While Graves spent the first few days huddled in his study, pretending to pore over the case files that needed his attention, it turned out that circumstances left him less time to stew (in his misery, in his failures) than he expected. Certainly he felt the ache around where his long-dormant heart rested in his chest, and he still felt a surge of disappointment when he saw that Credence's coat no longer hung on its hook.
But the print on the pages he stared at slowly began to resolve themselves. Eventually they were no longer just a jumble of lines, were instead meaningful language.
A week after Credence left (after he had sent Credence somewhere safer), Graves found something.
The sheaves of paper scattered around his study painted an ugly, worrisome tableau.
Graves had long since abandoned the idea of keeping a fire in the hearth; no one was left in his home who cared about the cold, and he had other concerns besides. With the sun set, he'd thrown open the shutters to let the pale moonlight in, and he had used his wand to summon a few floating sparks of light to ensure his eyes weren't deceiving him in the dark.
They were not.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise, Graves thought. Not really. Of course, Grindelwald had abused Graves's position of power to seek out an obscurial without raising any suspicion, but it was ludicrous to assume he hadn't done other things. And now, after days of combing every single case that had ever crossed his desk while Grindelwald was behind it, Graves had the vague outline of what some of those things had been. Aided, perhaps, by the impressions of Grindelwald's mind that he'd gleaned when he'd been forced to feed on the dark wizard (don't), a picture resolved itself in his mind's eye.
If it wouldn't result—had likely already resulted—in loss of life, Graves might have appreciated the artistry of it. An insurance policy of sorts, he supposed, in case Grindelwald's mission to retrieve the obscurial failed. The files told of a web of traffickers of stolen magical goods, of sentences commuted, of infractions forgiven, of a hundred points in a constellation. Good gods.
Graves grabbed his jacket and waved his wand in the direction of his shutters to latch them shut. Then, more swiftly than any mere human had hope of being, he apparated to MACUSA's headquarters.
He made for Abernathy's desk first, as the most senior of his aurors on duty at this hour. With some effort, he kept himself from moving with vampiric speed; it was better to let his aurors see him coming.
To Abernathy's credit, he managed to push himself away from his desk and stand without knocking anything over or stammering as he said, "Mister Graves, sir. You're back early."
Graves ignored the statement of the obvious. "Listen very closely: we may be on the brink of a catastrophic event which is on the same order of magnitude as an unbridled obscurus. I need you to assemble a team for me and meet me in my office in twenty minutes."
Abernathy stared at him, gobsmacked, for a moment too long. Gods, if the man hadn't proven himself a sharp duelist and good with illusion charms, Graves would have demoted him to paperwork duty just because of his nerves. He cleared his throat, which had the desired effect of galvanizing Abernathy into motion. "Yessir! On it!"
His subordinate having been alerted, he had no more need to move at human speeds. He hurried to his office more quickly than any of his aurors would be able to track, and spent the twenty minutes he'd given himself assembling his case.
With a flick of his wand, copies of the files arranged themselves mid-air, oriented by infraction, location, and when they had come to Grindelwald's attention while he had been impersonating Graves. He drew arcs of light in the air between the floating papers to connect the dots for his audience, and he managed to put the final touches on the web just before his door swung open.
Graves didn't need to be facing them as they filed in to know what sort of a team Abernathy had assembled for him. Coronado and Mallory weren't a surprise; the both of them and Abernathy had been thick as thieves since they'd been junior aurors. Goldstein, though, that was a shock. It spoke volumes about how seriously Abernathy was taking the situation that he would wake her up, given how much he resented her reinstatement and how much she resented his treatment of her during Grindelwald's administration.
All in all, Abernathy had assembled a serviceable team.
Graves turned to face them, slipping his wand into his pocket. Mallory had been on duty with Abernathy, so she was primly dressed and wore her regulation leather duster. Coronado and Goldstein had both apparated in hastily donned clothing from the day before, though Coronado seemed a bit more put together than his other compatriot. Everyone wore a grim expression. Good. It meant they understood the gravity of the situation.
"Thank you all for your presence and punctuality," Graves drawled. "It seems that we have a bit of an emergency." He sketched a wide gesture with one arm that encompassed all of the floating papers. "Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, what do you see?"
Coronado snorted. "A damn sorry reason to drag a man out of bed." Mallory stifled a snicker behind one hand.
Graves scowled. He could do with less of Coronado's attitude, but he let it go for the moment. "Look harder."
He studied his aurors' faces as they, in turn, studied what he'd laid out for them. There wasn't an auror in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that he hadn't hand-selected. None of them were stupid.
Understanding dawned on Goldstein's face first (she was like an open book, would never succeed at undercover work), but he suspected that Mallory had been a little quicker on the uptake. Abernathy's eyes widened, and then, finally, Coronado's lips turned down in a frown.
"Sir." Abernathy shifted from foot to foot. That tic usually meant he was holding on to a question he didn't want to ask.
Coronado saved him the trouble. "We know the who and the what, but do we know the when or the where? 'Cause from where I'm standing, those are some pretty big blanks in this happy little picture you've drawn. Sir."
Mallory shook her head. "No, see, we got a good guess to the where. He was clever about it, but all these guys over here and over here?" She gestured with her wand to circle two sets of files in blue light. "I helped bust half of 'em. They work outta the west side but I heard some of 'em got seen slinking around some docks on the Hudson. I'd lay money that that's our where."
"Very good," Graves said, finding it in himself to be pleased despite the situation. She'd picked up on something he hadn't seen.
"But we'd still need to narrow it down," Abernathy protested. "And what about the when?"
Goldstein finally spoke. "I've got a guess. Grindelwald's extradition is in three days. Once he gets on that boat, that whole area gets burned to ash."
"Worse," said Coronado. "It's no good to Grindelwald's cause if it can't be pinned on magic. Those stolen goods… I'd lay money that they're going to use them for something…" He flapped his hand in the air as if to catch the words. "Transfiguration. On a massive scale."
"Good eye, Coronado. I doubt we have as long as Goldstein suggests," Graves said. "We've always suspected that Grindelwald has a way to get communications out of his holding cell. Whether it's a mole or some other means, it doesn't matter. We have to operate on the assumption that we're almost out of time."
"Well, boss, what now?" Coronado asked, pushing one hand through his hair in a motion that Graves recognized as a particularly egregious tell. He'd likely keep doing it until they left the building.
"Wish we still had Peter, God rest 'im," Mallory muttered, crossing herself and bowing her head. "Having the Hound woulda been real nice right about now."
The words hit Graves harder than any physical blow he'd taken. It had been decades since his body could feel nausea, but his mind provided a convenient memory. He closed his eyes against it.
Peter's face stared up at him, slack-jawed, eyes wide with betrayal. He had no throat, just a mess of flesh that had been shredded. Peter's lips twitched as if to say something, then stilled. Something hot and wet and thick dripped off Graves's chin.
He heard himself (no, him) sigh. "Such a waste. Are you prepared to pay this price until I get what I came for, Percy?"
No, no, no, no, no—
Goldstein's voice pulled him back from the precipice. "Mister Graves?"
"Unfortunately, we will have to make do without the services of Mister Galen," Graves ground out. Gods, he could still feel the heat of the blood on his lips, in his throat. Lord and Lady. "We'll work with what we have. Coronado, Goldstein, get your regulation leathers and meet Abernathy, Mallory, and myself in the atrium."
After a brief disagreement—Goldstein and Abernathy against; Coronado, Mallory, and Graves for—they decided to split up. There was safety in numbers, and the circumstances were dangerous, but the dire situation called for the speed of searching separate areas individually. As a concession, Graves sent Goldstein to fetch a handful of canary chits: small tokens painted like yellow birds that were charmed to call out the bearer's location if the token were damaged. It wasn't much, but with any luck, they would go unused.
Graves suspected they would not be lucky. The grim set of his team's faces told him they did not disagree.
He took a moment to mark out which areas each of his team members would be searching, then distributed the chits. "You know what to do," he said. "Good luck."
One by one, they apparated away with Graves the last to go.
He'd assigned himself the largest area given his supernatural speed, but even this did not save him from two hours of fruitless searching. It would not do to give in to the mounting sense of despair, but the night dragged on and sunrise loomed closer and the urge to engage in useless casual destruction grew.
His senses were overtaxed and he felt the weight of the sun (only an hour or so away from rising, by his estimation) in the way the space behind his eyes itched. He'd heard nothing from his team, which could only mean that their searches had turned up just as much as his.
Something snagged his attention as he drew close to a quiet warehouse near the far end of his assigned area. At first he thought he imagined it, but no, there it was again. A shiver of magic ran down his spine. Someone had erected an anti-apparition field over this plain no-maj building.
Graves held his wand at the ready as he approached.
Inside the field, everything was soaked in stray magic. Any doubts that he'd found the right place were dispelled. All that remained was locating whatever Grindelwald's people had cobbled together out of the stolen goods.
He strained his hearing, listening for signs of life, and he was not disappointed. He heard several heartbeats, the shuffling of feet on concrete. The walls did little to muffle them, and it was trivial to find a window far away from them to force open and climb through.
From there, his search did not take long.
He didn't know what he was looking at, not exactly. A notice-me-not charm hung in the air, twisting it like heat rising off the streets in summer. It wasn't the work of a single powerful wizard, rather the efforts of a handful of undisciplined people trying to stitch their magics together. Graves could cut through it with a flick of his wand, he was sure. But there were at least six separate heartbeats in this building. As soon as he dispelled it, they would be on him.
His fingers ran over the canary chit in his pocket while he weighed his options. If he'd had the foresight to take some blood, Grindelwald's agents here wouldn't have been a problem. Whatever the device was, it oozed enough magical energy to make Graves's teeth ache. He discarded the idea of simply waiting for backup. The pulse of power beneath the notice-me-not charm had grown steadily even in the few moments he'd been gripped by indecision.
No, he had to take care of this. Now.
One hand holding his wand at the ready, he brought the canary chit out of his pocket and let it drop to the dusty floor. He waved his wand in a broad stroke and muttered under his breath, "Finite incantatum." As his magic shredded the offending charm, he crushed the canary chit under the heel of his boot.
The token under his boot let out a banshee-like shriek before the enchantment took from and swirled up into the air. With any luck (hah!), at least Goldstein or Mallory would find him soon. The din of the canary chit's magic overwhelmed Graves's hearing, but there was no possible way that the other six occupants weren't on their way. He had less than a minute. If that.
The magic of the revealed device hummed high and loud as if in response to the canary enchantment's screeching. Even without the charm hiding it, Graves still had trouble keeping his gaze from sliding off of it. His bones vibrated in its presence as if it were reaching out to draw him in by his marrow.
His hand rose in a vague, sluggish gesture as he invoked a shielding charm. The air shimmered white for a moment, then faded as the object sucked the magic in. The hum rose in pitch again. It nearly drowned out the calamitous footsteps running down the rickety staircase.
Graves turned to face the approaching wizards, wand held at the ready. The skin on his back crawled with the electric charge of the device. Facing away from it felt infinitely more dangerous than not confronting Grindelwald's agents, but what choice did he have?
He'd barely finished pivoting toward the five wizards (three women, two men; damn, where did the sixth one go?) before the first crackling hex flew toward him. Graves deflected it with a counterspell, sending it careening off toward the far wall. Before it struck, the hex curved around and streaked back behind Graves. Heat and light rushed over him like some sort of magical blow-back. Damn. Whatever was happening was not good.
A jinx whizzed past his head, dragged into the strange object by its magnetic pull. The hum climbed in pitch to a wail. One of the wizards shouted. Behind her, Tina Goldstein swirled into being with her wand and chin both held high.
There was no point in talking, he doubted his voice would carry even if he could shout over the calamitous screaming of the device. Instead he cast a half-hearted protego to show her what happened to spellwork here. The strands of the glimmering shield flowed over him, and he deflected another curse that followed the shield charm into the device.
Goldstein's eyes widened and she nodded.
The people standing between her and Graves had yet to notice the other auror behind them. And Graves intended to keep it that way. He took two steps forward—hard-earned with the device at his back trying to pull him in—and hurled a hastily muttered expelliarmus at the woman directly in front of Goldstein. His aim was true, but the spell never landed. It turned back on him just short of the woman's chest, and only his vampiric reflexes allowed him to parry the spell with his wand before he lost it.
Everything exploded into flashes of color and searing magic. Seizing on the opportunity to attack without fear of retaliation, all five of Grindelwald's agents flung hexes at him. He turned them all aside, sending sparks of energy flying as some of them bounced off the floor but most were eaten by the device.
Using the fight to her advantage (gods bless Goldstein for being able to think on her feet), Goldstein aimed a stunning spell at the farthest witch from her. The spell hit its mark and the woman dropped to the ground. The clatter of her wand was overshadowed by the hisses and pops of the fight and the growing whine of the device. Goldstein stunned two more of them before the remaining two caught on.
The last wizard and witch standing both turned on Goldstein, the magnetic draw of the device rendering their wand-hands just a little too slow. She stunned them both before either of them had the chance to utter so much as a jinx.
"Good work, Goldstein!" Graves shouted over the din. The artifact didn't seem to take his words, at least. "We need to contain this before it does whatever they made it to do!"
"What about the others?" she called as she picked her way over the unmoving bodies of their erstwhile attackers. "This is big. Can we do it with just the two of us?"
"You can use your canary but we don't have time to wait."
Goldstein nodded, dropped her chit on the ground, and crushed it under her boot. The enchantment triggered, the magic screamed in the air and then died as the device consumed it. If the rest of the team had not heard Graves's canary, as seemed likely, he and Goldstein were on their own.
He reached out and offered her a hand once she was close enough. The pull of the device rattled his bones, but Goldstein's cool, sure grip and steady pulse helped ground him. Something in it must have been responding to his vampiric nature, rather than simply his human magic. He tugged Goldstein to his side and turned to face the artifact.
It defied observation. Based on the case files he'd read, he had a good idea of the components that went into it, but his eyes couldn't settle on any one thing. It shed his gaze like water rolling off a duck's back. He raised his wand, and Goldstein followed suit. "Standard shield charms won't work," he said.
"Can we disrupt it so we can put up a shield? Then move it somewhere safe?"
He didn't bother telling her that it was pointless to ask. She knew, just as Graves did, that their only option was to try and hope they weren't wrong. Or too late. He nodded and raised his wand, a motion which she mirrored.
"Divellius," Graves intoned. The tip of his wand sparked and the threads of magic wrapped themselves around the device. The humming dropped in pitch. Some of the object's outline solidified in his view, though he still couldn't make out any details.
At his side, Goldstein wove a shimmering net of shielding spells and cast it over the artifact. The golden glow bowed inward, then snapped into place. The humming dropped to an almost imperceptible level. Sweat prickled on Goldstein's brow, and her wand hand shook with the strain, but her containment held. "I might need some help moving this, sir," she said with a trembling voice.
A disarming spell whizzed through the air, and it was only by the barest margin that Graves managed to put himself between it and Goldstein. He deflected it with a fluid swish of his wand, and it bounced harmlessly off the far wall. Graves scanned the room and he allowed himself a moment to swear at his own negligence; Goldstein had dispatched five of Grindelwald's agents. Graves had identified six heartbeats in the warehouse.
The sixth agent, a young witch with a round, open face and hatred burning in her eyes, leveled her wand at Goldstein. "We will live in the shadows no more!" she hissed. She raised her wand, noxious green glow collecting at its tip like poison. "Avada— "
Graves didn't wait for her to finish the spell. He threw himself at Goldstein's side, tackling her to the concrete floor before the killing curse could find its mark. She let out a startled grunt, tried instinctively to fight Graves's hold on her, but she lost her grip on the containment spell.
The object shrieked as it ate the remains of Goldstein's handiwork, ate the witch's killing curse, ate the witch's high, triumphant laughter. "We will live in the shadows no more!" she screamed again before flinging herself bodily onto the artifact.
Time seemed to slow, as it often did when staring down near-certain death. Graves saw the witch crumple, her body twisted at odd angles as the object devoured her. Everything rose to a fever pitch and the object began to spit splinters of magic. Whatever it was meant to do, it was about to do it.
He muttered a prayer to the Lord and Lady; he'd never excelled in protective magic, not the way Goldstein had. But he had no choice now but to try. He twisted to cast a protective net like the one Goldstein had made, but his work wasn't as sure. It pinched and bent in places where the object tried to consume it, and bowed outward where shards of raw energy bounced against it. He felt the strain down to his marrow. Gods, grant him the strength…
Underneath him, Goldstein slithered to where she could aim her wand at the protections Graves had woven. A thread of silver shot out, joined the magic that Graves had already lain, and the barrier solidified. It stretched and rippled, but it did not shatter.
Goldstein shook hard enough with the effort that she fairly vibrated. "What… what do we—"
Everything exploded. The barrier expanded to contain what it could; raw magic tore at the spell they'd cobbled together, burned it out by inches. By the time the shield fell, much of the force had been contained, but there was still more magic left to rip through its surroundings. Graves dropped to cover as much of Goldstein's smaller frame as he could while he said another prayer. Let us have done enough.
The wild energy tore through the warehouse, scorching everything it touched. Graves tried in vain to erect a shield around himself and Goldstein, prayed that it was enough to at least ensure Goldstein's survival. In his last moment of consciousness, he hoped against hope that Credence would not be forced to bury the both of them.
Interlude
Tina came to with a jerk and had to take a moment to let the spots in her vision and the ringing in her ears subside. Heat rolled over her, and she caught the smell of charred flesh. Mercy Lewis, this was not good. Someone's body slumped atop her, unmoving, not breathing. Oh no… oh no.
She pushed herself up before her vision fully cleared and shimmied out from under the dead weight. The body on top of her groaned. Mister Graves!
When her vision finally cleared, she sat dumbstruck for a moment. The spots in her vision weren't entirely illusory: motes of light like embers drifted to and fro, and a fine layer of sparkling dust coated almost everything in the room. Still, it wasn't enough to cover the scorch marks, especially at the epicenter, where the magical bomb had once sat. Around the center of the blast, the concrete of the floor had bubbled up, twisted, and formed shapes like grasping hands.
A thin line of the glowing dust surrounded the central blast site—the remains of the shield that she and Graves had thrown up, no doubt—beyond which the floor seemed largely untouched.
Her gaze swept over the rest of the room. She'd seen the stacks of crates, but most of them were gone, likely dispersed into dust. Some of them had shattered and showered splinters over the farther corners of the room. The five goons she'd incapacitated…
Tina's stomach twisted. Even with most of its power dampened, the bomb had made horrific work of the men and women she'd laid low. Their limbs spiraled around each other, bones jutted from places that no bone should have been. The flesh melted and pooled and reformed and—
She tore her gaze away and appraised Mister Graves. He'd taken the brunt of the blast, leaving his backside scorched almost beyond recognition. A huge shard of wood had embedded itself into the flesh of his right side, and another piece of shrapnel had grazed his scalp.
With shaking hands, Tina grasped the wooden spike. Please don't be ash, she thought as she yanked it free. Mister Graves made a sound somewhere between a human groan and a monstrous snarl, but he did not move. Tina tossed the wood aside. "Mister Graves, speak to me, please."
He didn't respond. Damn it all!
Tina's voice quavered almost as badly as her hands as she raised her wand. "Expecto patronum!" Her patronus, a sleek, silvery mongoose, sprang from the tip of her wand and wound around her waist. "Find Abernathy," she told it. "Or Mallory, or Coronado. I don't care. Someone needs to clean this up. I've got to get Mister Graves help."
Silent as a whisper, her patronus leapt through the air and slithered out one of the broken windows into the night. With any luck, one of the others would be here soon. Hopefully. Damn it all.
She bent down and got a good grip on Mister Graves. "I'm so sorry, sir," she said as she hoisted him up and took his weight across her shoulders. Another pained noise rumbled in his chest, and she winced. "Sorry, sorry, just hang on, sir. I'm going to get you somewhere safe, just hang on."
In a swirl of magic, Tina apparated them both out of the ruins of the warehouse.
"We need a healer!" Tina shouted at the top of her lungs as soon as she appeared in the infirmary in the basement of the Woolworth building. Her legs gave out underneath her, and she dropped to her knees hard enough that she knew they would be bruised. It took every bit of physical strength she had to keep from dropping Mister Graves on his head. "Help!"
Two junior healers appeared at her side, taking Mister Graves between them. "Tell us what happened," one of them said. The other followed up with, "When was the last time he had blood?"
"I don't know when he had blood last," Tina said. Then she sketched out the basics of what had happened. "He hasn't been conscious this entire time," she added.
"Not good," one of the young healers said. "We'll need to get him to containment."
"Right, I'll summon Healer Baxter," the other said before peeling off and dashing down a side corridor.
Feeling cut adrift, Tina followed after the junior healer carrying Mister Graves. The healer laid him out on a stretcher, then cast a levitation charm over it so that it hovered along obediently at waist-height.
"Is he going to be okay?" Tina asked just to have something to fill the silence.
"I really can't say. Healer Baxter would know better."
They hustled along one of the sterile white hallways in silence, striding past empty room after empty room—a good sign that none of the other aurors had shown up bleeding. At least, not yet. Shuddering, Tina quickened her pace so she could walk even with Mister Graves's head. His face was paler than normal and smeared with the strange dust from the explosion and some of his own blood. Oh, what in Deliverance Day was she going to tell Credence if she'd gotten Mister Graves killed?
"You've got to hang on," she whispered to him. "You've got to."
Healer Baxter met them at the door to one of the rooms, a scowl on his face. He shooed both Tina and his junior healer out of his way as he looked over Mister Graves. "You have to understand that there isn't much we can do," he told Tina without looking up from his work. "Humans, those I can fix. Break a bone, cut your skin, we can stitch that right back up. But vampires… No one's yet found the trick to do much for them." He shook his head. "The best we can do is make him comfortable. Hope he hasn't taken too much damage to heal himself. Notify his next of kin."
"There's got to be something we can do!"
Healer Baxter just shook his head. "The only thing that can heal a vampire is blood, Auror Goldstein. If you want to be kind, you'll contact his next of kin so they can make arrangements if the worst comes to pass. And maybe let one of my youngsters look you over, once that's done. You look like hell."
"Thanks for that," she grumbled. "I'll take that under advisement."
He shrugged. "Of course."
If he had anything else to say to her, it was lost as she dashed back the way she'd come. Once she left the halls of the infirmary proper—and the anti-apparition wards—she raised her wand and disappeared.
When she re-appeared in the sitting room of her apartment, Queenie and Credence both sat in the dining room, two mugs standing forgotten on the table in front of them. "See?" Queenie said with a forced kind of cheer, "she's already—" Her statement died as she caught the edges of the whirlwind spinning around in Tina's head. "Oh. Oh, no."
Queenie pushed her chair back and stood so quickly it would have toppled over if Tina hadn't caught it with an off-hand flick of her wand. Credence seemed fit to jump out of his skin at the sudden burst of activity, and it wasn't helped by Queenie tugging on his arm until he stood up, too. "Go on, go. Go with Tina," she urged.
"What?" Credence stumbled as Queenie nudged him in Tina's direction.
"It's Mister Graves," Tina said. "He's… Well, it's…"
All the blood left Credence's face. "Tell me."