Silver magi 3, p.7
Silver Magi 3, page 7
“Who’s there?” he says, turning and walking towards the electrical box.
Shit. Think! If it’s a Void, he might scream if the Voice doesn’t work on him. I might have gotten lucky with Ms. Newman. Looking at the girls with worry, I think, do I chance it? I touch Johanne, who is our best shooter, and I use my hand to pretend I am talking. I slash horizontally and point to my pistol. Shit, please get it, Johanne. I want to try the Voice, but if it doesn’t work, I need her to shoot him with her pistol and the silver needles. Thank God, she nods and takes out her own air pistol slowly and quietly.
I hear the footsteps coming closer. I count to three with my fingers, and on three, I pop up.
“Do not move and do not scream,” I say, using as much power as I can in my Voice.
Instead of following my orders, the man falls back on his ass and starts to scramble away. Suddenly I hear the sound of Johanne’s air pistol go off multiple times with a hiss, and I see the man’s white medical jacket take the impact of three shots. His back arches, and purple smoke and flames escape from the puncture holes.
Slowly, the purple flames and the smoke dissipate, and the man groans and turns over onto his back. It looks like he is about to scream, but Johanne, who had walked up next to me, says quickly using the Voice, “Do not move and do not scream.”
He stops with a confused look on his face. Johanne bends down and looks at him. I can see the terror in his eyes. Mind you, he is looking at a very furry half-hybrid Werewolf, one withs two large breasts that are covered in black and gray fur. Not that long ago, I would have had that same terror in my eyes. Changing into my human form, I pull Johanne back and stand in front of the man, blocking out his vision of the three girls.
Looking over my shoulder, I see Johanne, Silvana, and Lina have all changed back into their human forms as well. Turning back to the man, I say using the Voice, “What is your name?”
“Jim Magraw,” he says, confusion still evident on his face as he looks around. “Where am I? I was out shopping and-” he cuts himself off with a perplexed look. “How did I get here?”
“What’s down there?” I ask him, pointing to the elevator.
He turns over onto his stomach and looks to where I am pointing. “I don’t know,” he says, and turns back to me. “I don’t even know where I am,” he says.
“What state were you in when you were shopping?” Silvana asks him.
“What state? I was in Nevada. Why?” he asks suspiciously.
“What town?” Silvana asks him, not answering him.
“What? Vegas,” he says. Silvana looks at me tellingly.
“Right,” I say, nodding my head.
Using the Voice again, I tell him, “I want you to go outside and go down the road, but I want you to hide in the brush until morning. Then, in the morning, when you get to the road, turn left on the highway and walk until you hit a gas station. From there, I want you to call the police and say you got lost, and that there is a house down the road with people in it who are being held against their will. Tell them that you were drugged and finally were able to get free.”
Jim gives me a puzzled look, but he nods and gets up, and heads to the stairs to leave the house. I don’t hear his steps as he leaves a testament to the builder of this place. It’s fucking solid. Once I feel he is outside and away from the house, I let go of some of the tension I was holding.
“Now what?” I ask the girls.
Silvana points to the elevator and says with a sigh, “No choice, we need to go down there. But something tells me it will be one of those shoot and ask questions later, kind of things.”
“Yeah, you think they are all Infected down there? How many was it that they figured? Four or five? So we got Muldo and another two or three down there?” I say. But then the air is pierced by the scream of a child again, clearly in pain, and I stop asking questions. “Shit,” I say as I head towards the lift, changing into my Incubus form as I run to it. I can hear the girls coming up behind me. I get into the lift and take the pistol out of my holster and aim it down my leg, ready to bring it up quickly.
Once everyone is in, I look at the panel on the elevator cage and press the only button that is there. I whisper so that Silvana, Johanne, and Lina can hear me, “Remember, don’t shoot Muldo. We need information.” At least we have a picture of Muldo, so we all know what he looks like. The elevator jerks, and it heads downward into the bowels of who knows what.
Chapter Twelve
Slowly the elevator sinks down into the floor. I fucking hope no one is looking at it, since they’ll see four sets of feet, three of them being furry, instead of the one they expect. Once the elevator lowers enough for us to see, we look around but there is no one there. We are in a very sterile white room, with only one door made of metal. It looks like one of those you would find on the outside of a building. But it has a trigger handle that is on this side of the door, and as luck would have it, I don’t see a lock.
Getting off the elevator, we walk towards the door but don’t open it. I put my ear against it to see if I can hear anything. Nothing. Holding up my pistol, I look at the girls and nod, letting them know I am about to open the door. Pushing down on the door handle trigger, I try to open the door as quietly as possible. Once I feel the lock disengage, I pull the door open quickly and run through it.
The room I enter looks like a lab. There are multiple medical beds, but around one, there is a group of people surrounding a small female child. She is strapped down to the bed with leather restraints, and her eyes are closed. I would say she is about four or five years old. The two males and one female standing around the bed are in medical whites. The room is fairly large, and standing at a lab counter is our primary target, Muldo.
Knowing that Johanna, Lina, and Silvana will leave him alone, I aim my air pistol at him. I hear the soft spitting of three other pistols going off, which tells me they are shooting the other three targets. Muldo looks at us in surprise and reaches for something.
“Don’t try it, or I will shoot you with silver,” I growl at him, and he stops reaching under the counter and lifts his hands up in the air instead.
“We got them,” Silvana says. “We will take them to the other room.”
“Thanks. Is the child fine?” I ask her, not taking my eyes away from Muldo. He looks at me with anger in his eyes. His face is flushed.
Muldo looks to be in his fifties. He has a gray goatee with salt and pepper hair. He is slim with a slight tan to his skin. I would guess he is of Arabic or Middle Eastern lineage.
Silvana doesn’t answer right away, but I hear the straps being taken off. “Yes. She is simply sedated. There are no external injuries that I can see. I will take her out and heal her, just in case there are internal ones.”
Then I hear the girls repeat a command three times, using the Voice to get the others to follow them quietly. I hear the shuffling of people moving towards the exit.
“You’re too late,” Muldo says with a triumphant grin.
“What were you doing to the little girl?” I ask him.
“As if I would answer you, Incubus. I am not sure how you survived, but no, wait,” he says, squinting at me. Then his eyes widen in shock. “You’re not! I am not sure what you are, but your aura is too powerful for an Incubus. I am not sure what you are, but you are too late.”
Diving deep into my pool of water, I grab power and push it into my Voice, “What did you do?”
“I got,” he starts, but then visibly shakes himself. His hands slam down onto the counter in front of him, and he shakes his head and breathes deeply. Finally, he looks at me with murder in his eyes.
“I don’t know what you are, but you can’t get it out of me,” he says with a leer.
Shit, I need to know what the fuck he did that is making him feel so damn proud. Going deeper than I ever have before, I reach into the deepest part of my lake of power. It’s almost icy, as if the heat of the sun never reaches it. I feel my skin get cold, and I begin to shiver. Not stopping, I stretch even deeper and bring up more and more power. I am so cold I can see my breath leave my mouth as I exhale. Finally, when I think I have enough, I push it all out into my Voice.
“What have you done,” I say. But what comes out isn’t my Voice. It’s a Voice that is so deep and so ancient that the power of it throws everything off the counter in front of me, and not gently. It even pushes Muldo back a foot or two.
Muldo looks at me in a daze, but then slowly answers me, “Using this last child’s DNA, I was able to figure out how to create magic in these pathetic human bodies.”
“Wait, the child that just left has the ability to do magic?” I ask him in shock.
“No,” he says, still under the Voice’s compulsion. “We were able to use children as baselines for the humans’ DNA. With that, we were able to create a mutation that, once injected into a human, would allow them to use magic.”
“Shit,” I hear behind me, “It’s fucking cold in here. Brandon! What did you do?” Turning around, I see that the girls are back, and it was Silvana who had uttered those words.
Once I am facing them, the three girls stop dead in their tracks and look at me worriedly. “Brandon, what did you do?” Silvana asks me in trepidation.
“What do you mean?” I ask her, confused. “What’s wrong?”
“Your eyes are glowing blue. And your nose is bleeding,” she says.
Reaching up, I feel blood coming out of my nose. “Fuck. Yeah, I reached for a lot of power.”
I take the cloth that Johanne passes me from the table beside the bed that the little girl had been on. “Thanks,” I tell her.
“And what do you mean that humans can use magic?” Silvana asks Muldo. I turn back, and he is simply staring at me and doesn’t answer her. Right, the compulsion came from me.
“Answer her,” I tell him, and again, that tone comes out of my voice.
“They can, but it’s wild magic. It uses their meager life-force,” Muldo says.
Gasping, Silvana says, “You made them use their life-force?”
“What’s wild magic?” I ask Silvana, not understanding.
Turning to me, she says, “There are two types of magic. There’s the one we use, which uses a pool of magic that is inside us. The other kind is wild magic. It uses your life-force. That one is never used, for obvious reasons. The more powerful the spell, the more life-force it uses.”
“So,” I say, turning back to Muldo. “You found a way to allow humans to use this life-force magic? Who have you given that ability to?”
“Only the Organization right now, and two,” he says, but then he unexpectedly gives a large shake of his body, before biting down on something in his mouth with a crunch. Suddenly purple smoke and flames start springing from his mouth. He throws his head back and screams at the top of his lungs.
“Shit!” I run towards him, casting heal, hoping that it would somehow keep the Void alive, as I need fucking answers!
But it’s no use as the smoke and fire keeps coming out, no matter that I throw three heals at him. Finally, the man slumps down to the ground, passed out.
“Fuck, what happened?” Lina says, looking over the counter at Muldo lying on the ground.
“I think he had one of those fake teeth with silver inside it? I saw him bite down and heard a crunch,” I say, pissed off.
I bend down and open the unconscious man’s mouth. Looking inside, I see the tooth in question, and there is silver powder still sitting in his mouth. Good thing I am immune to it. How the fuck did he not kill the Void himself, being that close to it? Opening his mouth wider, I move his head to get more of the light from above into it, and I see that the lining inside the tooth is dark. Lead? It would make sense. But why the fuck would a Void do that? This is not your typical Void, I think to myself.
Looking up at the girls, who are watching me intently, I nod. “Yeah, he had a silver suicide tooth. That makes no fucking sense!”
“Brandon, he said the Organization,” Johanne says. “The same men who were after you when I first met you.”
“I know. And if the Organization now has access to magic,” I begin to say.
“Then we are fucked,” Silvana finishes intensely, and looking at her, I see anger there too. “Do you honestly think the Void would have told the Organization that the magic they can do now will shorten their lives? No. Which means they will think they have unlimited power and will attack with that mindset.”
“You think that this Muldo, sorry, this Void,” I say, pointing down at the body next to me that is still breathing, “would keep such information from them?”
“Yes, since I have a feeling the Void was using them as guinea pigs. We need to go see your mother, Brandon,” Silvana says.
“Ok, let’s look around here quickly to see if we can find anything,” I say, getting up.
“What about him?” Lina says, poking the passed out man on the ground in front of me.
“If he wakes up before we leave, we can tell him the same story as I told the one upstairs. I assume you told the other three the same thing? How’s the child?” I say.
“Yes, we did. And the poor girl is fine. She woke up after I healed her. She has no idea how she got here, and doesn’t remember anything. The woman was her mother. I told them all to go wait like the other one,” Silvana says, brushing her blond hair out of her face.
“Look around and see what you can find. Papers or even a cell phone or something,” I say, getting back down and checking the pockets of Muldo. But all he has is his wallet—nothing else. So I start to look in the counter’s drawers, but I only find medical and lab equipment.
“Found something,” Johanne says from across the room at one of the beds.
“Oh?” I say, heading around the counter towards her. As I get closer, she passes me a notebook. I open it to the first page, but it’s in a language I don’t know. Hell, looking at it, I don’t think it’s even a known Earth language. I flip through it, and it’s all the same. The language is a very flowy artful language with thin blocks and lines that extend out. Almost what you would find in old monastery bibles with the colors and such. But these are not English characters. These are alien.
Passing it around to Lina and Silvana, they shake their heads, indicating they can’t read it. “Shit. All right. I will need to show that to my mother and see if she recognizes it.”
Sighing, I say, “I guess we need to go find Trent to get him to bring us to my mother.”
“Look on the bright side,” Lina says, leaning into me.
“What’s that?”
“You get to go see your dad,” she says with a grin. I stare at her, floored by her comment.
“Oh, shit!” I say in a stunned voice.
Chapter Thirteen
“Hmm, Brandon?” Silvana says as we head towards the exit.
“What?” I ask her, almost in a daze at the thought of meeting my father again.
“Your eyes are still glowing blue.”
“Oh,” I say. “Not sure how to get rid of it,” I tell her, embarrassed.
“How did it happen?” she asks me.
“Well, I was grabbing as much power as I could, but in my lake of power where it was deep. That was the reason it was so cold in the room. Somehow, that coldness seeped through me and into my magic.”
“Then I would suggest trying to imagine putting that power back into your pool because you can’t go out like that. You will stand out like a beacon,” she says with a musical laugh. Looking around, I see that Johanne and Lina are both grinning at me.
Closing my eyes, I try to visualize the power that is inside me, and I put it back into my pool. Basically the reverse of what I do when I want to draw out my power. I feel the power inside me slowly drain and drop into my lake like a cold rain. How I can tell that’s what is happening, I have no idea. Once it’s done, I open my eyes and look at Silvana.
“Much better. There is still a tiny glow, but it’s only noticeable if you stare deep into your eyes. Over time, let’s hope it goes away,” Silvana says with a smile.
The elevator is not there, as the others had taken it to leave the house. On the wall is a red button, so Johanne goes over and presses it. We hear the hydraulic sound of the elevator, and looking up, we see it descending. Once it’s on our level I wave the ladies inside, and once I am in, Lina presses the only button again.
Once we hit the top floor, the girls take out their pistols. “You think we will have trouble?” I ask them.
“Better to be safe than for one of us to die, right?” Johanne says, taking point again. Nodding, I listen to her reasoning and take out mine. This time we leave through the front exit. It’s still dark out. We haven’t been in the house for that long. I would say it’s near one in the morning. I don’t think we’ve been away from the Hummer for more than an hour.
“What about everyone else here?” I ask quietly.
“They will eventually see that their guru is gone or is not himself, and leave,” Silvana says.
“Shouldn’t we make sure that all the Void is gone out of everyone?” Johanne asks hesitantly.
Silvana stops and ponders it. “You’re right. As much as we need to bring this news to Brandon’s mom, it might be a good idea to do a sweep. I don’t want to leave any Voids here if we don’t have to. All right, you and Lina go to the left, and Brandon and I will take the commune’s right side. Once we’re done shooting everyone, we will meet back here. Should we shoot them, wake them up, and tell them they can return home?”
I shake my head. “No, since for some of them, this might be their home. I would say tell them to sleep and forget about us.”
“Smart,” Lina says with a grin.
So with Silvana following me, and the other girls going their own way, we start with the first shack we come to. I try the door, but it’s locked.
