Magi Saga 2: Shadows of Darkness (21 page)

‘The details of her capture are unimportant, suffice to say, she’s no longer in New York.’

Amanda turned away and immediately sent out a link to Liz. Her Mind reached out and tried to find and talk with her apprentice, but she got nothing. She couldn’t sense her in any way, which most likely meant she would be hidden behind an Aegis somewhere that would stop such communication.

Amanda glanced back at Yasmin, who stood a short distance away, her hands clasped behind her back again and smiling, clearly enjoying the moment.

Thinking for a second, she reached out and Ported a small but valuable item from Liz’s room, into her hand before reaching out once more and trying sense her location, hoping that whatever Aegis she sat behind, that there might a weak spot somewhere and that she might show up.

She wasn’t surprised to find she came back blank. As a last ditch effort, she tried to call Liz’s phone, but she only got a message about the person not being available. She stabbed the button to turn the phone off and forced herself to take a breath and calm down, she could feel her blood boiling, her anger and frustration at Lucian and his actions building. This was it, he had gone too far now.

She stopped, and looked up into the middle distance, her mind racing. She couldn’t locate her, but she would be willing to bet that Yasmin knew where Liz had disappeared too.

Amanda turned back to Yasmin.

‘You know where she is.’ Amanda said.

‘I have a vague idea, but I didn’t follow it up, not for me to do. But I know someone who does know where she is. Which leads me quite nicely to the next bit of information, that is, your house is under surveillance,’ purred Yasmin.

‘I thought as much, by who?’ Amanda said, this new bit of information side tracking her anger over Liz for a moment.

‘He’s a Scion, his name is Shaun Murray, and he’s in…’ Yasmin walked over to a nearby window and pointed out of it, ‘…that apartment right now. He works for Lucian as an information gatherer and knows intimate details of Lucian’s operation. He’s also harbouring something of a grudge against Lucian right this moment. I’m fairly sure he would be more than willing to help you.’

Amanda looked out at the Apartment window, her keen eyesight now able to pick out the feint hint of camera lenses in the darkness of the room over there.

She eyed the window a moment longer, feeling the anger rise once more before returning to look at Yasmin, who had wandered over towards the front door.

Amanda moved away from the window and stepped over towards Yasmin, a question suddenly popping into her head that had been troubling her since arriving in New York.

‘Yasmin, I have a quick question. Did you tell Lucian not to attack us?’

Yasmin smiled.

Amanda studied that wickedly seductive smile and knew she had been behind it. For some reason, she had told Lucian not to kill her, or maybe even hurt her. ‘May I ask why?’ Amanda said, hoping that the lithe woman in black might give up some small bit of information.

‘Be seeing you Amanda.’ Yasmin said, and immediately disappeared, Porting from the hallway in a whip crack of air rushing in to fill the void she left behind.

Amanda stared at the spot Yasmin had been stood in, before walking over and closing the door behind their departing guest. She might not have actually given Amanda much information verbally, but it did seem that Yasmin had some kind of vested interest in Amanda, a reason to keep her alive. As useful to know as this was, the why of it would have been more interesting. She put that to one side for now though, she had much more pressing matters. She needed to find Liz, and as her thoughts settled on this issue once more, the anger and frustration also started to return. She turned to Gentle Water.

‘Go, I will watch Alicia,’ he said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course.

‘Thank you,’ she said, before concentrating; placing her senses in the apartment to make sure she wasn’t porting into trouble. A second later, she Ported away from the house and appeared in the main room of the apartment with a whip of air.

Two people were in here with her, a woman who sat at the computer desk, her arms crossed on the desk top, her head resting on those arms. Across the way, a man in all black clothing paced up and down the room. The man’s disfigured face marked him as a Scion, as did his magical signature. Amanda could see no heartbeat and his body, although up and moving about, would be considered to be medically dead.

She’d seen this before in Maya and also more recently in Yoh, who were both Vampire Scions. She guessed this would be Shaun and that he also happened to be a Vampire like her friends.

Shaun stopped pacing almost immediately and looked up at Amanda, caution on his face. She stared at him, not trusting herself to start the conversation unless she just started shouting at him.

‘Well, I knew we wouldn’t remain undetected forever. Welcome Amanda, I’m Shaun and this is Vanessa.’

Vanessa sat up with a start at Shaun’s voice and jumped again when she saw Amanda stood a few feet from her.

‘Holy shit, you’re here,’ said Vanessa.

‘You know who I am?’ Amanda said. It seemed like Shaun wanted to talk, so she indulged him.

‘’Hell yeah,’ Vanessa said.

‘You’re Amanda-Jane page, you’re a Magus from Ireland originally and you live with Gentle Water and Elizabeth Fox, your mentor and your apprentice respectively. Yes, we know who you are. We’ve been watching your house for a couple of weeks now.’

‘Which means that you no doubt know why I’m here,’ she said.

‘My guess, either to kill us or to ask for our help, I’m hoping the latter ideally.’

Amanda walked around the room a little bit as she talked, taking in the surroundings. The place looked like a bomb had hit it. There were food wrappers everywhere, crumbs crushed into the carpet and half-finished drinks dotted about the place. Walking helped her control her anger, gave her something to focus on that wasn’t violence.

‘You work for Lucian?’ Amanda said.

‘I do, as well as others occasionally.’

‘And you have intimate knowledge of his operation,’ she asked, keeping her voice as level as she could.

‘That’s correct.’

‘How’s that arrangement working out for you?’ She said, gambling on something not being right any more between Lucian and Shaun, based on what Yasmin had said.

‘We are, in a period of review,’ he said, guardedly.

‘Well, I have need of your services, and would appreciate it if you would work for me.’ Amanda said through gritted teeth.

Shaun looked at Vanessa, who shrugged, and then back at Amanda.

‘What do you want to know?’

Well, that seemed easier than it had any right to be. What had Lucian done to Shaun that would cause him to turn his back on that partnership so quickly?

‘Lucian has kidnapped Liz, and I have been reliably informed that you would know where she would be,’ Amanda said, her anger, at Shaun anyway, subsiding slightly.

Shaun nodded. ‘I think I do,’ he said, before moving over to a nearby computer. A few mouse clicks and keyboard taps and he pointed to the screen. ‘She’ll be in there.

Amanda stepped closer to the screen and watched as Shaun zoomed in and out of the Map, showing a satellite view of a palatial mansion in the heart of Columbia.

‘And Lucian, where does he hide himself away?’

‘The Pit Club, in Harlem, I can get you in, avoiding his protections,’ Shaun offered.

‘Really? Then I will be back for that later. In the meantime, I think you should pack up,’ she said, gesturing to the camera gear still trained on her house.

Her anger no longer really focused on Shaun and what he had done, he seemed reasonable and probably had little choice in the role he had to play in recent events. Lucian seemed like a dangerous and somewhat unstable man. Someone you really did not want to cross. Shaun although clearly not without blame and at the very least guilty of being somewhat mercenary, had probably had his back up against the wall with regards to his work with Lucian. Amanda had no idea what threats he had been working under, maybe that Mortal in there with him, Vanessa had been threatened? Or someone else. He did seem to be all too eager to turn his back on Lucian though, and that had worked to her advantage, at least for the moment.

‘Gladly.’ Shaun smiled back, and handed her a cell phone. ‘My number is on it. Call me when you need me again.’ The phone beeped suddenly in her hand. ‘And that’s the address of the mansion in Columbia I’ve just texted to you.’

‘I’ll be back,’ Amanda said, before Porting away a heartbeat later.

The legends of Yasmin seem endless, if you believed them all you’d think that she alone caused all of the major incidents you have heard of throughout history.

According to some, she is behind the fake moon landings and JFK and worse. But the fact is that Magi rarely cause these events, they sometimes get caught up in them, but they rarely cause them.

With that said, we do have reliable eye witness testimony that places Yasmin at a few well known moments in history, such as the Fire of London. Did she cause it? I suppose we’ll never truly know, but I’m not surprised to hear of a Nomad taking advantage of an unfortunate situation such as that.

For instance, we do have Photographs of Yasmin that place her in the Nazi death camps of World War II, wearing an SS Uniform.

Death on such a grand scale will always attract Nomads like moths to a flame.

- From ‘A history of the Dark Nomads’, by Trevelyan.

One Woman Army

May 19
th

Columbia

Amanda appeared on the street of the well to do gated housing estate on the edge of Medellin in Columbia. The sun had set hours ago, but the air still felt very warm, even without the sun being up.

The houses in this private estate were all very nice and quite large. Here the rich and well to do shut themselves away from the poverty and gang violence in the city streets, violence that some in here helped create or direct. She suspected that there would probably be a few criminal figureheads hidden up here amongst the legitimate business owners and the trust fund crowd. Part of her loved the idea of a one woman crusade, travelling around the world, righting wrongs, exacting retribution against those who preyed upon the weak.

It would no doubt remain merely a fantasy though, operating that openly would be frowned upon by the Magi Council.

For today though, she had her eyes on one target only, the house on the other side of the road from her. The white washed home sat in a beautifully landscaped garden, surrounded by cruel looking pointed black railings over six foot high. She could see an Aegis that surrounded just one wing of the huge house, leaving the rest of the building unprotected, and that Aegis didn’t seem terribly strong.

Had it only recently been created?

Amanda’s keen magically enhanced eyesight cut through the darkness, allowing her to see as clear as day and pick out the security they had in place here. She could make out a number of men walking the grounds, mainly close to the house although there were a few at the gate as well.

Cameras were everywhere, she could see the electricity flowing along the powerlines feeding the cameras that watched the perimeter and the outside of the house, they probably had motion detectors as well.

She took a breath, psyching herself up for the fight ahead. Coming to New York and facing off against Lucian had tested her confidence, both in herself and her Magic, she’d doubted herself a few times, but she felt that in the end, she had grown and raised that belief in herself, at least a little bit.

Coming here might have been a slightly rash choice, but Liz needed her and whether she felt totally confident in doing this or not, she had to try and find her friend.

She had no idea how this would play out, but she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to get Liz out of there, but she wanted to make a show of force doing it. She wanted to take down whatever operation Lucian had running here and make him sit up and take notice. She wanted to show him that he had crossed a line.

She wouldn’t stop at this though, this would merely be step one, the larger challenge was yet to come.

Using her Multitasking to split her mind into three separate but working minds, she started by quietly building an Aegis around the whole compound that would stop any magic entering or leaving the grounds. As that grew, she started to work in other elements, cutting off the phone lines and the mobile signal, cutting off the people inside from the outside. Finally she also added in a one way sound dampener, so that no sound would pass beyond the walls of this compound.

As she put the finishing touches to this shield, and brought the strength of the Aegis up to, and then beyond the strength of the Aegis the Nomads had erected themselves, she walked up the street towards the gate.

She’d left New York immediately from Shaun’s apartment, itching to do this herself. She wanted Gentle Water to look after Alicia and she didn’t want to mess about trying to bring other people in on this mission. She wanted the element of surprise to be on her side.

Sure, Lucian almost certainly expected Amanda to react and do something, maybe he expected her to find him in New York and demand Liz’s release. He probably didn’t expect Shaun to turn his back on him and start to help Amanda.

Also, she could not rule out the possibility that Shaun had played her and that he might be right this moment be on his way to tell Lucian what had just happened.

She wanted to be in and out of this house before anyone could Port over here and intervene. Erecting the Aegis around the property helped to prolong this as much as possible and acted as an early warming mechanism. She’d woven in a small effect into the Aegises Magic that would alert her to anyone breaking through any part of the shield.

Her trip down here from New York had taken a few jumps, she Ported to a Jacksonville rooftop first, before briefly appearing on similar rooftops in Cancun in Mexico, then a field on the coast of Nicaragua before finally Porting here.

Each time she stopped, she boosted and fine-tuned her own Aegis and Force Shield, and happy with the Shield over the house to her left, she continued to feed her own Aegis and store some Essentia in her own body, ready for the Essentia Strikes she would probably need in here.

The gate came into view and she could easily make out the four or five men, all of them carrying sub machine guns quite openly over their suits. She could see one of the men fiddling with his walky-talky and getting angry with it as she started to cross the street and walk directly towards the main gate.

As she drew nearer, a couple of the men noticed her and alerted the whole crew, a pair of them broke off from the group and approached the gate while the others spread out behind them.

Amanda had no desire to talk to these guys, this would be a business trip, there would be no small talk.

She called on her Magic and with a judicious use of kinetic energy, the two front gates flew off their hinges directly back into the men behind them. The two closest men fell to the floor bloodied and useless, another man took a blow to the face from one of the flying gates and dropped to the floor, squeezing off a few rounds from his gun that shot up into the night well away from anyone.

The other two men wasted no time in opening fire on Amanda, but their guns had no enchantments on them, their bullets just small slugs of metal travelling at high speed. They bounced harmlessly off of Amanda’s force shield with a slight crackle of Magical energy, which Amanda ignored as she ran forward a little too quick for a normal human.

Her body, magically enhanced to be permanently stronger and faster than most people could ever hope to be, and further enhanced with the Magic she used now, almost became a blur as she closed the gap with the closest guard, punching him in the gut with a force that winded him before kneeing him in the face, crushing his nose as blood exploded from it.

The second man adjusted his aim and continued to fire, his shots pinging off of Amanda’s shield. A few of them struck the guard Amanda had attacked, killing him, as Amanda turned her attention to the last guard left standing and leapt into the air, spinning as she did so and bringing her foot down upon this last guards head, knocking him off his feet and breaking his jaw. He landed roughly, out cold as a couple of teeth bounced off the concrete beside him.

Amanda stood there for a moment, and scanned about her. She still wore the same dark outfit of a fitted top and smart skirt that came to above the knee. The skirt had a rip up one side now from her acrobatics, showing more of the black tights she wore. She grabbed each side of the rip and tore it some more giving her full and free movement of her legs. She spun on the spot and walked towards the house, her bright auburn hair, held in a ponytail, flaring out behind her as her stiletto heeled boots clicked on the paved driveway. She pulled off her coat and flung it to the floor as she moved through the darkness towards the house. As she advanced, she set one of her minds to breaking the Aegis that covered the east wing of the building. She hammered it with Essentia at one spot, looking to break through and then hopefully bring it down completely.

As she neared the house, a couple more guys ran out of the shadows, not noticing Amanda until they were too close. The nearest guy came up short, seeing her at the last moment and tried to bring his gun to bare, but he never got there, Amanda moved quickly, disarming the man, breaking a couple of his fingers on his right hand as she did so. She extracted the clip of bullets from the gun as it dropped to the floor and in one smooth motion, getting his arm into a lock.

The second guard approached on the other side to Amanda, so that the man she held stood between them. He pointed his machine gun at her, holding it high to sight along the barrel. Amanda moved, spinning with the man she held and used the momentum to kick out and send the second man’s gun flying into the darkness.

The sudden movement and spinning motion proved too much for the shoulder and elbow joints of the man she held, which broke and dislocated with a couple of  sickening sounds. The man fell to his knees in agony holding his own arm.

Turning to the second man, who now pulled out his pistol, she took hold of his hands and arm and twisted. She forced him to pull the trigger and shoot himself in the leg three times. As he screamed, she ripped the gun from his hands as he fell to his good knee. Flipping the gun, she hit him on the side of the head with it, knocking him out cold before sliding the barrel on the automatic and taking it apart.

The wailing coming from the man behind her with the broken arm annoyed her suddenly, so she span on the spot and kicked the side of his head with her black suede boot. He fell and went quiet.

She followed the path where the two men had appeared from and walked up some steps surrounded by bushes. She emerged onto the lit front patio of marble flooring and a front door framed with columns of white stone.

Two men waited on either side of the door, one knelt, the other stood, but both with their high powered MP5’s trained on Amanda. They didn’t waste any time, they knew she meant business so they opened fire. Their automatic weapons sprayed her with bullets that ricocheted off her shield, leaving her unharmed, but destroying the foliage and plant pots next to her.

Their weapons ran dry of rounds and finished shooting her with the clicking noise of an empty gun.

‘My turn,’ Amanda said, and with a quick tug on the magical energy around her, both men were slammed into the walls behind them. They dropped to the floor and went still.

As a general rule, Amanda tried to avoid killing whenever she could. Working with Orion and Xain on their missions against the Nomads over the last year, Amanda had been in a few fights for her life, and a few of them ended with her having little choice but to take their lives. It had literally been kill or be killed.

She’d talked at length with Gentle Water, and Orion and Xain about this, about dealing with being responsible for the death of someone else, even when the death could not have been better deserved.

She’d learned to understand that when it came to Nomads, the horrific stuff they did meant that you were usually saving lives of others by taking that final action. Few people really deserved to have their lives ended, but when it came to the Nomads, the Arcadians were the only ones who could do the job. They were the last defence against the rising darkness. The killing of Nomads and their Covens, including the Initiated humans who served them had been officially sanctioned by the Magi Council

But even so, Amanda always tried to subdue her foes whenever possible, keeping her conscience as clean as she possibly could.

That said, and as much as she hoped she could do this without killing, she knew that if the situation needed it, she wouldn’t shy away.

Satisfied that these two were no more threat, she walked forward and purely for dramatic effect, used her magic once again to blow the doors off their hinges. They flew inside and clattered into the hallway, breaking a couple of ornaments as they went.

As she walked into the large reception room at the front of the house with its pair of curved staircases leading up to the second floor, Amanda immediately detected a couple of sources of Magic ahead. Looking around, she got barely a second to see that two Magi stood at the top of the stairs, one on each flight, both of them carrying automatic weapons. At that moment, a squad of Security guards ran into the room from the house on the same level as Amanda. They all pointed their weapons at her and opened fire.

Amanda didn’t stand there and take it this time, not least because both the guns the two Magi were firing had Essentia imbued rounds.

Breaking from the doorway at a sprint, she ran to her left and jumped high and fast, going head over heels as she went and landing on the wall with her feet. The gravity shifted with her, as she ran along the wall, the plaster and stone exploding all around her as she sprinted a few steps, moving towards the first of the two Nomad Magi up the left hand stairway. The man wore beige trousers, an open black shirt showing off his chest hair and chewed on a cigar as he gritted his teeth and fired his weapon.

‘’Come to daddy you bitch, I gonna show you how we do things here in Columbia,’ he raged, but Amanda ignored it.

She leapt from the wall, a few of the rounds from the mundane weapons and a couple from the Magical ones hitting home. She only cared about the Magical round as they damaged her Aegis, but these were weak and it would take an awful lot more than that to break down her shield. 

Spinning and kicking him across the face, he fell back against the banister. As Amanda dropped down in front of him, she hopped and span again, moving quicker then she should, kicking the gun from his hands. His own Aegis sparked at being hit but held firm.

The gunfire from the guards below and the other Magi faltered, stopping in case they hit the Magus she fought, but she kept an eye on them as they started to move to try and get another angle on her.