Lazarus 6 - EIGHTEEN: Aftermath

We were met by fire.

Beaten and bloodied, we stared at the orange and yellow flames eating through the Arch-Mage’s safe house, a thick plume of smoke, trailing up into the sky. To my frazzled mind, the gray cloud looked like a giant question mark. Fitting since I had so many questions about what in the hell had happened here. Heavy duty metal safety shutters now covered the windows and doors, but they were all scorched to shit. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and at least one wing of the house was just… gone. Pulverized. Leaving only stony rubble, shattered glass, and charred boards behind.

We were in a warzone. Hell, I’d seen actualwarzones that looked less like warzones than this.

There should’ve been cops and firetrucks swarming all over the place, but the entire street was abandoned. Not a soul in sight. That, at least, I had an explanation for. Protruding from the yard was a Guild Beacon—looked a bit like a fancy silver tiki-torch with electric blue runes spiraling along the shaft and a fat blue gem, embedded in the head. That gem pulsed with a gentle light, strobing on and off every few seconds. Guild Beacons were almost never authorized for public use since they relied on powerful mental glamours that tip-toed right on the line of compulsion. I could feel the suggestion radiating off in waves.

LEAVE THIS PLACE… ALL IS FINE… LEAVE THIS PLACE.... THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE... LEAVE THIS PLACE…

Thanks to my mental wards, I barely felt its suggestion, but Winona had to physical restrain Chris to keep him from turning around and walking in the other direction. At least until we were safely inside the containment field.

The Beacons cast a wide net, forcing Rubes to stay away—to turn around and forget whatever it was that might have seen. It was some heavy duty, Men in Black bullshit for sure, and the Guild only every trotted them out for major damage control. Incidents that happened in major metropolitan areas, for example. It didn’t surprise me even one bit that the Arch-Mage just had one chilling in her broom closet. That seemed very consistent with her hypocrisy and utter willingness to twist the rules, so long as she was the one doing the twisting. But I could worry about all that later, after we figured out what had happened and whether my friends were okay.

I called to my power, embracing Vis and Nox, and wove my construct without a second thought. Enormous, swirling bands of air and water settled over the house like a heavy blanket, smothering the flames in the span of a few seconds. A great whoosh of steam and smoke billowed up, raining gray ash down on us in the process. We needed to look for our survivors, but I couldn’t let the fire spread. Enough damage had already been done. This was an old neighborhood, the houses all ancient with history. Some had probably seen the birth of America or at the very least the fall of the Confederacy.

They’d survived war after war and endless years of hurricanes, but they hadn’t weathered the Guild’s civil war.

“There’s a Panic Room in the cellar,” Sullivan said, setting a hand on my shoulder and gently pressing down. “I don’t care how tough the Morrigan is, there’s no way she killed everyone.”

“This is my fault,” I said, shrugging off his reassuring hand. “I knew bringing as many people to the Cult as we did was a risk. They came for the Scion. The Scion was only here, because I was stupid enough to take her from Firroth.”

“Yancy, you couldn’t have known—”

“Stow it,” I snapped. “I’m not in the mood for excuses. Just get me to panic room.”

“I know where it is,” Levi said, now back in his human form.

I turned to Chris and Winona. “You two post up out here,” I said. “Stay together, but signal us if you see any movement.”

Levi, Sullivan, and I headed up the short stairs and pushed through the steel-covered door, mangled and blasted half-way off the hinges. The interior was still filled with smoke, making it hard to see, but a gust of gale force wind cleared that out in a hurry, giving us a clear line of sight and a view of the damage. More bullet holes. Part of a wall was missing from what looked like a grenade blast, based on the scorch marks on the floor and the shrapnel embedded in the plaster. Blood spattered also decorated everything. Up ahead was a body, face down and badly burnt. Even at a glance, though, I could tell it wasn’t any of our people.

The arms were disproportionately long, the skin sickly pale and riddled with creeping black veins. I got closer and kicked the corpse over with the toe of my boot. I recoiled when I saw the pointy ears, the hinged jaw, with a fleshy tube-like tongue hanging out, ringed at the end with jagged teeth like broken glass.

“No, can’t be,” Sullivan said from behind me.

“What is it?” I asked. The fact that I genuinely didn’t know was alarming in its own way. I’ve been around for a good long while and though there were still a few things in the supernatural world I hadn’t squared off against, I prided myself on knowing what most of them were, at least.

“Strigoi,” he said. “I’ve never seen one in the flesh, but I remember reading about them back when I was a probationary judge.”

“One of the five?” I asked arching an eyebrow.

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “This is a hatchling. Newly born. Likely turned in the last few weeks or so. Look at the eyes. Bright red. Blood vessel are blown. That happens during the turn, but eventually clears up. Hatchlings are unthinking, though. Nearly uncontrollable without guidance from an Overlord. Which means one of the Five was likely a part of this raid…”

My blood ran cold as he trailed off. The implications were enormous. If the Morrigan was giving the Overlords a pass to start actively breeding again, then stopping her was more urgent than ever. The Overlords were as bad as the Morrigan in their own way, and though they might be playing nice with her at the moment, they would turn as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Once they did, it would be humanity that suffered the consequences.

Levi ushered us past more chaos and bloodshed, past the winding staircase that lead to the second floor—where the war room and the bedrooms were—then down a small hallway and into what was probably once a sitting room.

I whistled through my teeth.

The air was thick with magic and the room was thoroughly thrashed. Coffee table upended. Leather couches and sitting chair, smashed to pieces. Artwork torn from the walls. Oh, and there were bodies everywhere. Nearly a dozen of them, all sickly pale like the thing we’d found in the hallway. Bullet holes peppered faces and chests, leaving sprays of black blood across the horrid floral wallpaper. Others had been hacked to pieces, which was probably Sir Gal’s doing, and at least two of them had been ripped apart at the joints or charbroiled beyond recognition. That had to be the Arch-Mage.

A brightly colored area rug was shoved into one corner, revealing a metal-topped cellar door set into the floor. The panic room.

I hustled over to the metal door and knelt, brushing my fingers along the rivets.

The damn thing thrummed with potent, unseen energy which spoke to wards, painstakingly worked into the metal. My eye went out of focus and I let my preternatural, Vis-enhanced senses brush along the surface. Yep. Heavy duty constructs, likely drawing energy from the formidable domicilium seal that filled this home with an arcane power of its own. The power of the mundane. The power of human life, invested a piece at a time as its inhabitants shuffled across the mortal coil, leaving bits and pieces of themselves behind like a static charge on the surface of a balloon.

There was no way we were getting through that thing.

I pounded on the surface with the side of my hand, thump-thump-thump, then called out, amplifying my voice so whoever was inside would be able to hear me.

“Ferraro? Greg? Anyone? Its Yancy. Anyone home down there?”

For a long beat, nothing happened, then there was an audible clunk and the sound of whirling gears.

“I’d stand back if I were you,” came the Arch-Mage’s muffled voice.

I shuffled back a few paces as the door groaned and hissed, swinging upward with the aid of a hydraulic piston. The Arch-Mage’s face was the first sight to greet me, her silver hair in disarray, her face smudged with a combination of soot and blood. She had a nasty cut running down her cheek and across her chin, which was telling. The Arch-Mage was a powerhouse in her own right and if she’d been personally injury in the throw down, then it meant things were dire.

“Everyone okay?” I asked, voice thin, chest tight.

“No,” she replied curtly. “We have wounded.” She turned and headed down the steel steps, motioning for us to follow.

“Levi, go get Chris and Winona, would you?”

He shook his head. “If we have wounded, best if I have a look first. Might be able to help.”

“I’m on it,” Sullivan said, slapping me on the shoulder.

Levi and I followed the Arch-Mage down into a sparsely decorated room that looked like a steel walled bomb shelter. There were a couple of cots, a bank of surveillance monitors and computer equipment, and a small armory—swords, maces, guns of various makes and models, and enough ammo to supply the lot. A door lead deeper into the panic room, presumably connecting to storage and a latrine. Darlene sat at in an office chair, monitoring the surveillance system and clacking furiously away at a computer.

I spotted Ferraro and Sir Gal at once, and though they both looked worse for the wear, they were alive. Spread out on one of the cots was Greg, his dark skin unusually pale, sweat beading on his forehead. His eyes were closed and for a second, I was sure he was dead. Then I saw his chest rattle and rise. Not dead, but dying. His breathing was labored. Sir Gal was applying a pressure dressing to his stomach and a tourniquet had been slipped around one of his legs, staunching the flow of blood from a ragged wound in his calf. Looked like a chunk of meat had been rudely ripped away with hungry teeth.

Ferraro glanced up, offering me a tight smile, then went back to work, rigging an emergency IV. There was already a bag of saline suspended from a stainless-steel infusion rack, and she was already adding a second line. A blood bag.

“Is he okay?” I asked, the words felt like sandpaper being forced through my throat.

“He’s alive,” Ferraro replied. “For how long, I don’t know. The wound in his leg is nasty, but one of those vampire things carved up his stomach. We’ve got internal bleeding. He’s been in and out of consciousness for the past hour or so. We’ve been busy trying to stabilize him, but its not looking good.”

Ever single word hit like a hammer blow. Like a bomb blast.