Anna gripped the briefcase a little more tightly as she walked down the dark path alone towards the Heart Bridge. The Kubota Gardens were some of Seattle's rare green spaces, maintained by Shiawase on behalf of the corporate executives who had a soft spot for the Japanese-style gardens. She knew shamans who spent some time in the area, soaking in the rare feeling of nature and tranquility in the busy, grimy world that they lived in. She preferred hunching over her books in her piece of drek apartment, listening to the creak of her cheap chair and plywood desk as she shifted and the rain drumming on her cracked window. It was tenement housing, honestly little better than squatting in an empty building, but she had enough flickering power to run a light and a trid player, which was all she really needed aside from her books. It was only two rooms, a cramped bathroom and a bedroom that doubled as her lodge, but she missed it intensely now that she knew she wouldn't be going back to it for a while, if ever.
Church's safe-house had been a little house tucked away in Renton near the edge of the barrens, surrounded by gang signs and broken windows, but relatively undamaged itself. No one seemed to pay it much mind, probably because the locals knew that the Vory made use of it now and again. There weren't qutie enough gunshots or breaking windows or shouts for her to feel comfortable, but Church's presence and a shot of bliss, which she'd snuck while the Russian was out of the room, made it possible to actually sleep. She was feeling better now, but nervous. There was no sign of Church anywhere and Anna had to hope that the Russian was nearby without any trouble.
She'd thought about summoning a spirit as back up, but she wasn't very good at it still.
There was no sign of Mr. Johnson anywhere, at least until she tripped. There was a splash when she landed painfully on the briefcase and a low, guttural moan. Her hands had struck the puddle, splashing dark liquid on her arms. Her only light was the silver glow of the moon when it peeked out from behind the clouds that crowded it out. It was enough illumination to realize that she'd just stumbled over a body.
His light colored eyes were glazed, staring at her but seeing nothing. His tie was askew, revealing a deep wound to the center of his chest. She could see past his cracked sternum to the ragged hole where his heart should have been. There was a faint glimmer of magic, a health spirit lingering in the area. It was weak and tired, barely holding him to unnatural life. Mr. Johnson was a dead man, and she wasn't going to be able to heal that.
The blood all over her hands and legs was still warm. His killer had to be in the area, and the lack of Church suggested that it wasn't the Russian's doing. Anna could feel panic starting in her chest.
"Church, he's dead," she whispered softly, knowing that the mic she was wearing would still pick it up. "We need to go."
She heard a laugh, sudden and clear. It sounded like a woman's, but there was also a dry, almost synthetic chuckle from another person behind her. A hand grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her upward, earning a yelp from Anna as she scrambled to her feet to avoid having it ripped out by the handful. She glanced at them through astral eyes, only to see a powerful mage ahead and a black essence hole behind her. He had to be a cyberpsycho with that much augmentation, but there was still magic flowing through his body.
Not the good kind.
"So Tlaloc was right," the woman in front of her said with a grin as the cyberpsycho grabbed Anna by her arms and held her firmly in place. "Our runner is a mage. You might even be powerful, if you were trained." She stepped out into the light. A pretty face, but not one that would stand out in a crowd. She had fair hair like Anna's own and tan skin like she spent a lot of time out in the sun, not a popular look in Seattle with the frequent acid rain. "I'd like my briefcase, runner. But first, let's hear your name."
Anna shook her head. Names had power, as any spirit would be quick to say.
"Tell me."
The compulsion was a writhing, red-hot need in the pit of her stomach. She could feel the words trying to claw their way up and out of her throat, but she bit down on her lip until it bled to keep herself from saying anything. The mage stepped forward.
"I admire your resolve, runner. Most can't resist me." She reached out with a finger, gently catching the drop of blood as it rolled down Anna's chin. "Don't worry, this will do."
Anna felt the dread hit like a runaway train and fear rose swiftly from the wreckage. A cold sweat was starting across her body as she watched the female mage study the little droplet of blood on her fingertip. "Who are you?" she managed to whisper through the copper taste and the knot in her throat.
The woman looked at her with a wicked smile and eyes alight with a feverish, unnaturally hungry glow before licking the blood off her finger. "Give me the briefcase, Anna."
A suppressed gunshot rang out and Anna heard a crack before something wet hit her shoulder: blood and a chunk of flesh from the cyberpsycho's face. Instead of a frozen silence, he let out an animalistic, feline growl and dropped Anna.
She shot forward, booking it towards the darkness on the other end of the bridge. It was a guess, but she knew the Russian had to be somewhere across the water. Anna felt a powerful spell flare to life and heard chanting, the kind of unforgiving thing that would sear the flesh off her bones. Briefcase is warded, she thought, her body already moving. She whipped around and threw up the briefcase between her and the wicked lightning bolt struck it instead of her. There was an explosion that flung her back off her feet
The air reeked of mana, overpowering even the smell of ozone. Anna could feel it crackling across her skin, wreathing her in a strange orange glow as something attuned to the flow of energy through her own body. She could see the spirit bending down towards her, so powerful that it blotted out everything else in her astral perception as well as her normal vision. It looked like a beautiful woman with red and black hair, golden eyes like a predatory bird's, taloned feet, and an owl's wings in place of arms. The face was perfect to the point of ethereality, shining like the moon and very much otherworldly. Anna suddenly felt herself pulled outside of time, outside of her body. For a moment, it was her looking down at her own scorched, damaged body as if she was the spirit. Then the world blurred and she felt a horrific agony explode through her being as the spirit connected with her. It was too much energy, like grabbing on to a powerline. Her bloody, scorched body started to writhe and choke on the ground in the throes of spirit possession.
"We have to go!" someone was shouting as they scooped her struggling body up.
She heard a scream of rage from the direction of the mage and the cyberpsycho. For a moment, she could see through the pain. The mage was there, right hand flaring with crackling purple energy, and so was a hulking beast of a man with strange, stylized tattoos of a big cat's face over his own.
Church raced away, carrying Anna. She wasn't stupid enough to try to fight that behemoth and a mage, not if it was possible to get away. Meanwhile, the dancer forced herself to grit her teeth against the pain, trying not to scream. Eventually, it reduced to just twitching, muscles slowly relaxing and unclenching themselves. Her blood burned with agonizing heat in her veins, but she didn't feel some external effect. Whatever it was, it was inside of her now. Her skin looked bone white against the bloodstain and the dark of Church's clothes. Hot tears dripped down her cheeks, mingling with the blood from her lip.
Her Russian rescuer slid out of the way down an embankment and bolted towards her motorcycle. "Anna, I need a ward," Church's voice said, cutting through the haze of pain. "They will just blow us apart."
The mage nodded through the blur, conjuring up a ward more powerful than she had intended. The chant tripped off her bloodied lips, fingers weaving a pattern on Church's shoulder. Glowing orange energy covered their backs, rippling when a bolt of lightning struck it but sustaining itself. The hulking figure was closing on them quickly, however, and Anna doubted she would be able to sustain it against that kind of joint assault. "Church, I can't—"
Church pushed her onto the motorcycle, this time in front so she could hold Anna onto the bike. She gunned the engine to life and took off, grateful that it was one of the Japanese racing bikes usually preferred by the Ancients and other speed demons. "Hold it as long as you can." The Russian's voice was tight and clipped from concentration or maybe stress. She was trying to weave in evasive patterns, but that was easier said than done. Once they were in Seattle traffic and not a side road and parking lots, it would be trivial to lose a tail.
Anna gasped as she felt something shift inside her, like something astral settling in and making itself comfortable within her own essence. She held tighter to Church, fingers fisting in the material of the elf's jacket.
They didn't stop until they'd woven through about six different gang territories back in Redmond, hoping to slow pursuit with gangers who would take exception to a pair like that. Granted, they were big enough fish that they might spook even the neighborhood baddies off. Church knew what she was doing as far as losing a tail. She pulled into the garage outside a run-down tenement. Not Anna's place, but definitely an equally cramped, dirty hole in the wall. There were people in the hallway trying to sleep under newspapers, some of them chipheads who were still jacked in or tweakers high on their particular poison. No one looked too hard at Church carrying a barely-conscious Anna through the halls, particularly not since she was heading towards Doc Carver's place.
A sign on the door she stopped in front of was plain wood with flaking white paint announcing "Clinik Hear" and a badly drawn red snake wrapping around a vertical line with cartoon wings on either side. Church knocked and then pushed the door open without waiting for a response, carefully maneuvering the mage through the door so she wouldn't hit her head on the frame. "Anna," Church said urgently. "Talk to me."
"It's inside," Anna said through the agony. Power crackled through her body, scorching Church's armor to the point where small curls of smoke rose from the Russian's sleeves and chest. It was orange, the same shade as most flame. Anna wasn't certain what was going on. Her plain mana had always been a brilliant blue. She was slowly becoming aware enough to realize that something really wasn't right, mostly because the pain was slowly ebbing down to a manageable level. "I'm okay."
"You don't look okay," Church said, setting her down on a table that was covered with a clean white sheet. "You almost match the sheet." She turned around when she heard feet approaching. "Allo, Doc."
"Damn it, Church, it's late," an elderly dwarf groused as he stomped into the room. He stopped when he saw Anna. "Well, she looks terrible."
"I was hoping you could help."
The dwarf paused and considered his prospective patient, glowing blue cyber eyes zooming in. "Well, judging by all the magic, looks like it might be beyond me." He walked more quietly over to Anna's side, pulling on nitrile gloves before starting to poke and prod. He turned over and arm and pulled up her sleeve. "Well, a bliss addict. That might be our solution to this little problem. I'll give her a good dose and we can see what that does. Was it a mage that did this?"
Anna shook her head. "Spirit." She went to sit up with a grimace and found herself pinned to the table by Church. "I'm okay."
"I disagree." Church's tone was particularly forbidding at the moment. "What kind of spirit?"
"Nothing like anything I've seen." Anna could feel exhaustion creeping in along with the strange, burning energy. It was a strange feeling to be so wired and so tired at the same time. "Old and powerful."
"Well, shall we see if this helps?" Doc was pulling out a syringe as he spoke and drawing a dose of bliss out of a plastic test tube. Without really waiting for an answer, he was feeling for a vein and then worked his way between needle marks to deliver a shot of the drug.
Anna wasn't a combative patient, not when he was promising to give her a badly needed fix. She just wanted to check out for a little while at this point. The familiar burning sensation in her veins quickly faded to be replaced by a definite sense of relief. Quickly, she was floating again, surrounded by warm and placid clouds. She was still superficially aware of what was going on, but she barely had the interest to process it. She knew her whole body had relaxed and her face had arranged itself into that sleepy smile that marked bliss addicts. "Better," she sighed.
"So, my dear, is it a good spirit?" Doc was probing for more information, no doubt hoping to narrow down his diagnosis.
"It inflicted a lot of pain." Anna's response was a murmur, barely audible. "If it were still around, I could ask it."
The dwarf checked her pulse and then her pupils. "Not as relaxed as I'd expected," he said. "The euphoria is there, but the other effects seem...dampened. Now, I'm not a magical expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I saw things like this in Chicago with the Universal Brotherhood. I do believe our young friend is no longer the loneliest number in that body of hers."
Anna sensed more than saw Church's frown through the fog. "What do we do? Is there a way to get rid of it?" The Russian sounded frustrated.
"That entirely depends upon its power, from what I understand. We're going to need a shaman to take a look at her and figure out what this spirit is and what it wants."
"She has my blood," Anna said, the non sequitur breaking through the conversation. "I bet to track me."
Doc Carver looked distinctly worried at that comment. "That is not standard magic. Even I know that. Church, what have you gotten yourself into?"
Church didn't answer, which was a good indicator that she didn't particularly care. "Will she take long to recover?"
The dwarf street doc shrugged expressively. "You're carrying her, Church. Let me put on shoes and grab my bag."
"You're coming?" The Russian raised an eyebrow slightly. "You don't normally stick your neck out, Doc."
"Yeah, well, I like it when you owe me favors. I've got some neighborhood problems I could use your special skills in handling," he said with a toothy grin as he sat down and pulled on steel-toed boots. The dwarf knew how much getting hit in the foot hurt. He grabbed his bag. "I know a rat shaman just down the street. And by down, I mean in the storm drains."
Church nodded before scooping up Anna, probably grateful that it wasn't in the sewers. She might have been able to walk before that shot of bliss, but the doc had given her a serious dose of the stuff. She was pretty checked out. "Is he going to be able to get a read on her like this?"
"Well, we'll find out. Now move it."
Anna let her head loll against Church's shoulder, too relaxed to even really grab ahold of the killer's jacket. She felt like she was wrapped in a warm blanket and everything was going to be perfectly fine. Coming down would be a rude welcome back to a cold, grey world, but Anna was used to the grim awakening. She'd been hooked on the stuff for more than a year now, courtesy of Leto and a drug dealer named Max. The little arcs of power were coming more and more infrequently as the spirit adjusted to her body, blending its essence and power with her own.
Getting down into the storm drains was a challenge with a barely-conscious young woman. Church had to pry up the grate, then drop down and have Doc pass her Anna. After a few minutes, though, they were well below street level and in safety. Rat shamans could be very territorial, even if many of the goblinoid ones had associations with the Ork Underground. "So you said you knew this shaman?" Church asked as they passed by a painted image of a rat totem and into the depths of the section that had been hollowed out by water and careful construction work by the shamans themselves, aided by earth spirits.
"Patched him up a couple times," Doc said with a shrug. "Like most of the 'hood, really. Gang scraps and such. There have been a few scuffles between the Ancients and the Underground in the area. He got caught in the crossfire, by which I mean he geeked an Ancient mage and got shot for his trouble. Almost drew the spade himself. His name's Monterey Jack."
Anna giggled. "Like the cheese?" she slurred.
Doc gave her a warning look. "I wouldn't say that in front of him. Got a little bit of a temper, which ain't all that attractive on a troll."
"Got it," Church said as they wove through the subterranean network of drains and tunnels. The ground was slick and wet, reeking of mildew and molds. It wasn't raining at the moment, but there was still about an inch of water in the system. There were rats everywhere too, scurrying from dry spot to dry spot or grooming themselves. None of the three paid them much mind. For one, Anna and Doc were used to them getting into their respective apartments and two, all of them knew that hurting a rat would not endear them to Monterey Jack or any other rat shaman in the area.
They sloshed probably a couple city blocks before Doc held up a hand. They were outside of a ramshackle shelter built against the wall out of plywood, two-by-fours, and a lot of optimism. It was painted with magical symbols and images of rats. Two devil rats were playing tug of war with what looked suspiciously like a human or metahuman rib bone. They were hairless, pale, wrinkled rats with spines and sharp teeth, each rodent nearly a meter long. Doc made a shooing motion at them. Both hissed, showing off their yellowed incisors, before darting away into the darkness. Church could barely see even with elven eyes, mostly through the light coming through storm drains. Anna was completely in the dark. Doc could see fine, of course.
"Come in," a deep voice boomed from inside the construction. No doubt their warm bodies stood out starkly from the cold background, easily visible to troll eyes.
"Heya, Jack," Doc said as he stepped in, shaking his head and wiping at his beard to get rid of some of the water that he'd accumulated on his journey. They'd stopped briefly on the way so Church could bundle Anna in her coat. Bliss tended to slow the metabolism of the body a little, which included heat production. It meant that Church looked like a failed drowning victim, but Anna was warm enough to survive. Her hoodie hadn't been able to withstand this much water, even treated as it was with water repellent. "This is Church. That's Anna."
There was a sharp inhale from the eight-foot-tall figure who crouched in the structure in front of a small radiant heater. He was smelling his guests. "Your friend is very...sick," he said, gesturing at Anna. "And most certainly Awakened. She shines like a beacon of power. No mage within a few city blocks could miss her."
"Not good," Church muttered as she gently set Anna down on the floor. It was mostly dry, only a few leaks coming in. She managed to avoid positioning the dancer in one. "Doc thinks she's possessed."
"I have not felt anything like such a thing," Monterey Jack said. He was visible only as shadows and a few striking features in the glow of the radiant heater. He was a sturdy troll, two horns curving back from his forehead like a ram's. He was covered in shamanic symbols painted in a red ochre color across his greenish-grey skin. Bone fetishes covered his body, rattling with every movement. He had a twisted staff resting against his shoulder that emanated a small amount of magical power that Anna could detect even in her current state. It was definitely a summoning focus, so they'd come to the right place. "This is...old magic."
"How old?" Doc asked.
Jack inhaled deeply again. "From the world before the last world."
Church raised an eyebrow. "Fourth World magic?"
"I believe so," the troll said. "I can see the spirit's aura bleeding into her own. There is little distinction between them. Not a possession as most mages might think. It is...a bonding. There are spirits that attach to souls they believe they can use or aid. Most pass on their wisdom and are called mentor spirits. I have never heard of one deigning to share a body with a mage. Perhaps the spirit believed that it had no choice. Did she see the spirit?"
Doc snapped his fingers in front of Anna's face until her eyes focused on him. "What did it look like, girly?"
Anna smiled dreamily, still riding her high. "She was beautiful. Red and black hair, eyes golden and like a bird's, soft wings for arms, and taloned feet."
"Hmm. Maybe a spirit of air," Jack murmured. He looked down at Anna with some sympathy in his eyes. "Did it tell you its name, child?"
She tried to concentrate, but she felt herself drifting. An answer bubbled to the surface in a different, honeyed voice. Anna's lips moved without her input. "I am the Howler in the Desert, the Queen of the Night, the Breaker of Chains, She Who Walks Without Shame…"
Church went rigid at the sound of that voice. It was distinctly not Anna's.
"So I take it she doesn't usually sound like that." Jack didn't sound terribly concerned, his tone almost conversational. "Well, with names like those and the beacon-like quality, this is a unique spirit. How'd you manage to find something like this in Seattle?"
"She has a gift for trouble," Church said dryly. She frowned a little before looking at Jack. "Can a mage track someone by blood?"
Jack looked at her, his eyes suddenly narrowed. "Why?"
"She thinks someone has her blood and is trying to find her. Probably just the bliss, but is it possible?" Doc said quickly.
"Get out." Jack's voice was menacing, but his eyes were wide with fear.
Doc bristled. "Look here, Jack, you owe me!" the dwarf snapped, wagging a finger at the troll.
"Not enough to step in this, Doc. And you shouldn't step in it either. If a blood mage wants her, we'd all be better served getting out of their way. Some things you can't fight," Monterey Jack said, shaking his head. "Get her out of here before they track her to me. I want nothing to do with any of this."
"Your lodge is warded," Church said with a cold rationality, barely maintaining a grip on her own temper. "They would not be able to track her here."
Monterey Jack shook his head. "You don't know what these people are capable of."
Doc grabbed Church's arm before she could hurl herself at the troll mage. "Forget it, Church. We can find help somewhere else. Just grab her and let's go."
The Russian nodded and picked up Anna, hurrying out of the shack after Doc. This was far, far from over and she had no intention of just walking away.