Chapter 8

 

Twenty six dead bodies. Twenty six women and men. Staci Smith had, perhaps, known what she risked when she got involved with Svenson’s schemes, but the others had had no choice.

Darius’s hands curled into fists. What he wanted was to beat Nick Sheen bloody. Arguably, this wasn’t the man’s fault. The human trafficker seemed sincerely upset, especially by his lover’s death. Darius had gained some insight into Staci via questioning Nick on the journey to the witches’ property.

The two of them had been a matched pair in their lack of conscience. Neither had blinked at using slaves. Darius suspected that Nick’s emotions now were less about grief, even though he’d lost his lover of two years, as of fear.

If Svenson was willing to double-cross and kill a witch with the power of five covens behind her, what would he do to silence a minor hedge wizard who could link him to slave trading?

Nick had sworn that he’d testify against Svenson. “I’ll tell you everything. Anything.”

The man’s implicit promise to lie for them, if needed, had angered Darius. He’d left the magic-blocking cuffs on Nick and locked him to the jeep. But outside the jeep. In the cold.

Let him freeze. Darius was angry, and following Olga as she worked through the crime scene only made him angrier.

Every now and then she shuddered. The professionalism that she usually wore as naturally as her own skin was shredded. Horror, grief, anger, pity. She wanted answers and to give justice to those they’d failed.

Darius understood, but his emotions were less complicated. He craved revenge.

He’d partnered with Olga to gain proof of Svenson’s guilt in ordering General Olafur to sabotage Darius’s army combat team. He didn’t have that proof, but the nightmare around him rendered the point moot. For this atrocity alone, Svenson deserved hell. And I’ll send him there with pleasure.

“They definitely summoned a shade.” Olga stood looking down at the ashes that had been sucked from the corpses of the witches who’d formed the five covens.

The trails of ash all led to the twenty sixth body, that of Staci Smith. She lay face up, eyes gone, as if plucked out. Mouth open—Darius tried to block the memory from forming and storing itself to return in his nightmares.

He’d seen death. Violent death. He’d even delivered it. But this was death as fuel. Staci hadn’t just died. Her spirit had been raped, violated, to spawn the shade.

Olga pointed with the hand-length wand of electrum that she’d been using to scan the scene. “Bat wings.” The ashes did lie in that sort of shape near Staci’s head. But the shape was crude. It was only there because Olga had given it a name. It was like reading tea leaves. The bat wings could have been a butterfly—but not in this place of death.

Darius’s shadow lion prowled around them, guarding them both in case evil magic lingered waiting to wake and consume them unaware.

Twenty crystals lay dirty and drained in a broken circle around Staci. The break in the circle faced east. The bat wings shaped in ash filled the gap.

“It’s a shade, but I can’t prove Svenson was here.” Olga looked at Staci’s corpse, and away. “I believe he was. He’s a master manipulator. Somehow he got Staci to use the death star in a spell that meant her death.”

“She couldn’t have known,” Darius said.

Olga put the wand in her coat pocket and held her hand out to him.

He clasped it, surprised. And was even more surprised when she hugged him with her free arm. Immediately, he felt warmer.

“The local 13OPS agents will be here in a minute,” she said. Like him, she could sense the approaching magic users. Unlike him, it seemed she could recognize their signature. 13OPS, as with any government agency, had its secrets. “They’ll take over processing the scene. We’ll be questioned.” She took a deep breath. “I know you want to chase after Svenson. So do I. But there are things we have to consider, not just procedures.”

“I won’t run off,” he promised.

The headlights of the first car shone ahead of its approach up the driveway. Other headlights followed. The agents would park at the front of the main house so as not to contaminate the scene.

He tapped his chest to call the shadow lion back into its rune. It hadn’t detected any dangerous magic here, and he’d prefer not to reveal the guardian construct’s existence to others.

Olga made no move to release his hand. Apparently, she didn’t mind her fellow agents witnessing her trust in him or that she’d sought the comfort of human contact.

“I can’t follow Svenson yet anyway,” Darius continued. “He’s in the air.”

She’d discovered that fact while scrying for him. Svenson’s speed and route had indicated a helicopter, and the marks they’d found on the ground here at the witches’ property confirmed it.

“Rest can’t open a portal in midair. I have to wait till Svenson lands.”

“Hold that thought.” Olga went to meet the lead agent for the local office.

Never one to enjoy the political maneuverings of bureaucracy, Darius headed for where Nick was imprisoned at the jeep. He released him, except for the magic blocking cuffs.

“This is messed up.” Nick was subdued for once. “You can despise me and distrust me as much as you want, but if I’d known about this, I’d have warned Olga. Hell, I’d have begged her to intervene. Svenson had us fooled. He gave Staci a spell he said would create a fountain of youth.”

Darius shoved his hands in his pockets as he stared at the 13OPS agents surveying the scene. “So you said in the jeep.”

The agents had been warned what to expect, but their body language showed that a warning couldn’t prepare you for the reality of a sacrificial massacre.

Olga led the man she’d been speaking with over to Darius and Nick, and offered a brief introduction.

Declan Kilander shook hands with Darius. “We’ll take an initial statement from you in one of the cars since Olga says you’re partnered with her on an active investigation and need to get going. We’ll find you for follow up questions.”

“Olga has my phone number.”

Kilander whistled and an agent who’d been standing back observing them started forward. Kilander gave him curt orders. “Secure this one.” It was his first acknowledgement of Nick’s existence. “Then interview Mr. Selbourne.”

Darius was sure that the agent had been fully briefed on what Kilander required from the interview before they arrived at the scene. He accompanied the agent as he escorted Nick to a van and secured him inside. Then the two of them retreated to the front seats of a black SUV.

 

Declan Kilander proved to be a skilled interviewer. The mix of routine witness questions and an agent’s debriefing both relaxed Olga and encouraged her to volunteer information as they sat in the warmth of his SUV. Not that she’d forget herself and give him anything more than she intended.

Whoever went after Svenson would need to be highly skilled, ruthless and powerful. There’d been no reports of anyone summoning a shade in over a decade. Shades were viciously protective of their hosts. As sorcerers, and given Darius’s combat experience, they had the best chance of taking out the shade. She wouldn’t allow anyone to get in the middle. Svenson’s death count was already too high.

Through the windscreen she watched Darius return to the jeep, his interview concluded.

“You trust him,” Declan said.

She didn’t respond to the observation. She’d let Declan and his team witness her holding Darius’s hand. It had been a quiet statement that she trusted him so much that she’d draw emotional support from him. Now, Darius climbed into the passenger seat of her jeep as casually as if the vehicle wasn’t so heavily enchanted that it repelled everyone else.

“I won’t wait for Gregory,” she said. Her boss was flying in to liaise with Declan concerning freeing the magical talents imprisoned at the compound and unravelling the wider human trafficking network. She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Take his guidance regarding Gerald Svenson.”

Declan observed his agents processing the mass sacrifice scene before them. “You have no hard evidence that Svenson was here, only circumstantial stuff.”

She opened the passenger door of the SUV. “That’s a safe thought to keep hold of—for now.” Gravel crunched under her feet.

“Olga.”

She turned to look back at Declan.

“If you have to kill Svenson, twist the knife.”

 

Darius had his phone on his knee when Olga returned to the jeep. His head was back against the seat, his eyes on the 13OPS agents processing the scene. “I called Gabe. He’ll update Rest and Austin. Rest will be ready to portal us anywhere.” He paused. “Is it still ‘us’?”

She pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it would go before placing her scrying tray on her lap. She understood what he was asking. “This is no longer a covert operation, but Gregory hasn’t ended it. So we continue.”

“Except that our aims are different. You want to arrest Svenson. I want to—”

She put her hand over his mouth briefly. “Don’t tell me. I’m a 13OPS agent, remember? No matter how we feel…” She looked at the scene in front of them. “I can’t condone murder. But a shade is a supernatural danger I am authorized to neutralize, and collateral damage would be accepted.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She had her suspicions about how Svenson’s network of influential people might react to losing their savior. If he had promised people eternal youth in a Shangri-La separate from the world and its troubles, anyone who prevented that promise being realized would suffer their wrath—and the billionaire circle could be brutally vengeful.

She stared at the scrying tray. Svenson’s midnight blue dot travelled steadily westward. The speed was wrong for a helicopter. At some point he’d transferred to a jet. “He’s moving west, fast. My guess is that he’s on his way to Papua New Guinea, to the island he bought under the guise of a mining corporation.” She put the tray aside. “Whatever we decide to do, Svenson’s shade has to be neutralized first. What do you know about shades?”

“I know I’ve never fought one. That’s about to change.”

“The 13OPS archives have a few stories. Shades are composed of a person’s malevolence, the self-seeking shadow side of personality that people try to hide. They operate without their host’s conscious direction. The modern theory is that they draw their commands from their host’s subconscious. In the old days, they were deemed demons.”

“Could my shadow lion take one out?”

“No. A shade is created by a spell, but once summoned—given form—it draws its power and existence from its host.”

“About that.” He cocked his head to the side. “Do you think Svenson knows that his chosen protector is draining him?”

“My working assumption is that Svenson does his research. If he’s willing to host a shade he must have calculated that he can afford the price of the constant bodyguard.”

“Which means he believes he has access to the fountain of youth or something similar to maintain his stamina.”

She switched on the engine. “It’s not just about us taking him out. Nick seemed honestly shocked at events here. If our kidnapping of him precipitated the death star and Svenson taking on a shade, then Svenson is aware of us. We should be prepared for an attack. He shouldn’t know that you’re a sorcerer, but—”

He covered her hand where it rested on the gearstick. “We’ll be vigilant and I won’t leave you alone.”

“I wasn’t worried for me!”

“Partners. We’ve got each other’s backs. Let’s prioritize. We can argue about what to do regarding Svenson once we know our options and priorities. We need to confirm that he is flying to Papua New Guinea, and ultimately, the island he’s bought under the guise of a mining corporation.”

She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she sped down the road, trying to hide even from herself how much it meant that Darius saw them as partners. They’d begun as colleagues. Now, they were more. But she didn’t acknowledge any of that. Her focus was for the mission. “We need to know how a Shangri-La is created. If Svenson killed twenty six people to create a shade, the cost of a paradise on Earth will be colossal. I’d also like to know who else is flying to Papua New Guinea. We have to learn how to neutralize a shade.”

Her phone rang. She answered it hands-free. “Gregory, you’re on speaker. Darius is with me in the jeep.”

“Two things. Neither of which you’re going to like.” Gregory’s curtness meant the proverbial had hit the fan. This was how he got when a case took pressure from his superiors. “The first is Svenson. He is on Jerome Oro’s private plane with the official destination being Sydney.”

“And ‘engine trouble’ will divert it to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea,” Darius muttered his comprehension.

“The plane was within US airspace when we issued a warrant to bring Svenson in for questioning. His lawyer blocked us. His lawyer and Oro, who is now on the plane with Svenson, are both willing to swear that Svenson was with them in Minneapolis when the death star occurred.”

Darius thumped the jeep’s door. “Hell no.”

Gregory spoke faster. “Svenson has activated his network, and he has every bit of the influence we feared. My orders are to recall you, Olga. Your covert operation is finished. You’re to come in. I can’t recall Darius, but, Darius, I have to officially inform you that you are no longer approved to work with 13OPS.”

It was Olga’s turn to swear. They’d reached the edge of the state forest and she took the first road into it. The jeep’s headlights barely cut the darkness as they were swallowed by the trees. She drove slowly, but she was glad to be off the open road. Something in her wanted to hide.

Gregory’s next words confirmed her instinct. “Unofficially, Olga, my advice to you is to go to ground. We have to sort through this mess and, hopefully, your career will be there at the end—but you need to be alive to enjoy it.”

“What mess?” she asked grimly.

“Nick Sheen is dead.”

She braked. Unthinkingly, she turned off the headlights. It wasn’t an act of mourning. It couldn’t be. Nick had been…

“How?” Darius asked.

“One of the guards, a wizard, from the slave compound crossed onto the witches’ property, got into the van where Nick Sheen was being held, and executed him.”

Olga was cold with horror and failure. “Nick couldn’t protect himself. He was cuffed, captive.”

“Are you interrogating the guard?” Darius asked Gregory. “Tell me he’s at least alive.”

“She. And yes, Declan Kilander is questioning her. For what good it does. She won’t say a word. We need leverage to get her to talk.”

Olga stared at the darkness. The jeep was safe, her mobile fortress. “We should have kept Nick with us. He had answers.” Which was undoubtedly why Svenson had ordered his death. There was no silence as deep as that of the grave. “Twenty seven dead.”

“The death toll keeps climbing.” Darius glared at the phone as if it was the source of their troubles. “You think Olga and I are on Svenson’s kill list.”

“Yes.”

Darius growled. “Unless we kill him first.”

“That won’t stop things,” she said, and when he scowled at her, added. “Oro and Svenson’s lawyer are willing to lie to keep him free. That’s not because they like him. Maybe he has blackmail material on them. Maybe. But incentive is more powerful than threat. The promise of living forever in paradise is sufficient that anyone Svenson has promised it to will kill us to get it. Or kill us for preventing them from achieving it.”

“Stay out of sight.” Gregory hung up.

Olga rested her forehead against the steering wheel.

“We have a day,” Darius said.

She turned to him. “Pardon?”

“The flight to Port Moresby and on to the island Svenson proposes to turn into Shangri-La will take him a day.”

“Oh.”

“We have Rest. We can portal there in seconds. Once we have a plan.”

She straightened up. He was carefully not pushing her, and she appreciated it, but twenty four hours didn’t leave her time to have a meltdown. “I believe in the system. The justice system, I mean. We—sorcerers—have so much power. I like having a system to keep me in bounds.”

He put a hand at the back of her neck, thumb caressing behind her ear. “I’d trust your conscience any day. You’re a good person.”

“I try to be.” Why did honest emotion often sound clichéd and pathetic? “You’re going to encourage me to go rogue.”

He didn’t immediately answer, but his hand remained warm at her nape. “We need food. Let’s take an hour to eat and discuss our options.”

“I have MREs.”

“We’ll pretend they’re edible,” he joked about the ready meals standard to the military before releasing her and climbing out of the jeep.

Slowly, she did the same. Once she got moving, the activity helped to steady her. It was just ordinary things: ensuring the jeep’s protections, including its concealment shield, were active; finding two beef hotpot MREs and using a heat cantrip to warm them; and watching Darius shape a sofa for them out of the dirt.

The seat was small enough that sharing it meant touching arms and thighs. The jeep’s extended and enchanted environmental controls kept them warm and dry.

The rehydrated hotpot tasted awful, but the instant coffee was acceptable and she washed away the taste of the hotpot with it. Beside her, Darius read on his phone. It triggered her to check her email. She had items flagged for later reading, including one from a Minervalle research librarian.

Olga was accustomed to calling on assistance from outside 13OPS. It was a matter of getting the job done by the best, and for esoteric knowledge, Minervalle’s researchers beat the 13OPS archives. She’d flagged Lacey’s email to read later, and later had arrived. They needed knowledge on Shangri-La and that’s what Lacey had been researching.

Olga knocked her elbow into Darius as she dug her phone out of her pocket. She wriggled, trying to find a more comfortable position and he seemed to unconsciously assist her by wrapping an arm around her shoulders. It was the sort of “smooth move” teenage males tried for in movie theatres. Except his attention was on his phone.

“I asked one of the research librarians associated with Minervalle to provide a briefing on Shangri-La, the myth, and any spells that mentioned it. Basically, anything unusual or powerful. I warned her to keep her research secret and discreet. I don’t want Svenson directing his network against that of the Old School. 13OPS exists to police the supernatural bad guys, even the biggest players. We’re prepared to wear the risk involved.”

“Even when your own turn against you?” Their faces were close, his eyes searching. “I know how hard that is. When I learned that General Olafur set up my team and got Liu killed it upended my world. That’s what you’re dealing with. Don’t underestimate the impact on you.”

She grimaced. “I still believe in the system. We just have to clean house.”

His disagreeing hum was mild before he changed the subject. “Austin sent me a couple of links to information on shades. Turns out he’s been reading up on monsters that we, our combat team, might encounter as a sort of hobby.”

“Useful hobby.” She snuggled closer as she read Lacey’s briefing paper on her phone. Then stiffened as she realized what she’d done. She relaxed when Darius didn’t seem to notice, appearing focused on his reading. She did the same.

Lacey had obviously condensed a lot of research. There were a ton of footnotes if Olga wanted to read further. She didn’t. The librarian’s warnings were enough. The truth of Shangri-La had been hidden and forgotten for centuries. Lacey had revealed it. Fortunately, the Minervalle researcher could be trusted to keep a secret.

Olga shivered. “This has been tried before.”

“What has?” Darius switched his phone off, leaning against her as he pushed it into his pocket. “Shades, Shangri-La, or something else?”

“Shangri-La. Do you know it’s in the Bible?”

“Uh no. I earned my halo at Sunday School and—”

The touch of humor was just what she needed. “Hush, you. I’ll give you an example. The creation of the Hanging Garden of Babylon required the destruction of both Sodom and Gomorrah. At its most basic, it’s about balance as well as the energy of creation. To create a Shangri-La, you have to create a matching hell on Earth. The hell is derived from the life drained from it into the framework and borders of the new Shangri-La.”

He swore. “So the question is, which city does Svenson intend to sacrifice?”

“A witch couldn’t handle a spell this big. Just summoning the shade, Staci burned through twenty crystals to protect herself from the power funneling through her. Svenson has to have a wizard. We don’t know who is on the plane with him. Or the wizard could already be on the island. Or flying in from somewhere else.”

She was wretched as she thought of all that they didn’t know. “A whole city, Darius. I never dreamed Svenson could be planning something so evil. I heard mention of Shangri-La, but I thought it was a peaceful place. If I’d researched it originally, maybe—”

He cut her off with a hard, dominating kiss.

When it ended, she blinked at him.

“The past is done,” he said bluntly. “You can only change the future.”

That was true. She blinked, again. “Why kiss me?”

“Maybe I want to change my future.”

 

Darius watched Olga process his implicit confession that he liked her. The screen of her phone lit her face from below and highlighted how her lashes fanned her cheeks as she blinked rapidly. Actually, he’d implied more than that he liked her. He wanted her in his future.

He respected her courage. He valued her loyalty to 13OPS and to Minervalle’s Old School network, even if the former had turned on her. He didn’t trust 13OPS, so the news that Svenson had suborned at least one of its higher ups failed to shock him. His rage that the result was 13OPS recalling her, and in doing so, making her vulnerable, had astounded him. The fury went beyond the echo of his outrage at how General Olafur had betrayed his team. With Olga, the protectiveness was primal and male.

He was wise enough not to reveal it to her.

She had proven she could protect herself and others. Her job demanded it, and she was the best of 13OPS’s agents. She would smack him down if he appointed himself as her protector. But partner…he’d been relieved and satisfied by how readily she’d accepted that role for him.

He wouldn’t let her down. His guardian construct was active in addition to a scouting spell he’d adapted from one he’d used on combat missions in his military days. Factor in the jeep’s passive defenses, and no one was getting the jump on them.

But he didn’t think they’d be holing up here long.

This was a chance to rest and regroup, and to agree their plan of action. He had his own preference. “Will your jeep be okay if we leave it here?”

“What are you thinking?”

Some part of him was thinking how good it felt to hold her, and reveling in the fact that she hadn’t pulled away. The former combat wizard part of him was thinking of a tactical retreat to relaunch their mission once they’d agreed its objective. He wanted to kill Svenson. He suspected that she was still thinking of capturing the man. Both of them were determined to prevent the death of a city.

Hells damn. Maybe Olga didn’t care if Svenson died resisting apprehension. A mass murderer warranted execution. “I’d like Rest to portal us out.”

“To where?”

And now he had to venture back onto perilous, personal ground. “Nick was targeted for a reason.”

She stood, folding her arms; holding herself together.

Darius was pretty sure it wasn’t the man whom she mourned, but the boy he’d been and the choices he’d made. But perhaps Nick hadn’t been irretrievably bad. If everything the man had said had been calculated, then just maybe Nick had given them the information Svenson had ordered him executed to prevent them learning.

Svenson had calculated that under ordinary circumstances Nick wouldn’t divulge anything of any importance to his kidnappers. But killing Staci, Nick’s lover, had changed the game. And there was one other factor.

“I’d bet that Svenson doesn’t know that you and Nick were childhood friends. He ordered Nick’s death to stop him confiding in 13OPS for revenge after Staci’s death, but what if Nick had already trusted you, not 13OPS, with the truth Svenson wanted hidden?”

Olga stopped hugging herself protectively. She came back to sit beside him, her hand resting on his knee, a look of keen expectation on her face.

He preferred this version of her, the warrior-hunter, to the grieving friend who lacked time to mourn. They had an unknown city to save.

His idea couldn’t be proven, but his conviction that it was more than probable had grown as he read Austin’s information on the nature of shades and how to fight one. “Nick said that Svenson identified minor talents.”

She nodded.

“And that he developed them.”

Another nod, and her hand gripped his knee.

“And Svenson is a hedge wizard, a minor talent.”

Understanding of where he was headed dawned in her eyes. “He developed his own talent. Except, no matter how they study, hedge wizards can’t grow into wizards.”

Darius led her gently through the steps of his theory to the impossible conclusion. “Which means that Svenson had to modify who he is.”

“It’s insane.”

“Is a mass murderer sane?”

They stared at one another.

Very slowly, obviously considering the idea from all angles, Olga stated the conclusion Darius had reached. “Svenson had his shade summoned so that he could use it, not just to protect him from his enemies—people like us—but from the magic he wants to work. Is it possible? Could a shade channel a city’s worth of death magic?”

He refrained from wincing as her fingers dug into his knee. “I think Svenson intends to find out.”

Her grip relaxed and she rubbed his knee. She was clearly oblivious to her actions, too deep in thought to notice her own fidgeting—or his reaction to it. Her had travelled rather higher than his knee as she frowned in thought, and Darius found the friction stimulating.

He picked up her hand, kissed the palm, and replaced it in her lap.

She frowned in puzzlement before her gaze travelled from his rueful smile to the bulge behind his zipper, his knee, her hand and…

“Not that I mind,” he said.

“I—” She stuck there. “Sorry. I was thinking. Or rather, not thinking. No, thinking about—” She took a deep breath. “Let me get my gear out of the jeep and I’ll be ready to portal to wherever you think we need to be.”

“Botswana. We’re going to need a big diamond to neutralize the shade.”