to be dealt with but it was hard when Anton wasn't interested in talking. At the very least, no one but them knew about the situation, and since he rarely used the gist anyway, no one would notice and use it against him. He still scared everyone that looked at him, making him more than enough of a force.
Solomon and Ghastly had similar jobs of simply finding and arresting all the many maniacs, druggies and drunk mages that got a little too excited to be safe around mortals. Fletcher was all over the city picking people up at designated drop off sites and back to the American Sanctuary, probably the most important job of them all as it made them a thousand times more efficient and safe.
That left Valkyrie, Tanith and Dexter as a second unit to take on other very dangerous criminals. Valkyrie had just placed her sixth criminal in shackles when the mid-morning light started to really shine. Dexter took their next call.
"Foe's gang was spotted," he told Valkyrie and Tanith when he finished, coming over to them. They were chugging down water some Sanctuary workers had passed them. "They were the ones that took the remnant and kidnapped Valkyrie a few years back."
Valkyrie remembered being at Scarabs old castle but not much about the criminals. She'd been focused on Scarab and Murder Rose, both of whom were now dead, as well as the zombies that attacked them, and didn't think she interacted with the gang after that fight, at least not while being conscious. "I never followed up on what their powers are," she admitted.
"Samuel is a vampire, and a strong one too," Dexter told her as they got in their car. Driving was alright in the early morning but they'd have to abandon the car when they got further into the city now it was daytime. "Obloquy is the creepy Sensitive dude that made you feel like you were in pain. And Mercy is an energy thrower of some kind, I actually forgot how exactly. Foe is just an energy-thrower, similar to myself."
"Great," Tanith rolled her eyes, getting her phone out and calling Nadia. She'd done that already a few hours earlier. Going back to work for long hours after the whole Myra thing was not a fun time for Tanith, but Valkyrie was proud of how on her game she'd been. A few more weeks of training and Tanith would be in as good a fighting shape as she'd been before she'd gotten pregnant. Except for the lactating. She'd had to pump breast milk every few hours, and had no plans to stop yet. It was okay to see her do it at home as it felt very comfortable and normal in their home, but watching her wrangle her seat belt and two pumps at once in the back seat while trying to call Nadia was still somewhat disconcerting. Or maybe weird. Or maybe Valkyrie was just the bad one for thinking it was weird and it was normal, she didn't really know.
"How far is it?" She asked Dexter instead.
"The Clark County Public Library," he said. "It's on Flamingo Road."
"That's fun."
"I thought so too. It's a good hour away from here."
.*****.
They got a follow-up call in the car – this boy she spotted through the library shelves, Ryan, was of great interest to Foe's gang and it seemed as if they'd followed him not just across America, but actually from Ireland. So their job was to get Ryan out safely.
She struck up a whistle and rounded the corner. He was cornered against the shelf by Foe, Mercy and Obloquy on all sides, and Samuel not far behind. Her eyes wandered from one to the other and stopped when she looked at the boy.
"Hi," she said, putting on a smile. "My name's Valkyrie. Are these people bothering you?" Ryan didn't do anything other than look scared. She turned to Foe. "I'm part of library security. We've had some reports of overdue books in this area, and I'm going to need to ask you all some questions. We can do this were or downtown – where we'd actually have more space and access to a coffee machine."
Foe, Mercy and Obloquy looked around nervously. They didn't try to threaten her but Valkyrie knew they were more than capable of killing Ryan at that very moment and there wasn't much she could do about it.
"You really want this to happen?" Foe asked, his voice low. "Here? In a public place? Where all these innocent people might get caught in the crossfire?"
Valkyrie shrugged, taking her hands out of her pockets and wandering just a little further down the aisle. She was getting close to them now. "I'm just looking for a way to spoil your day, Vincent. The choice is yours. Stick around and get beaten up and thrown in a cell, or leave, now. Immediately."
"Sure," said Foe, standing back from the shelf and taking Ryan with him. "We'll just be taking Ryan with us."
"Ah. Well, see, now we have a problem."
"That's too bad."
"That's just what I was thinking."
Valkyrie moved, just two steps, and thrust her hand out. White magic shot out and slammed into Foe, causing him to fly back into Mercy. Valkyrie grabbed Ryan, who was stunned and hadn't seemed to follow what happened and ran with him. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she ducked as red energy flew over her head. Ryan shrieked and almost fell to the floor like a dramatic lump so she snapped at him to "Keep moving!"
She had to get to the exit and then get far away. She heard when Tanith punched someone and then Dexter's energy, and then she yanked Ryan's arm so he didn't get fried by Mercy. She stopped when Mercy, a perfect picture of rage and beauty, opened her mouth and vomited out red energy in her face. Before she knew what she was doing, Valkyrie shoved Ryan aside, ducked and rolled, then tackled Mercy. There was a grunt and the energy stopped, but Mercy took the moment of stillness from Valkyrie as a chance to grab her hair and pull viciously. Valkyrie slammed her forehead into Mercy's nose and flipped them over, gaining the upper hand. It didn't take a moment for her to grab an arm and swing herself back to pop Mercy's elbow out of its socket.
While Mercy howled, Valkyrie jumped up and grabbed Ryan's sweaty wrist, pulling him along. She felt lost and didn't know the way out. She hesitated, standing in the middle of the large building with its rows of books, and Ryan chose to find his spine and rushed in front of her, deftly repositioning her grip to be around his hand.
"This way," he said and pulled her.
They hadn't been going for more than twenty seconds when he led them to a bland old painting on a dead-end wall.
"Idiot," she snapped as she heard the sound of punching somewhere else.
"Sorry," he said pathetically as she retook control.
"I thought you knew where you were going!"
"I thought there was a door here."
She went around a corner and came face to face with Obloquy. The sensitive that caused her, and Anton previously, to be in extreme pain. He took a step forwards and she took one back, already feeling a ringing in her ears and a pressure in her skull. She launched into an attack, throwing energy at him even though she knew it was too powerful to use on another human, but he was already moving. She tried again, more measuredly, as Ryan jumped onto her back and tried to force her to go back around the corner, but she threw him off in time to throw another stream of energy that got him skirting to the side and down a different aisle. She turned to Ryan quickly.
"If you see an exit, you run to it. Understand?"
He nodded.
Obloquy dropped down beside her and before she had a chance to do a thing, he grabbed her by the arm and tossed her.
She flew through the air and just got a hold of herself to land safely, rolling to her feet with a pained hiss. She took off running, seeing the tails of Obloquy's coat on top of a bookcase stalking Ryan from above. She had to cut him off. She ran quickly, using the last of her energy and adrenaline to get to them on time, throwing white shadows at him and actually hitting him this time – he fell to his knees and shook like he was electrocuted.
Ryan stopped in front of her and Valkyrie took his shoulder and pushed him out of the exit he had successfully led them to, and out into the street. The car they had illegally parked on the side of the road was still there and Valkyrie opened the back seat and ushered Ryan in, looking over her shoulder. She jumped into the front passengers.
"Seatbelt," she ordered.
"Does it drive itself?" Ryan asked, staring at the steering wheel with an awed expression.
"Don't be thick," she told him, rolling her eyes. Why did Foe's gang what this pudgy little kid? She understood that with Fletcher, who was also a stupid kid, he had been an annoying but very useful young teleporter, but this kid seemed to be a mortal as far as anyone knew. A mortal with enough money and fear to push him to get a plane to America when he started being hunted by magical mercenaries, but nothing very special by any accounts.
Tanith and Dexter came sprinting out of the exit together, jumping into the car and taking off quickly. Ryan shrieked at the speed they started off with, but Valkyrie was happy to leave that place behind her. She texted the Sanctuary clean up unit that was trailing behind them, cleaning their dirty work, about the mess.
.*****.
Their ride through the traffic to wherever Dexter was taking them was interesting for sure. Ryan seemed very confused, looking between Tanith and Dexter with awe, obvious attraction and a little upset. He didn't seem to be comfortable looking at Dexter because Dexter was hot enough to make him blush and that didn't seem to be the reaction Ryan wanted from himself. And Tanith was a beautiful blonde woman with all the breasts and curves a young man could want, but she was also pumping said boobs and that was also making Ryan uncomfortable. He spent a long time staring at Valkyrie instead but that was annoying so she told him not to as she explained that magic was a thing and that they were a team designed to keep mortals like him safe from bad guys.
"You're just going to have to accept some things," she ended up telling him, taking a deep breath. "As it is, we're your best shot at surviving what's going on right now, alright?"
"Okay?" He said, unsure. His eyes kept flicking over to Dexter who had finally noticed Ryan's uncomfortable interest and had started to smirk. Ryan put his eyes on his lap and seemed to make an effort not to look up. "But all that went on in the library. It's going to be all over the news."
"Actually," Valkyrie said, "it's not. We have people for that sort of things, magic people called Sensitives. Sometime in the next few minutes, some nice Sensitives are going to turn up at that library and convince everyone in there that what they saw didn't actually happen. And they'll believe it. See, some Sensitives can see the future, and some can read minds. And others can convince you to believe anything they say to you. Another Sensitive was a man called Deacon Maybury. Which is where you come in."
"I've never heard of him," Ryan replied, glancing at Tanith as she pulled her shirt back up. He missed the view, and lucky for him too because Tanith would have hit him for trying to sneak a look at her breast.
"Of course not," she said, trying to be sympathetic. She could still feel the lingering effects of Obloquy's magic and stared rummaging around her pockets for a numbing leaf. "I hadn't either until about an hour ago when we got a call about those people trying to hurt you. Those people being Foe's gang. They told us about you and that it's believed Foe's gang killed Deacon's brother, Davit. They were sextuplets, apparently. Six identical Maybury's. Only four now though."
"This Deacon Maybury, he's dead too?"
Dexter pulled up the hand brake as they settled into the city traffic. "Deacon was a Sensitive who worked for the Sanctuary, our government. That's who we work for, except in Ireland, usually. Sometimes we arrest criminals that are so evil or messed up in the head there just isn't any redemption. Deacon had the power to do a procedure where, if the criminal's mind was weak enough, he'd enter their thoughts and make a new personality. The old one would be subdued and the new personality would give the individual a new life and chance at a future. Usually, he gave them no knowledge of magic so they'd be less dangerous. Generally he did it for the very mentally sick or badly abused people, or genuine psychopaths. It's controversial at best and I don't think anyone really knows how to feel about it."
"But he got bored," Valkyrie interjected before Dexter could start making a debate of the subject. "Deacon's friends say he wanted more money and power, so he fell in with the wrong crowd, Foe and his gang. They're bad people and involved in a lot of crap I'll spare you knowing about. We usually deal with people who want to end the world, that's what I've been specially trained to deal with since I was twelve. Some criminals want to take it over, some want to change it. Foe and his gang are in a special little category for people that want to utterly obliterate it. They're suicidal idiots."
"Nihilists," Tanith provided.
"Idiots," she repeated. "The Sanctuary think they want to set off something called the Doomsday Machine, Ryan. It's as stupid as it sounds. Some genius went ahead and built a genuine world-destroying bomb so that if the Faceless Ones ever came back to our planet we could destroy ourselves and the Faceless so no other planet has to deal with them."
"Faceless Ones?"
"Don't complicate it Val," Tanith said, rearranging all the little plastic baggies of milk she had in the freezer bag at her feet.
"Sorry. Don't worry about that Ryan, just know that this Machine is shit and not good news for any of us. Foe's gang have actually found this Machine and they hid it. Which must have been hard because it's apparently as big as a house."
"Why didn't they just set it off?" He frowned.
"They didn't have the key. They've been looking on and off between other projects of mayhem for the last few years, and after Deacon joined them, he seemed to have found it. He hid the key, shaped like a clasp, to sell to the highest bidder like a fucking idiot."
"Cub, calm down," Dexter said soothingly, putting a hand on her thigh. She took a breath and put the leaf in her mouth. "The thing is, Ryan, after Deacon hid the key, Foe and the others caught up to him and he fell in a woodchipper."
Ryan winced.
"Yeah, pretty bad. They now have to find that hidden key and supposedly no one knows where it is. Except, since Deacon died they've been chasing you around, which leads us to believe you know something."
"I did find a clasp," he said, frowning worriedly and looking between them all. Valkyrie's eyes bugged and she turned in her seat to take the stupid thing. He continued hurriedly. "But it turned to dust in my hand when I touched it. It's gone!"
"Show me your hand," she commanded. He did and she saw the pretty picture the clasp had left behind, burnt onto his skin. "I'm afraid that clasp must have absorbed itself into your skin. It imprinted on you. You are the key now. That means Foe and co will be all the more desperate to find you because they need you to activate the Doomsday Machine, not a key. I'm sorry Ryan, but you're going to have to stick with us until we have them in shackles, alright?"
"Okay," he said quietly. He blushed darkly when Tanith grabbed his wrist to look over the pattern.
Oof that's the second time I edited that, I didn't save the first time! Also, 'Foe and co' is a way better name than Foe's gang. You can't change my mind.
This is based on the World Book Day mini story by the way, in case you recognise it. I can't remember if it was also added to Armaggedon-Outta-Here as well, but I used the Wold Book Day copy because it's much more fun when the book is the size of your hand.
Always remember to review, even a guest can do it :)
