This business of saving the world

by Baeraad

A mage cabal finds itself attacked by a force bent on the very extermination of all their kind...

DISCLAIMER: Mage: the Ascension and all the organisations and metaphysical laws therein are the property of White Wolf Publishing. Dito Hunter: the Reckoning, and whatever else I might be pilfering here…

Kevin Harsh and his friends and enemies are, however, entirely my own creations, as far as I am aware.

This business of saving the world is dedicated to Tessa Smolenaars, whom the Children of Sunset would have been thrilled to have among their ranks.

Kevin Harsh bani Shaea leaned back in his comfortable armchair and passed the tulip-shaped wineglass under his nose to enjoy the scent of the fine red wine. It was excellent. He had of course known it would be. Kevin knew all the vintages and regions and general rules of wine, and he would never dream of serving anything but the best for the weekly get-together of the Children of Sunset. But it was still nice to reaffirm that his judgement remained impeccable.

He was tall, gracefully slim, and handsome enough to put to shame a great many men who earned their living by being handsome. His hair was long and fair and spilled out over the shoulders of his dark, elegant suit.

"It will do," he said, smiling.

Veronica and Liron, the two of Kevin's guests who had arrived on time, exchanged a dry expression. As long-time friends of Kevin, they knew his behaviour had learned to live with it. Liron picked up the wine-bottle and filled first her own glass, then Veronica's. Kevin waited until the women were ready, and then raised his glass.

"To tardy clergymen," he said. Liron chuckled, and the women both drank to it. Kevin threw a glance at the one chair around the table that wasn't filled, the one where Desmond was supposed to sit. He couldn't quite suppress a hint of anxiety. Dougal was a dangerous place to live in and of itself, and the Awakened did not enjoy safe or peaceful lives at the best of times. He didn't let any worry show in his face, though, and did his very best to banish it from his mind. Desmond could take care of himself, and there were a hundred reasons for why he might be late.

Liron raised her glass again.

"And to clergywomen who were right on time," she said. Kevin smiled and drank. Veronica just drank. She was not really the smiling sort.

Liron Rainer was curled up in her armchair like a cat, supremely at ease and eradiating vigil at the same time. She was full-figured, and wore a pale-yellow dress that showed a great deal of tanned skin. To an objective eye, she was plain, but the gleam in those dark eyes tended to make people very un-objective very quickly. She wore a lot of rather strange gold jewellery, and with the dark eye-shadow on her face, it made her look either fascinating or frightening, depending on the mindset of the watcher.

She had been born somewhere in the Middle East. Kevin didn't quite know where; Liron was a bit unclear on that subject. She had spent a lot of her Awakened life as part of some obscure sect that worshipped the goddess Isis and stood ready to welcome and prepare her anointed champions when they presented themselves and began their work to bring salvation to the world. Eventually, she had gotten tired of being nothing more than a footnote in the story of other people – that was how she put it. Kevin wasn't sure if she meant Isis, her fellow priestesses, or those mysterious champions, but the end of it was that she had moved halfway across the world to get rid of her former affiliations, and decided that the world would just have to bring about its own salvation. She still considered herself a priestess of Isis, but now she worshipped the goddess on her own terms.

"I wonder if we should perhaps begin?" Kevin said, spinning the glass in his hand. "It is only that it's not as much fun without Desmond here with us. I do wish the old boy would hurry up."

"Oh, I'd say we can give him another ten or fifteen minutes," Veronica Long said in her low, velvety voice. "If he isn't here then, I suppose we have to move on."

If Liron was all soft curves, then Veronica was all hard angles and straight lines. She was of Asian descent, with hair that was set up in an intricate arrangement and eyes that seemed to see far more than they gave out. She was pale, and made herself paler with makeup. Her gown was black and hung in loose folds around her, the sleeves baggy and full of hidden pockets. She grew her nails long and painted them black.

Veronica did not speak of her past. She had appeared in the chantry one day, claiming to have been referred there by an Akashic master who, it turned out, had recently died. The cabal of the Children of Sunset had already been formed, and the three members had seen in Veronica a kindred spirit; the melancholy tranquillity of someone who had made peace with the fact that the world was filled with ignorance and despair, and that there was little enough to do about that. They had brought her into their fold, and she had proven a valuable ally and, in her own strange way, an amiable friend.

And if they had later found out – because mages always found out, in the end – that a woman of Veronica's general appearance had been involved in a violent magickal feud down in South America, then surely that was nothing a person of manners and refinement would bring up if the lady herself did not?

"Hey, while we're waiting," Liron said, "did anyone have a chance to look through those Hebrew poems I gave you last week?"

"I did." Veronica sounded reserved in the way of someone who knows that her honest opinion will not be the one her friend wants to hear. "They were all right… I guess. Not quite my thing."

"I personally found them very enjoyable," Kevin said. "I found myself wishing that I had studied Hebrew, so I could see them untranslated."

"See?" Liron grinned teasingly at Veronica. "Someone in this room knows quality when he sees it."

"I didn't say they didn't have quality," Veronica said with great dignity. "But I like my poetry a bit more structured."

"But feelings aren't structured," Liron said.

"No, but that's the charm of it," Veronica said. "Poetry is supposed to be feelings made structured. The ephemeral put into form."

"She has a point," Kevin remarked.

Veronica shot him an unamused glance, eyes half-closed.

"Et tu, Kevin?" she said.

Kevin chuckled at her expression.

"I'm simply pointing out that Veronica is right in principle," he said, "though perhaps I do not consider a poem to need quite as much structure to be worthwhile as she does. But passion without restraint is a road that leads nowhere. As is, of course, restraint without passion. You see, the qualities I enjoy in a good poem, and that I try to put into my own humble attempts, is the combination of sophisticated feeling and supporting flow that has made…"

 "Wait, hold, back up," Liron said. She had a big, annoying grin on her face. "Are you trying to write again?"

"Well, I didn't say that as such," Kevin said, perhaps a bit too quickly. Veronica certainly picked up on it easily enough.

"You are, aren't you?" she said. She didn't exactly look amused, but to someone who had known her for years, there was a certain gleam in her eyes. "If we went through your desk drawers, we'd find a somewhat rumpled piece of paper with bad rhymes on it."

"Rude," Liron said. But she didn't sound all too disapproving.

"True," Veronica said with a quick bow. "Sorry, Kevin. But we would, wouldn't we?"

"Well, it's really no affair that shakes heaven and earth," Kevin protested feebly. "I fancy myself an artist, of sorts, though I never do seem to be able to achieve anything outside of the musical area…"

"Yes, but the only time you try to write poetry," Liron said, "is when you're feeling lonely and needy and simply have to put all your angsty feelings on paper."

"Say, hasn't it been a pretty long time since we've seen him in the company of some dashing you man?" Veronica insinuated to Liron.

"A few years, if I'm not mistaken," Liron said, equally innocently.

Kevin sighed. The last thing he needed was these two acting as matchmakers. He had no desire to get romantically involved, and most certainly not with anyone who his friends had fixed him up with. Aside from all else, there was such a thing as proper decorum.

"That is as might be," he said with all the dignity he could muster. "But that is, I believe, no one's concern but mine."

"Nope," Liron said. "We're your friends. We care about you. That gives us the right to be nosy and intrusive."

"Indeed?" Kevin said dryly.

"Hey, don't blame me. I didn't make up these rules."

Kevin gave Liron a flat stare. The priestess of Isis smiled back at him innocently.

"She has a point," Veronica said. "You haven't even made an effort to get involved with someone since Kyle, and that was more than three years ago now. Don't you think it's time?"

"I… don't wish to talk about Kyle," Kevin said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. That wound was still fresh. Sometimes he thought that it was going to stay that way for the rest of his life.

"Okay, no problem." Liron raised her hands in an I'm-backing-off gesture. "But all the same, you don't have to live in celibacy for the rest of your life. Good men are hard to find, so it's really not very nice of you to lessen the count by one."

"The whole 'good men are hard to find' thing would of course be more convincing," Veronica mumbled, "had it not been stated by someone who's managed to find three. Simultaneously. And two good women. Also simultaneously."

"Oh, they're not that good," Liron said shamelessly. "Just… adequate. For lack of better."

"It never seizes to amaze me that you manage to fit all your lovers into a normal week," Kevin said, more than happy to let the conversation drift over to someone else's sex life. Liron's sex life was more interesting than his, anyway. She worshipped a goddess of love, and for her, every aspect of life was a prayer.

"It takes skill," Liron said matter-of-factly. "Especially since two of them think that I'm monogamous."

Veronica glanced at Liron.

"Sometimes," she said, "I don't know whether to strangle you for being a menace to tender feelings everywhere, or to ask your autograph for being so good at it."

"A common feeling," Liron said, grinning insolently. "But we were talking about Kevin here, and his need for a mate. Or at least for some serious mating."

Kevin groaned inwards. Just when he had thought that he was home free…

"I would like to question why you are coming down on me," he said miserably, "while letting Desmond off the hook completely. He has lived in celibacy for the better part of twenty years."

"Yes, but that's because he believes that it improves his connection to the All," Veronica said. "Or the One and Prime, as he'd call it. You just need a push in the back to get out there and see what the world has to offer. Not all wisdom is found in your books, you know."

Kevin squirmed ever so slightly. He didn't really want to get out there. Out there had turned into rather too upsetting a place for him. He knew what the world had to offer, and what it had to offer was bumps, bruises, scrapes and people who shot at you. If he could have Ascended on the spot, he would have. As he couldn't, at least he could minimize his contact with an unfriendly humanity.

He was saved by a furious knock on the door. It didn't stop as he got out of his chair and walked to the entrance. It seemed like whomever was out there intended to keep knocking until someone answered or the door broke down, whatever came first. Kevin ran the last few steps to the door and quickly unlocked it.

The door was torn open by a short, squat man with long, unkept white hair. He was wearing a dark duster coat, and leaning heavily on a young, dark-haired man for support.

"About damn time!" Desmond growled.

While Kevin quickly closed and locked the door behind Desmond and his friend, Veronica and Liron helped the white-haired priest to the sofa. He sat down heavily on it, his expression furious. Desmond wasn't an even-tempered fellow at the best of times, and whatever had happened to him today had clearly thrown him way past anger and into the realm of quiet fury.

Desmond had been a travelling preacher once. He had gone from town to town, spreading his particular brand of Christian message – which did not follow any of the major Christian religions – and helping it along with a few miracles. Desmond had had an edge there, compared to most preachers; he could perform real miracles. Not that it had helped. People had listened, nodded at his sermons, ooohed and aaaahed over the magick, and then gone home and kept doing exactly what they had always done.

It hadn't been the fact that humanity was a bunch of sinners, Desmond told Kevin, years later when he had settled down in Dougal and stopped trying to save any souls other than his own. Everyone sinned. He sinned. It was the way they did it that got no his nerves. They didn't go against their hearts and consciences because of any overwhelming desire for it. They simply gave in to their lowest impulses because they didn't consider their hearts and consciences worth listening to.

Liron got his coat off. The shirt inside was stained with blood.

"Worthless bastards!" he snarled. "They shot me! I'll get them for this! I'll make them pay for this! They'll know the wrath of the One and Prime, oh yes they will! Every single dirty, stinking one of them!"

You had to hand it to Desmond. He was probably the only person in the world who could swear curses and damnations over someone while staying away from all but the mildest of four-letter words.

"Is he going to be all right?" the dark-haired young man said. He was tall and slim, and quite handsome when you weren't too busy being shocked by finding your friends injured to notice. His eyes were dark and alert, and he watched the four Children with a sort of self-confident wariness. Kevin had an idea that the fellow was rather disturbed by the whole turn of events, but he wasn't going to be intimidated. On the whole, he approved. Not getting intimidated was a fine quality. As long as Kevin wasn't the one doing the intimidation, at least. In that case, it was just common sense.

"Oh, I've taken worse," Desmond said offhandedly. "It's just a flesh wound."

The corners of Kevin's mouthed twitched ever so slightly, and he saw that Liron, for one, was smiling fully. Desmond was a Disciple of Life. When he was injured, it always turned out to be just a flesh wound. The Consensus was willing to accept that sort of thing. Wounds closing in a flash of light would bring down Paradox, but even in this narrow-minded world, you could get away with miracles, as long as you made sure they were small miracles.

The dark-haired man scowled. He had noticed a private joke taking place, but he didn't understand it. He wasn't in a position where he could afford to not understand things. Kevin would have taken mercy on him and explained – not necessarily explained how it was, because telling a complete stranger that you were a mage wasn't very healthy, but given a plausible explanation – but right now, he was more interested in what had happened to Desmond.

"Who was it that shot you?" Veronica said. Her face was the usual unreadable mask, but her eyes gleamed. She didn't much like it when people went around shooting her friends, either. The Children of Sunset had, each after his or her own fashion, stopped caring about the world, but they still cared about the people close to them.

"How the Devil should I know?" Desmond snapped. "Some people. Looked as ordinary as you could ever ask for, except ordinary people don't pull guns when you try to stop them from beating up some kid."

"I heard that," the young man said dryly. "Since you did stop them from beating me to a bloody pulp, I'll overlook the less than flattering reference to my age, though."

Desmond shot him a glance. You had to hand it to the younger man, he didn't flinch. Desmond's glances tended to make most people do so, and more.

"And who might you be, young one?" Kevin said. "And, though it be far from me to blame the victim, but why were those fellows harassing you?"

The corners of the dark-haired man's mouth twitched.

"Jeesh, did you go to some school to learn to be that posh?" Kevin looked startled, which made the younger man smile wider. "I might be Dennis Lantz. I work for a software company. So I'm not involved with any knee-breakers, if that's what you're asking."

"Are you Awake?" Veronica said suddenly. The next moment, all four Children of Sunset were looking at him steadily, watching his face as he answered.

Dennis blinked. Kevin couldn't see anything in his expression but genuine puzzlement.

"Of course I'm awake!" he said testily. "Unless I'm dreaming this, and I'm pretty damn sure I'm not."

He watched as the four of them slowly relaxed, each one wearing an expression of deep calculation. Dennis didn't seem to like that. He looked from one to the other, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Okay, enough of this," he said. "This, pardon my French all to hell, this is bullshit. I don't know why those guys jumped me, but you four apparently know something. Would you mind telling me what? Like, right now?"

Kevin took a few slow, steady steps towards Dennis, ending up right in front of him; not so close as to touch, but close enough to be inside Dennis' body space. To be 'in his face', to use a somewhat unrefined description.

"You are," he said, not unkindly, "a guest in my home, young one. I do not consider it to be unreasonable for you to let me satisfy my curiosity before asking questions of my own. Hmm?"

Dennis smiled sweetly and leaned forward until they were practically nose to nose.

"Well, then I guess I'll just walk out of here," he said. "Then I won't be 'a guest in your home' anymore, and you'll just going to have to get by with an unsatisfied curiosity. Hmm?" He mimicked Kevin's finishing word.

Kevin tried to think of a retort, but Dennis walked past him and went for the door.

Kevin hadn't seen Veronica move, and he didn't think Dennis had, either. Regardless, she was suddenly in front of the dark-haired man, blocking his way. Veronica was not physically imposing as such, but there was something about her that suggested that any finger laid on her without her consent was a finger in serious trouble. Dennis halted.

"Lady," he said. He was grinning, not without a certain tired humour. "Lady, get out of my way, would you?"

"You are quite probably still in danger," Veronica said in her soft, almost half-singing voice. "You have a certain amount of safety here. You should stay a while longer."

"Yeah. Thanks." Dennis glanced at Kevin over his shoulder. "But I think I'll take my chances, if the alternative is letting you four crazies bully me. I won't be pushed around, ma'am, not by any son of a bitch alive."

Kevin took a deep breath.

"I did not… wish to… to 'bully' you, or 'push you around'," he said slowly. "I apologise for my manners. This is all… rather upsetting."

"Kevin admitted he was wrong," Liron said to no one in particular. "Okay, that's it. The world's ending. It was nice while it lasted."

Kevin winced. He wasn't sure himself why he had apologised. Normally, he took the position that everything he did was right because it was him doing it. This time, though, he really did feel that perhaps he had overstepped his boundaries a little. Dennis was keeping a remarkably level head for someone who had been attacked on an open street, and maybe he deserved a bit better from Kevin than strong-arm tactics, for that fact alone.

"Please tell us what happened," he said. "Then I promise that we will answer as many of your questions as we can."

Dennis hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

"Yeah. All right." He slowly walked back to the sofa and sat down next to Desmond. The preacher winced as the movement made his wound flare up in pain, but he didn't say anything. "Can I at least get to know your names first?"

"Mmm. That's asking more than you're probably aware of, young one." Kevin sank down in his armchair again, looking thoughtfully at Dennis. "Names have power."

"You already have mine," Dennis pointed out. He didn't seem too surprised by the cryptic statement. Maybe he figured that the day was already so weird that any more strangeness just sort of floated on the top.

"Fellow's got a point," Liron said. She was back in her own armchair, legs crossed beneath her.

"Very well." Kevin shrugged. "You may call me Kevin. That's not my Christian name, but it is the one I use the most. This is Liron, Veronica and Desmond."

"Is that their Christian names?" Dennis said, smiling. He smiled a lot, Kevin was starting to realise. And the smile said, very clearly, that Dennis was smarter than anyone else in the northern hemisphere. Kevin found that very annoying, especially since he was usually smiling in exactly the same way.

"I'm not a Christian," Liron said peacefully.

"Names are meaningless sound," Veronica said, sounding like she was talking to herself.

Dennis raised an eyebrow.

"I thought they had power?"

"Don't get them started." Liron rolled her eyes. "They've bickered over that one for years."

Kevin smiled faintly. Of course they had. Veronica simply refused to admit that names were the foundation of all things. He had very limited hope of making her see reason, and he guessed she had an equally slim hope of bringing him over to her way of looking at things, but they were having way too much fun bickering to stop now.

"All right." Dennis shrugged. "What happened. Well, I was walking home from work, which is what I tend to do at this time every day, and I was taking a shortcut through Beaver Alley, which I tend to do at this time every day. Then some big, greasy guy came out of a doorway and grabbed me and said 'Judgement is here, pal' or something like that. This, in case you're wondering, is not what tends to happen at this time on most days."

"Had you ever seen him before?" Kevin asked.

"Uh-uh." Dennis shook his head. "Not that I know of, anyway. So I tried to do what I've done a few times before when I've been in trouble, which is kind of lock eyes with the guy and make my face all cold and dangerous-looking…"

"One moment." Liron held up a many-ringed hand. "What usually happens when you do that?"

"The guy backs off." Dennis smiled, proud despite himself. "It's gotten me out of a few bar fights. Doesn't always work, though. Once, when I guess I was a lot drunker than I usually am, I tried to give some bully the glare, and before I knew it, I was on my hands and knees, throwing up on his shoes." He rolled his eyes. "Got a broken arm out of that one."

The Children of Sunset exchanged glances. Dennis noticed, but didn't comment.

"Do go on," Kevin said.

"Well, he looked a little shook up," Dennis said, "and I thought he was going to go away, but then he sort of smirked, like he had outsmarted me somehow. And then these other guys came spilling out of the door. I think there were three of them, but I was feeling kind of confused at the time, so I'm not sure. About equal spread as far as ladies and gentlemen went. And they didn't look like they belonged together."

Kevin raised his eyebrows.

"Meaning?" he said.

"Meaning they didn't strike me as a natural group of buddies," Dennis said. "And definitely not as your average mugger gang. The guy who grabbed me was wearing some sort of jumpsuit, like a mechanic or something. But there was this other guy, middle-aged, who was wearing a pretty fancy suit. And they were all different ages."

"Well, we four don't really dress all that much alike," Liron pointed out.

"That's right," Dennis said. "So I'm guessing these guys were something like you."

The statement was quick and calmly forceful. The meaning was clear; I can figure things out for myself. Don't think you can trick me. Liron hesitated, not sure how to respond.

"It… may very well be," Kevin admitted. "But I don't know any cabal that has members like the ones you described."

He saw how Dennis processed the word 'cabal' and filed it for later reference. Then he nodded.

"Right. Anyway, I think it was the suit guy that said 'You're going to die. Tell us where your friends are, and we'll make it quick'." Dennis smiled tightly. For the first time, his attitude gave way to a bit of strain. Bar fights were one thing, but people didn't tell him they were going to kill him – not threaten to, but simply tell him – on a regular basis.

"Ghastly fellow," Kevin said, shaking his head. "Some people simply have no idea how to behave as civilised human beings."

Dennis laughed, in spite of himself.

"Yeah. Tell me about it. Anyway, so I told him I didn't know which friends he was talking about, but he just said 'you're just making it worse for yourself, tell us where the rest of the freaks are'. That's when that guy – Desmond, right? – showed up."

Desmond smiled weakly.

"I saw four people harassing one," he said. "So I decided that I would very much like to punch their ugly faces in. So I got their attention…"

"'Now, excuse me, but I think you good people have forgot what you learned in Sunday school'," Dennis said. His impression of Desmond's voice and intonation was uncanny. "'Allow me to remind you: it's love thy neighbour, not be an asshole. It's funny how so many make that mistake.'"

"I may have said something along those lines," Desmond admitted, amused. "Now, here's the odd part. They reacted all wrong."

"They didn't tremble before your fury?" Liron said in a tone of innocent curiosity. Desmond gave her a flat look.

"Actually, they did, in a way," he said. "When they saw me, they all looked scared for a moment. I mean really scared. You'd have thought I had grown three extra heads, all of them with big, sharp teeth. They pulled themselves together, though, except for this one skinny little woman. She cowered and whimpered, as I recall. The fellow in the overall looked angry. The one in the suit just assumed a sort of stone-faced expression. The other woman, who was a great deal older and plumper than the first, stepped forward and held up a cross, of all things. Told me that she would get the others over her dead body, or something similarly melodramatic."

Kevin wrinkled his brow. That was surprising. The four people had all acted like Desmond was dangerous. Now, Desmond was dangerous, but you wouldn't know it to look at him. Like he had said, he was just this little white-haired guy. And holding up a cross? Desmond had crosses hanging on his apartment wall, plenty of them.

Kevin knew that there was such a thing as vampires. In fact, his Order was technically at war with them right now, though Kevin did not take any greater part in it. But he failed to see how you could mistake Desmond for a vampire. He was even quite tanned.

"Then I hit Greasy in the head," Dennis said, somewhat smugly. He laughed at the expressions of the three Children listening to the story. "Well, he wasn't paying attention to me anymore. His mistake. When he let go of me, I ran."

"We both ran," Desmond said. "One of them shot me in the back, though. I'm not sure who, though I suppose it's an academical question, seeing as I will take great pleasure in disembowelling every damn one of them."

"If the police ask me later, I didn't hear that," Dennis said with a half-smile. "Well. That's about the whole story, I guess. We lost them easily enough. They didn't want to follow us into any crowded areas, I guess."

"The whole story except one thing," Desmond said. "There weren't four of them. There were five."

Dennis shrugged.

"Well, like I said, that whole episode was kind of intense, so I might not remember correctly…" he said.

"Oh, you remember correctly." Desmond snorted. "But you didn't pay attention. There were four of them harassing you, sure, but there was another one, standing at the end of the street, taking notes."

"Taking notes?" Dennis said.

"Curiouser and curiouser…" Veronica said dreamily.

Desmond shrugged, then winced as the muscles around the gunshot wound were strained.

"Yeah. I didn't see her clearly, but I'm pretty sure it was a woman. Dark hair, dark clothes. Kept watching us, and writing in a notebook."

"So we have those four people," Liron said thoughtfully. "I will leap to conclusions and say that by 'freaks' they mean 'Awakened ones'. They sound a little like the Society of Leopold."

Desmond shook his head.

"I've tangled with the Society before," he said. "If these losers were with them, then they must be getting desperate and admitting anyone into their ranks. And not giving them much training before sending them out, either."

"Well, putting that aside for a moment," Liron said, "there's these… these witch-hunters. They are trying to track us down and kill us. And then there's this woman spying on them as they do that."

"Also rather inexpertly," Desmond said. "If she had known what she was doing, I wouldn't have been able to spot her. The only reason they didn't is that they didn't know what they were doing either."

"I would say 'what the hell is the Society of Leopold?'," Dennis said conversationally. "I would say that, if I thought that there was the slightest chance that I'd get a comprehensible answer."

Liron took mercy at him.

"You know the Spanish Inquisition?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"You know the Spanish Inquisition having ended?"

"Yeah?"

Liron smiled teasingly.

"See, that's where you're wrong."

Dennis took that in.

"You're telling me that there are still nutcases running around looking for witches to burn?" he said sharply.

"What we're telling you, young one," Kevin said, faintly amused, "is that the world is very large, very strange, and almost completely different from what you've always thought."

Dennis shrugged.

"Big deal. The first two I knew already, and I've always had a hunch about the last one."

"Good boy," Kevin said. "There may be hope for you yet."

Dennis gave him a 'I would pummel you, but I've decided to show mercy just this once' look.

"Four people…" Veronica said dreamingly. "One old man in a suit, one young man in an overall, one slim woman, one plump woman. Was that how you described your attackers, Dennis?"

"That sounds about right," Dennis agreed. "Why?"

"Oh." Veronica looked distracted for a woman. "Because they're standing down in the street right now."

Kevin, Liron and Dennis were trying to all look out through one window at once, which brought about a certain lack of space, and a lot of pushing and scrambling for room. Kevin was fairly sure that he had heard Liron mutter a few words in ancient Egyptian under her breath as they hurried up to the window, and somehow she had managed to place herself in the middle, with Kevin and Dennis trying to squeeze themselves in at the sides.

"There." Dennis pointed. "Do you see them?"

Kevin did. Four people were standing under a streetlight at the other side of the street, watching the building. One was young and heavyset, dressed in a striped jumpsuit that was covered with oil stains. He had a baseball cap on his head, and dark, unwashed curls spilled out from underneath it. He held some sort of long, dark object in his hand; Kevin thought that it might be a crowbar. That would fit the general makeup of him.

The other man was tall and well-dressed, with a short, white beard and a neat haircut. His suit was completely black, but to Kevin's surprise, there was a flash of white at his throat. The man was wearing a priest's collar. Another point for the Society of Leopold theory. Kevin didn't like the look of that man at all. He was older and thinner than Greasy was, but there was something about him that radiated confidence and dedication. Kevin, who had based his whole life on the knowledge that positive thinking not only had an impact but had a greater impact than just about any other one aspect, knew how dangerous confidence and dedication were.

One of the women was short, pudgy and white-haired, though she didn't seem all that old to Kevin; in her early forties, maybe. She had a hard face, all edges and frown-lines. She wore jeans and a nondescript, durable jacket. Nothing fancy or unpractical here; this was a woman who had a job to do.

The last one was so short and thin that she gave the impression that she was trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. She was young, perhaps not even out of her teens, with hair in a mouse-brown colour and a pale, plain face. She wore a light-green overcoat that looked two sizes too large for her.

"By the way," Dennis said to Veronica, frowning. "How did you know they were there? Did you just see it in your head or something?"

"Of course not," Veronica distantly.

"Oh." Dennis looked slightly embarrassed. "Well, it's just…"

"I saw it in the candle-flame," Veronica said.

Dennis suddenly looked very tired.

"What do you think?" Liron asked Kevin.

"They can be a problem," he said. He looked at Suit, eyes narrowing. "They look to me like people who're fighting a holy war. Remember what that was like?"

The other three Children of Sunset nodded soberly. They knew what that was like. The thing that had drawn them to each other was that each one had once fought for what had then seemed good and right, and then realised that it was at best futile and at worst wicked. They remembered very well what it had been like to believe in something so strongly that it was worth dying for.

It turned you into a bloody dangerous person, for starters.

"Oh-kay," Dennis said with pretended cheerfulness, "now, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the point where I will get some answers. Some serious answers, or I won't be held responsible, okay? This has been one hell of a day, and now it looks like I'm under freaking siege by four maniacs, together with four other maniacs. Come on. Talk to me. I've earned it."

Kevin supposed that he had, at that. He nodded.

"Well, we lack the time for the long version, I'm afraid," he said. "The short version would be as follows. Magick exists. The reason why you've always been told that it doesn't is because the world is ruled by a secret conspiracy of super-scientists trying to eradicate the use of it. We are mages. From the looks of it, so are you, you're just not aware of it. The people outside, it appears, hunts mages. End of short version."

Dennis looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he shrugged and nodded.

"Okay. Thanks."

There was a brief pause, while the Children of Sunset watched Dennis with stunned disbelief.

"You didn't find anything odd with that explanation?" Kevin said carefully.

"Oh, I've heard worse," Dennis said flatly. "At least this one covers all the known facts and doesn't demand that I give up all my worldly belongings in order to go to Heaven."

"You actually believe us?" Liron said, still somewhat nonplussed.

"Shouldn't I?"

"Well, yes," Liron admitted. "Seeing as we're telling the truth and all. It's just that… well… I've never really heard of anyone who's believed the truth right away when hearing it…"

"Oh, I don't really believe you," Dennis said with a shrug. "I'm just adding your view of the world to the list of all the ones I've heard. Eventually, I'm going to have disproved all of them but one, and that will presumably be the right one."

"You are a most unusual young man," Kevin said flatly.

Dennis grinned annoyingly.

"Said the guy who believes in secret conspiracies of super-scientists that rules the earth."

Kevin had to admit that that was a good point. Even so, there was something faintly unnatural about a person who didn't argue when you said insane things. It didn't matter that magick and the Technocracy and all that stuff was real. Reality was pretty darn insane, these days.

"Well, okay, then," Liron said cheerfully. "I'm going to go out there and kick their asses. Who's with me?"

"Hey, wait," Dennis said. "They're armed, you know."

"They won't be for long," Liron said with supreme confidence.

"It's my home they're laying siege to," Kevin said. "I'll go with you."

"I wouldn't miss it," Veronica said in a tone that might be sincere or sarcastic or anything in between.

Dennis looked from one of them to the other, perplexed.

"Okay, what part of 'they're armed' did you miss?" he said.

"The part where guns can be used against experienced mages, young one," Kevin said with dignity. "Facing one unprepared Disciple and one raw Orphan is quite different from facing three rather annoyed Disciples who has the home ground and the initiative."

"Okay, just who are you calling an orphan?" Dennis said. "I have a full set of parents, I'll have you know." He considered for a moment. "For that matter, just who are you calling 'young one' all the time?"

Kevin smiled teasingly.

"'Orphan' simply means that you have received no formal training," he said. "As for 'young one', you are younger than me."

"Yeah, like ten years. You make it sound like you're my grandfather."

"You don't know that," Liron said, grinning. "For all what you know, he's ten thousand years old and immortal."

Dennis hesitated and glanced suspiciously at Kevin.

"Well, are you?" he demanded.

Kevin smiled and shook his head.

"I must admit that I am not, in fact, quite that old," he said. "To my knowledge, there is no one alive who is that old." He realised that that was an overgeneralization. "At least no one who is that old and still recognisably human."

Dennis held up his hands in front of him.

"I don't want to know," he said dryly. "Let's just go."

"Ho! Wait!" Liron said. "Dennis, you can't come with us."

"Oh yeah?" Dennis crossed his arms, giving her a steely glare. "And who, if I may ask, is it who they want to kill?"

"That's hardly a merit…" Desmond interjected from the couch.

Dennis spun around, frowning at him.

"No?" he said. "Well, maybe not. But as far as I can see, you're short one man in this fight, unless I fill the spot. It was me who got you involved in this! Don't you think I realise that? I don't like that I'll owe you my life after this, but there's nothing I can do about that – but I can go along and share whatever it is you'll be forced to do to save me, and I'm damn well going to! And if you try to stop me, you'll have to fight me along with them, so don't even think about it!"

There was a moment of silence. The Children of Sunset were not usually spoken to in this way. Not without repercussions, at least. Usually, those repercussions involved the most impressive volley of curses that could be mustered by any cabal in Dougal.

"You have courage, young one," Kevin said tonelessly.

"Thanks," Dennis grunted.

"And you have honour."

"I'm blushing."

"What you don't have," Kevin finished sharply, "is sense."

Dennis grinned insolently.

"So I'll make do with two out of three. Either way, I'm going."

Kevin looked at Liron and Veronica and shrugged.

"It appears that he is," he sighed.

The four of them – Dennis and Kevin, Liron and Veronica – were standing by the bottom of the stairs. They had bandaged Desmond and left him in the apartment to rest; even a flesh-wound could get dangerous if you strained yourself. Like Dennis had said, they were one man short in this fight.

"Now, then," Kevin said. He had picked up his ornamented cane before leaving the apartment. "This is the plan. The moment we break cover, I will arrange for the streetlights to go out. That should give the two of you time to work. Veronica, I presume that you can deal with any firearms they might be carrying?"

"They will click," Veronica promised.

"And Liron, you make sure that their night vision takes a long time to arrive, while our night vision arrives very quickly indeed."

"I'm on it," Liron said.

Dennis wrinkled his forehead.

"You're talking about doing magic, aren't you?" he said.

"Indeed we are," Kevin said.

"But in that case, why…" Dennis made vague gesture. "Why can't you just make them all catch fire?"

"In your experience," Kevin said, "do people generally catch fire for no apparent reason?"

"I can't say I've ever seen it happen, no…" Dennis had to admit.

"That's why," Kevin said.

Dennis thought that over for a moment.

"So you're telling me that you can only use magic to make things happen that might have happened anyway?" he said, sounding like that was a bit of a disappointment as far as this whole magick business went.

"Got it in one," Liron said cheerfully. "Except it's really a lot more complicated than that, but we don't really have time to go into that right now."

"I guess that makes a kind of sense," Dennis admitted. "The kind that sounds good when you say it, but when you think it through, you realise that it's nuts."

"Lesson number one, young one," Kevin said. "The world is nuts. The three of us are sane, and so's Desmond, but very little else is."

"What about me?" Dennis said.

"You are still on probation."

Dennis rolled his eyes.

"Now, then," Liron said. "On the count of three. One. Two. Three!"

The four of them burst out through the door and into the street. Kevin found himself grinning madly as he ran. Getting into fights was not a gentleman-like thing to do, so he tried to avoid it whenever possible, but it was such a good way to get your blood pumping. He didn't think he had had this much fun since Diana had made him help her face down Karl Militts, arguably the most powerful mage in the city.

The ladies are right, he thought with a wry smile. I really do need a boyfriend, if this is more enjoyable than all other parts of my life…

He shouted three harsh words in Latin, and the streetlights all along the streets went out in a fizzling of sparks, leaving it dark except for the light coming from the windows and the sparse light of the moon. For a moment, Kevin was blind; then his eyes adjusted, and he could see the four dark siluettes standing underneath the ruined streetlight, scrambling desperately to get their bearings.

He felt more than saw Veronica at his side, drawing a cloth bag out of her deep sleeve and throwing a shower of fine powder over the witch-hunters. He felt a faint tingle as her magick started to work, rendering any firearm in the vicinity useless. All was going according to plan.

And then, suddenly, it wasn't.

Greasy raised the item he was holding, which was indeed a crowbar. It began to glow with a piercing white light, turning the darkness into something that was almost day. Kevin gave off a surprised cry and raised his left arm to protect his pupils, which were completely dilated thanks to Liron's spell, and therefore at their most sensitive to sudden flashes of light. He heard screams and yells from the other three, as they befell a similar fate.

Then the witch-hunters were over them. Kevin was hit in the chest by a fierce punch that knocked the wind out of him and sent him to the street, struggling to breathe. He moved feebly on the ground, squinting his eyes and trying to see what was happening. He found a shadow standing over him, and he rolled out of the way just in time to avoid a kick to his head.

Somewhere, a gun clicked on an empty chamber, and a male voice growled in anger. Somewhere, there was a crack – Kevin recognised it, with a feeling of nausea, as the sound of bones breaking – and Veronica cried out in pain.

And Liron shouted something, harsh, dry words in old Egyptian, some spell as old as civilisation itself…

And suddenly Kevin could see again; his eyes had adjusted to the light, as quickly as they had to the darkness. Veronica was on the ground, one of her legs bending in more places than legs were supposed to bend. Greasy was standing over her, shining crowbar raised, but couldn't finish her off because Dennis had grabbed hold of his wrists and wouldn't let go, despite Greasy's greater size and strength. The priest, still stone-faced, swung the butt of his useless revolver at Liron's chin and hit. The priestess of Isis staggered backwards, clearly struggling to stay on her feet. The pudgy woman was moving towards Dennis and Greasy, not running but walking with long, determined steps, her face stern.

The witch-hunter standing over Kevin, and aiming for another kick, was the skinny little woman. She looked terrified – actually, she looked a little sick – but she kept attacking him anyway.

Now wait just one second, Kevin thought, somewhat dizzily. She was the one that hit me? She? Last time I was punched that hard was when I mouthed off to that Son of Ether in a power-suit, but she looks like she couldn't lift a kitten over her head…

But looks could be deceiving.

With a wordless war cry, he swung the cane around, knocking Skinny's feet out from under her. She fell on her flat posterior with a sound that was not so much a scream as a whimper. Kevin felt a little guilty, but only until he realised how much it still hurt to breathe. He forced himself to his feet and pressed a hidden button on the side of the cane. It split apart with a click, and when Kevin pulled the shorter piece away from the longer one, a thin blade came with it. Smiling mirthlessly, Kevin dropped the sheathe and broke into a run towards Dennis and Greasy.

Tried to break into a run. Skinny had grabbed his angle, holding on for dear life.

"Now really!" Kevin said, exasperated. This woman just would not quit! He pulled at his foot. For a moment, it was like it trying to pull it free from a wrist cuff; Skinny's fingers might as well have been carved in stone. But then she gasped in pain, and they went slack. Kevin broke free and ran.

He got between Pudgy and the people she was walking towards, raising the sword-cane in a salute.

"May I have this dance, madame?" he said, grinning and raising an eyebrow.

In response, she raised the cross.

"Back, fiend! Back!" she barked.

It felt like a storm wind striking him – except it didn't seem to affect anything else. The air itself seemed to throw itself against him in sudden fury, and he had to choose between throwing himself backwards and trying to keep his balance, or staying up and not even having the chance to.

Kevin threw himself backwards. Right Dennis and Greasy, who was still wrestling. The three of them went down in a heap, with much swearing from the two less refined parties. The crowbar went dark, and suddenly everything was pitch black again. Kevin tried to get his bearings, but before he had the chance, strong, calloused hands gripped his throat. Greasy was strangling him!

No air to chant spells with. No sword, either; he had dropped it when he fell. Kevin tried to gather his strength, to will something to happen, but already his entire body was screaming for air, and the power that he had spent so many years learning to control eluded his grasp as if he was a fumbling apprentice again.

Then the fingers went limp and let go of him. In the gloom, he could make out Dennis rubbing his fist. He had knocked Greasy out.

"Thank you kindly," Kevin croaked. His throat wasn't working properly at the moment.

"Ain't nothing," Dennis said smugly. They both got back up, gasping and struggling.

"I have it!" a male voice was shouting. Kevin guessed that it must be Priest; there had only been three men on the scene to start with, and two of them weren't in any position to shout. "Kill it! Kill it!"

Liron started saying something in old Egyptian, but her voice turned muffled as Priest pressed his hand against her mouth. If he hadn't known before what a mage could do with a spoken spell, he had sure learned now.

"Where are you?" Pudgy complained from somewhere nearby. "I can't see anything…"

Kevin decided that he had just about had it with this constant flicking between light and darkness. He turned towards what he thought might be the south, clasped his hands over his heart and bowed deeply.

"Bringer-Of-Ashes, demon of flames," he intoned, "Kevin Harsh bani Shaea invokes you by the Third Compact of Beraal, and by your true name which is Den Kad Utis Mahall…"

"What's it doing?" Skinny asked in a trembling voice. "What's it doing?"

"It's to your right!" Priest shouted. "Your right! Hit it! Kill it!"

Kevin realised, somewhat appalled, that by 'it', they referred to him.

"If you are hungry, I invite you to feast on my power," he went on with his enchantment, speaking faster now, but still pronouncing every word firmly and carefully; Bringer-Of-Ashes wasn't one of the big demons, but Kevin still didn't want to mess up an invocation of him. Kevin, after all, was not one of the big mages, either. "If you are thirsty, I invite you to drink from the well of my wisdom. Most humbly do I beg and implore you, great lord of fire; grant me the power to see as you see."

There was a brief pause, and then Kevin's vision was suddenly filled with light. The people were siluettes of dark red; the walls of the houses were outlines in faint pink; the burned-out streetlights were points of brightest crimson.

"Well," Kevin said cheerfully. "This is a bit of all right, I would say."

Skinny, having regained some of her night-vision, threw herself at him. Kevin knew better by now than to match his strength against hers; there was something very odd going on with this lady, and until he understood it, he was not about to tangle with it. Instead, he slipped to the side, and stuck out his leg as she passed by, making her stumble. She didn't fall, though; maybe she had learned her lesson, too. It didn't matter. Kevin had better things to do. He started out for Priest, but Pudgy was already there. She swung her cross against Liron's head like a club, and it bit into her skull with a crunching sound that made Kevin gasp.

The priestess of Isis went limp in Priest's arms, and he dropped her to the street without further ceremonies.

Kevin felt a moment of curious emotionlessness, which was quickly replaced by holy fury. One of his friends, one of his very few friends, had just been hurt, very possibly killed. By this cold-faced stranger, who spoke about Kevin as 'it'.

Now that just wasn't acceptable.

"I really have no idea just what you are," he said in a tone of carefully cultivated boredom. "But I believe that I will send your souls to a certain most personable Demon Lord I happen to know. He will be ever so pleased to receive some fresh toys."

It was hard to see which way people were facing when you could only see heat radiation, but Kevin thought that Priest and Pudgy had turned to him now. Skinny had retreated back to them, and was cowering behind them. Dennis, following her example, had gone to Kevin's side. Veronica, Liron and Greasy were on the ground. Veronica was moving. Liron and Greasy were not.

A facedown, Kevin thought. But they are leading by points.

"What we are is justice, monster!" Pudgy snapped. "What we are is the righteous wrath of God Almighty come to visit!"

"And what, pray tell, do you presume that you know about God?" Kevin said, still with his best I-am-only-talking-to-you-because-I-have-nothing-better-to-do voice.

"That He set forth the laws of man," Priest said, slowly and with grave dignity, "and that one of those laws was, 'Do not suffer a witch to live'."

"Ah, yes. That one." Kevin had read the Bible. There were all sorts of hints in it, if you knew what to look for. "I do believe you'll find that He has been quoted as saying a great deal of things over the years. And strangely enough, His will very often seems to suit the views of His prophets."

"Heresy!" Pudgy snarled.

"Of course it's heresy," Priest said. "It speaks no other language."

"You guys are nuts," Dennis said matter-of-factly. "Just thought I'd state that for the record. Completely and utterly fucked up in the head."

"Hold your tongue, fiend!" Pudgy said.

"Nyeeeeeh. Make me," Dennis said in the most annoying voice he could muster. Which was pretty darn annoying, actually. Kevin could literally see Pudgy's body temperature increasing as she got angrier.

"We will," Priest said evenly. "No more of this. My sisters, let us finish this."

As if driven by a common will, the three of them started marching forward. Kevin bit his lip. He wasn't quite sure what to do. There was no way that he and Dennis could take these three on in hand-to-hand combat. Kevin didn't even have his sword anymore; it was on the ground somewhere, and since it was as warm as the rest of the ground, it was effectively invisible to him. And he had never learned to fight with his hands and feet; it was undignified for a gentleman to fight like an unrefined animal. Dennis was a bit better off, but all three of the witch-hunters seemed quite capable in this area, and at least two of them had some sort of power besides.

And, yes, there was the fifth one, the shape in the shadows. Kevin could see her at the end of the street. Hiding. Watching. Taking notes.

Kevin struggled madly for some opportunity, some possibility that could be turned into a truth. Desmond or Liron, Disciples of Life, could have caused heart attacks and strokes, turned minute imperfections in the witch-hunters' bodies into catastrophical maladies. But Kevin was a Disciple of Forces; his magick had to focus on pure energy, and there was only so much you could do with energy while still keeping it coincidental. He could probably make one of the witch-hunters stumble, maybe even fall into another one and trip her, too, but that wouldn't buy him anything but a chance to escape. And escaping meant leaving Veronica and Liron (if she was still alive) to their fate, and probably Desmond too…

Kevin bit his teeth together. No way. Not a chance. He would tear these three goons to shreds with his teeth and nails if he had to. Do not suffer a witch? He would show them that there was at least one witch in the world that could give them some serious suffering!

Then Veronica moved, pushing herself up with her hands. Her breathing was fast and strained.

"No," she gasped. "I will not have it."

Somewhere in the depths of Kevin's arrogant heart, he felt a touch of warmth. Veronica had apparently thought about the same thing he had. And she was in an even worse position than he was. It was a nice feeling to have someone who was willing to die for you, even if it meant that you would probably both die together…

Pudgy turned towards Veronica, but Priest kept his gaze at Kevin, as far as Kevin could tell. Perhaps he had decided that Kevin was the real danger. Almost flattering. Almost.

"Foolish, ignorant creatures," Veronica groaned. "You will not have my life, nor anything else from me but the fury of the Thousand Hells. For every drop of blood spilled tonight, each one of you will shed a river!"

The red siluette that was Kevin's view of Veronica moved; he guessed, quite correctly, that she was pulling something from out of her sleeves. She threw out her arms in a wide motion, calling out the names of demonic beings in a language that Kevin couldn't identify but which was probably some sort of lost Chinese tongue. The powder she had thrown out ignited, and the street was covered in light for a brief second. For a moment, Kevin could see both the world as he usually saw it, and the world as Bringer-Of-Ashes showed it to him. It didn't matter which one he focused on, though; both were filled with blinding light, as Veronica's magick threw flames all over the street. The witch-hunters gave off cries of anger, fear or surprise, depending on their nature, and threw themselves away from Veronica.

Then the moment was over, and he could see again. The vision was confusing to make out; shattered flames were burning everywhere, distorting the heat radiation. But Kevin could make out the witch-hunters, cowering on the ground where they had thrown themselves. And Liron. And a burning husk that had probably, a moment ago, been Greasy.

Veronica was nowhere to be found.

Kevin and Dennis looked at each other for a brief second, sharing one thought. Then they ran up to where Liron lay, Dennis lifting her by her shoulders and Kevin by her hips, and ran back into the building as quickly as their burden allowed.

Behind them, the witch-hunters tried to get to their feet. Kevin yelled the first spell he could think of, and lessened the friction between them and the ground as much as he dared without breaching the thin line between the improbable and the impossible. The witch-hunters suddenly found it very hard to get up; their hands and feet slipped and slid on the ground, making them fall down over and over again.

That bought Kevin and Dennis a brief moment of time to run up the stairs. When they reached Kevin's door, the witch-hunters were already charging up the stairs, but too late; the door slammed shut behind the mages, and Kevin locked and bolted it.

The two men sank to the floor just inside the apartment door, panting heavily.

"Did she die?" Dennis gasped. "Did she, I don't know, self-destruct or something?"

"I don't believe so," Kevin answered. "I think she simply went somewhere else… and let a little of the other place slide through the gateway before she closed it behind her."

Dennis laughed breathlessly.

"Now don't tell me that is something that could have happened on its own!"

"No, and she'll pay for that," Kevin said, frowning unhappily. "We can do the impossible, if we have no other choice, but the price is the enmity of reality itself. Wherever Veronica is now, she is very probably severely inconvenienced. We can expect no more help from her tonight, I think. If she survives her journey to the Thousand Hells and we die tonight, then she will wreak vengeance on the ones that have killed us, but that, I think, is a rather slim comfort." He sighed. "At least she has a chance. And she made sure we have a chance, too."

"Hang on. Hang on. Coming through." Desmond came walking into the hallway, moving very slowly and carefully as not to upset his wound. "I saw Veronica's little lightshow from the window, but how are you? How's Liron?"

Kevin flinched. He had forgotten about Liron, despite the fact that she was lying right in front of him. He cursed his stupidity and quickly checked her pulse. For a gut-wrenching moment he didn't find one. Then he felt first one heartbeat, then another and another, weak but coming in a steady rhythm.

"She's alive," he said, letting out a long breath of relief. "She might need your help to stay that way, but she's alive."

"Oh, man." Desmond sighed. "Okay, wait…wait… aaaaaarrrgggghhhh…"

He slowly knelt down by Liron, grimacing in pain all the way.

"Damn that trigger-happy lunatic," he gasped. "All right… here goes…"

He placed his hand on Liron's forehead, closed his eyes and started praying quietly. Kevin braced himself and got up, then took Dennis' hand and helped him up, too.

"Come on," he said tiredly. "We have to prepare. This door is custom-made to keep just about everything out for a while, but there is no door in existence that can keep anything out forever. Most probably those chaps are right now preparing some dynamite or something of the sorts. When they come through, we must be ready."

Dennis blinked.

"Why would they keep coming?" he said. "One of them is dead, for crying out loud! And chances are someone has already called the police. It'd be really stupid for them to attack again. And yeah, sure, they were insane, but I'm not sure that they were that stupid."

"On the contrary, young one," Kevin said, smiling humourlessly. "It would be very stupid of them not to press the attack. At least if they knew the first thing about mages."

"And why is that," Dennis said, and added with a crooked smile, "old one?"

"Because if they do," Kevin said grimly, "they know what happens if you try to kill a mage and fails."

Kevin rummaged through a cabinet in his ritual chamber, which was large and almost completely unfurnished on a normal day. Kevin arranged it to his requirements every time he needed to cast a major spell. The large cabinets in dark, ornamented wood were the only proper furniture, and in them he stored most of his arcane gear. Now, he took out one thing at the time, discarded some and stuck others into the pouches hanging from his belt. He had put on his ritual, dark-violet robe, put his ritual silver pentacle chain around his neck, and grabbed his seven-foot, rune-clad, ritual staff.

Kevin Harsh bani Shaea was getting ready to rumble.

"Potion of distorted perception," he muttered as he picked up a vial and then put it back into the cabinet. "No, that fellow with the priest's collar could see me well enough in total darkness, so I daresay he would see through it… Charm of projectile avoidance… No, Veronica took care of their guns. Potion of speed… yes, not? Wand of heat… No, there is really nothing to work with in that area…"

"So what are those people?" said Dennis, who was standing behind him, with his arms crossed and his face radiating resigned acceptance of all this craziness. "Are they magicians?"

"Mages," Kevin absently corrected him.

"Whatever. Are they?"

Kevin looked thoughtful.

"I really can't say," he said. "There are schools of magick, traditions, disciplines… but in the end, every mage tends to mix and match to get a style that is all his own. What we saw down there might have been magick. But not any kind of it that I recognised."

"And if they're not mages?" Dennis said. "Then what are they?"

"I really can't say," Kevin said as he inspected and disregarded a coat of lightness. "But there is always, in my experience, something…"

Dennis nodded thoughtfully. There was a brief pause.

"Would you answer a personal question?" he then said.

"That would rather depend on the question," Kevin said absently and lifted metal box to see if there was a lens of prediction hidden behind it. There wasn't.

"Are you dating either of those girls?" Dennis said. "You act like they're both kind of important to you."

Kevin gave him a stern look.

"That is a personal question," he said. Even so, he took a deep breath and went on, "They are important to me because they are people of my own mindset, which is a rare commodity in this world. I am no longer indulging in any sort of love life. Even if I was, it would not be with women, and even if it was, it would not be with these women, because they're my friends and I would rather not complicate matters there. Is that answer enough for you, young one?"

"Guess so," Dennis said, smiling faintly. "But it begs another personal question, which is why you're not dating."

"Someone died," Kevin said, his back still towards Dennis. His tone made it perfectly clear that that was the end of this line of discussion.

Apparently Dennis wasn't paying attention to what Kevin's tone said.

"Well, that sucks and everything," he said. "But, I mean, is that cause enough for the whole 'no longer' deal? I mean, 'no longer' sounds a lot like 'never again', and that's just a shame. I mean, a good-looking guy like you…"

Kevin took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Then he turned around, his face tight.

"I appreciate the concern," he said, his voice strained. "I do. But you do not have the facts in the matter."

"That's why I'm asking you to give them to me," Dennis said amiably.

Kevin considered telling Dennis to go bugger himself. But he was a man who believed in truth, and in the search for truth. He could not find it in him to deny answers to someone who was genuinely interested in finding them.

"There… was a woman," he said, his voice thick. "An evil woman. And I do not use that word lightly. The people outside tried to kill you, me, and my three best friends simply for being what we are, but I do not consider them to be evil. They're simply… misguided. This woman was not. And my boyfriend… She killed him. Brutally, and painfully, and for the sole simple purpose of making a point to me."

Yesterday there was love and happiness in your life, the note she had left him pinned to Kyle's blood-soaked body had said. Today there is only sorrow. And why? Because I stuck a piece of metal into a lump of flesh. Where are your high-minded notions now, Kevin? Where are your eternal truth and your undying beauty? Perhaps now you will see that there is only the flesh, and that the destiny of all flesh is to die.

They had hunted her down, in the end, and there had been a showdown, and that victory had tasted like ashes…

"I see," Dennis said softly. "I'm sorry."

"Quite all right," Kevin said shortly. "You didn't know."

"Still…" Dennis said thoughtfully.

"What?" Kevin snapped. Then he quickly composed himself. This was not gentlemanlike behaviour. He demanded better of himself than to get riled up because a young and careless man asked questions he did not like to answer. "What?" he repeated in a softer tone.

"Aren't you kind of letting her win, this way?" Dennis said.

Kevin took a deep breath to scream his fury at Dennis, but stopped himself. And closed his eyes. And slowly, carefully and mercilessly broke apart the storm of old pain and new anger that was raging in his mind, until he could think again. Then he spoke.

"You presume too much," he said. Not angrily, or aggressively in any other way. He was just calmly, softly and somewhat sadly stating a fact.

Dennis shrugged and smiled palely.

"Yeah. I do that a lot. Usually with the worst possible people and at the worst possible times. Like, for example, with the guy with supernatural powers, at a time when those powers are just about all that's standing between me and a bunch of murderous lunatics."

Kevin stared blankly at him for a second. Then he surprised himself by giving off a short, surprised laugh. It was hoarse and strained, but even so it was genuine.

"Quite," he agreed. "Let's get back to work."

He turned around to the cabinet and started going through the things inside again. But there was one more piece of truth that he needed to admit. Needed to, if he was going to be true to his ideals.

"I… don't need you to tell me that I'm letting her win," he said, tiredly. "I've felt her victory every day for the last three years. But I don't know how to do differently."

There was silence, after that.

There was a bang on the door. And then another and another, in steady procession.

"Well," Dennis said with false cheer. "Here they come."

"They're using a battering ram?" Kevin said incredulously. "Really. I was expecting so much better."

He had armed himself with every potion and talisman he thought might be useful. He had given Dennis the revolver loaded with silver bullets that he kept among his emergency equipment. He had asked the younger man if he could use a gun. Dennis had just smiled.

"Guess I'll find that out," he had said. "But, hell, it's just pointing and clicking. I've got a lot of experience in pointing and clicking."

Kevin had let him have the gun anyway. It seemed unfair to not give him any means to defend himself, when Kevin had all his own magick at his disposal. Besides, he couldn't cast and shoot at the same time, anyway.

Desmond was sitting in an armchair in the living room. He would be able to help if Kevin and Dennis had to retreat that far. Liron was unconscious on the couch. Desmond had made sure that her injuries were limited to a hairline fracture in her skull and a concussion, but he couldn't get her back to fighting shape tonight. Reality would only bend so far before it snapped back on the mage, and the last thing they needed now was a major backlash from a vengeful universe.

The door shook again. And again. And then it shattered, revealing Skinny standing outside with what looked like some sort of spare part to a car in her hands. She looked like she was close to death now; pale and hollow-eyed and hardly able to stay upright. Yet, in the depth of her eyes shone a sort of righteous glee.

It hurts her, Kevin realised. Making herself strong like that. It's rather like when Diana uses those implants of hers to give herself adrenalin bursts. Except this is even worse, because at least Diana merely falls asleep. I think this lady is very literally killing herself to get to us. Knowingly, and intentionally, and, God help me, gladly.

Lord help me, what sort of enemy am I facing here? What are they?

Before he could even begin to think of an answer, Skinny spotted him and Dennis at the end of the hallway, and ran at them. The other two witch-hunters were nowhere to be seen.

"Please do shoot her," Kevin said quickly. Dennis broke out of his stunned state, aimed the gun and fired. The shot went wide; a cloud of dust rose from the wall where he hit.

Kevin took a specially consecrated and rune-inscribed wand from his belt and made a quick, business-like flick with it. The thick carpet under Skinny slid, making her stumble. Somehow, though, she didn't fall, but regained her balance and kept running.

It was a pretty long hallway, for belonging to an apartment. But not that long.

Dennis swore, steadied the gun and squeezed off three more shots, as quickly as he could. One went wide, another clipped Skinny in the arm – more a cut than a real wound, and she barely seemed to notice it – but the third struck home in the woman's gaunt stomach.

She stumbled back a few steps and dropped to her knees. And then she threw herself forward again, exploding forward from knee-standing like a sprinter. Kevin couldn't believe what he was seeing. She should be dead, damn it, at the very least she was severely wounded, she should be lying on the floor struggling for every breath, and still she found the strength to not only move but to throw herself against him.

To her, her life was a reasonable price to pay for being able to take his.

She struck him dead on, a bony, tense body, clawing at him and covering him with blood. Kevin fell to the floor with her on top, screeching like a harpy. He felt her nails dig into his cheek and draw blood. Then she drew back her fist, and he could feel her summoning the strength one last time, using up the last of her reserves to finally reach her goal.

The revolver roared, and something warm and disgusting sprayed Kevin's face. Skinny fell off of him, her head a bloody, gory mess. Dennis had pressed the gun against her temple and pulled the trigger.

The young man stared at the dead woman on the floor, then to the gun in his hand.

"I… I…" he gasped. Then he dropped to his knees and threw up. Kevin could see tears running down his cheeks.

Bar brawls was one thing. Having your life threatened was another. And actually taking a human life was another still. Kevin could sympathise, but he could no longer remember when the taking of a life had last been a horrible thing, to be avoided at all cost. He had killed so many of the presumed 'enemy', back before he finally realised the futility of it.

In a way, he envied Dennis. He wished that he had been throwing up at the moment. Instead, he found himself thinking Blast. I will need to get a new carpet.

For a moment, it almost seemed to him as if the witch-hunters were right in wanting to kill him. If he couldn't feel more than this for the death of a human being, if it didn't mean more to him, what was he but the monster they said he was?

But no. He angrily shook off those feelings. No one would have died here tonight if this crazy bitch hadn't come here intent on killing him, killing his friends, and killing Dennis, who was a perfectly nice chap, even if he did presume too much.

The war might have left parts of him dead and cold, but he had walked away from the war by his own free will, and he deserved better than this. He deserved better than this.

Aside from which, he was Kevin Harsh bani Shaea, and he would submit to the judgement from no one but himself!

And because he was Kevin Harsh bani Shaea, and because he had friends who depended on him, he got up from the floor… and found himself looking straight into the eyes of Priest and Pudgy, who were standing two steps away from him, their expressions grim.

They had sacrificed a pawn, and now it was Scheck Mate.

"So." Priest didn't smirk. Kevin almost wished he would. A smirk would have been a human expression in this situation. It would have signalled the victory of one human being over another human being. Priest looked like he had just finished with an unpleasant but necessary job. Kevin got the feeling that he was regarded as something along the lines of a plugged toilet. "Two good people died tonight, witch. You will answer for that, too, when you stand before Satan."

"Indeed?" Kevin said tiredly. "Then I do hope that his Infernal Majesty has heard of the term 'justifiable manslaughter'."

"He'll probably be pretty upset with us," Dennis said, smirking. "Getting homicidal fucking maniacs off the streets is probably not something he approves of."

"You shut your filthy mouth!" Pudgy growled. "You sealed your fate when you first took up your unclean practices! We will rid the world of ones such as you!"

"And how, exactly, do you mean to do that?" Kevin said. "We are not a race, you know. We can't be hunted to extinction. By all means, you can probably rid the world of the craft itself, if you believe that would be such a splendid thing. But the raw talent will always find an outlet, and you have absolutely no way to keep it from manifesting. There will always be more of us."

"There will always be more of us, too," Pudgy said with absolute conviction. "The good Lord will see to that. You will never be rid of us."

"Well, that's just swell," Dennis said sarcastically. "No one can win. So you keep killing us, and we keep killing you, and both sides keeps getting refilled. Won't that be fun?"

Kevin wondered if Desmond would do something. Cause the veins in their brains to burst, maybe, or shatter the walls of their hearts. But no, he couldn't fool himself. Desmond needed to see the people he wanted to affect – most mages did – and in his injured condition, he couldn't be stealthy enough to see without being seen. Maybe if he stayed where he was, he could ambush the witch-hunters when they came in, get the both of them before they had a chance to attack him, and then at least he and Liron would be all right… but that didn't change the fact that Kevin would be dead no matter what.

"Don't listen to him," Priest said, sounding like he was giving a warning that was probably totally unnecessary, and which he only gave in case of the million-to-one chance that his listener would have forgotten about the danger. "He speaks with the Devil's tongue."

Kevin sighed.

"You know, I was rather certain that you would say something of the sort."

Priest took his gun out of his pocket.

"I must have forgotten to reload it," he said. "Witches always do have the Devil's own luck. But it's loaded now. I've checked twice." He placed the gun against Kevin's forehead. The muzzle was cold and hard. "Good-bye, witch."

"No," said a female voice. It sounded bored.

Priest's arm was knocked aside as by an invisible force, and the bullet went into the wall. It took Kevin half a second to realise that he was not, despite the likely prognosis a moment ago, dead. Luckily, it took Priest a full second to get his bearings.

Kevin struck his staff down on Priest's wrist. The gun fell from limp fingers. Kevin shouted three words in Latin, the weapon hit the floor in a way that caused it to bounce and roll right up to Dennis, who grabbed it.

"Freeze!" he shouted, apparently working on pure instinct brought on by hearing the word from countless movie policemen. He raised the gun in both hands.

Priest and Pudgy obediently froze. Skinny had been ready to die to get to the evil witches. Apparently her buddies were not quite so devoted.

Kevin looked past the two witch-hunters, to the doorway. There was a woman standing there, dressed in a black coat and with long, black hair falling down to her shoulders. She was slim, bordering on thin, and pretty in an unremarkable way. Her expression was one of detached curiosity.

And she held a notepad.

"I wondered if you were on their side or not," he said.

Notepad scowled.

"Oh, please. They're all God this and God that and 'oh my, we really have to do something about all those horrible monsters, don'tchaknow'." She winced. "No. But they were useful. I can't very well make observations if you're not doing your stuff, can I?"

"Observations?" Dennis said incredulously. "That's what you call this?"

"You're like them, aren't you?" Kevin said.

Notepad glanced at Priest and Pudgy, who was still standing with their backs to her, not wanting to do anything to make Dennis even more on edge than he already was.

"I'm nothing like them. But we share some abilities."

"You could have stepped in at any time," Kevin said tonelessly. "You could, conceivably, have stopped a great deal of… unpleasantness."

"I've been following that bunch of yahoos around for a week now," Notepad said flatly. "I had earned the data I could gather."

"And still you stepped in, in the end," Kevin noted in the same toneless voice.

"Yeah." Notepad shrugged. "I decided that, on balance, I liked you more than them. And I figured that they were probably going to go to jail anyway. I had no more use for them. You might at some point in the future provide me with more data."

"You bitch," Dennis said matter-of-factly. "You heartless, soulless, complete bitch on wheels."

Notepad smiled humourlessly.

"I do seem to recall hearing that before. But I'm the bitch that saved your hides. And I'm also the bitch who's going to save the world, eventually."

"Do you want to know what I've learned about saving the world?" Kevin said. "Do you want some data on that subject? As thanks for rescuing me and my friends, even if it took you a rather long time to get around to it?"

Notepad shrugged.

"By all means."

"It's impossible," Kevin said simply. "The world isn't saveable. If you try, you'll just end up another monster."

Notepad shook her head.

"No. I don't accept that."

Kevin sighed.

"Then you are like them, after all."

Notepad snorted, and walked out the door. Kevin heard her steps descend down the stairs.

He felt tired.

It was much later – in fact it was so much later that it was starting to get brighter outside. The police had come, taken away Priest and Pudgy – they had real names, of course, and Kevin had been told what they were, but he couldn't bother to remember them – filled the apartment and the street outside with forensics people and demanded a lot of statements, answers and accounts. Kevin had provided. When you dealt with Umbral entities on a regular basis, thinking up believable lies for the DPD wasn't really that much of a challenge.

Somewhere in all the ruckus, Desmond and Liron had been taken to the hospital. They were both going to be fine, after what Kevin had heard. And Veronica… well, there was really nothing he could do about her. All he could do was to wait for her to come back. She was strong and resourceful. There was every reason to believe that she would make it.

Kevin was sitting in one of the armchairs that he had intended to use for the Children of Sunset's weekly meeting, feeling more worn-out than he had in years. He wanted to sleep, but he didn't think he'd be able to. He'd just remember Skinny forcing her way to him through a rain of bullets, making her fragile body work even thought it was being torn apart from without by the violence inflicted on it and from within by whatever strange powers she had possessed. He would remember Priest's expression of dispassionate disgust, like Kevin was a loathsome stain on the world.

And he would remember Notepad saying I don't accept that.

That most of all.

In his life, he had met exactly one true villain. The rest of his enemies had been heroes. The villain had been worse, to be sure. She had been worse than anything. But people like her were few and far between, and heroes were a dime a dozen.

If there weren't so many people out there wanting to save the world, he thought glumly, then the world wouldn't need so much bloody saving.

"Hey." Dennis walked into the room. "The last of the cops have left now. You've got your privacy back."

"That is most appreciated," Kevin said wearily. "Though I daresay they will be back. And I will probably have to testify. I can think of quite a few more pleasant ways to spend a day than that."

"I don't doubt it." Dennis put down a piece of paper on the table. "Here's my number. You said you'd introduce me to some more people like you…" He hesitated. "… like us… right?"

"Oh, so now you believe in magick?" Kevin said, smiling faintly. Desmond smiled back in the same crooked way.

"Let's just say that my list of world-views that might be correct got a whole lot shorter tonight."

Kevin chuckled tiredly.

"Quite," he said. "And yes, of course I will introduce you to certain people. I can think of quite a few… deserving… mages."

"Was that a veiled insult or a veiled compliment?" Dennis said, sounding amused.

"Perhaps simply a veiled observation," Kevin said smoothly.

"Right. Well, they can call me on that number." He smiled. "And, well, seeing as two of your friends will be in the hospital for a while, and another one is, well, in Hell, I thought… if you wanted someone to have dinner with or whatever until they're back in action… then you could call me on that number?"

Kevin looked uneasy.

"I don't date," he said simply.

Dennis sighed.

"Yeah. You told me. Well, okay then. Bye…"

He started walking out of the room, but before he was across the threshold, Kevin forced himself to speak again. He talked fast, to prevent the words from sticking in his throat.

"I don't want her to win," he said, as he had once before. "But I don't know how to prevent it."

Dennis turned his head and smiled at Kevin. It was a nice smile; unlike the way Dennis looked most of the time, it wasn't the least bit teasing. It was warm. Kevin liked to be smiled at that way.

"If you figure it out, give me a call, okay?" he said.

Then he left.

Kevin remained where he sat for a long while, staring on the wall.