Josie sent a letter to Elaine. Once they knew where they should be looking, she could

throw out a bird and find the real Lich Queen. She wanted to know how this people

had come up with their bloodsucking and seed planting. After that would come

something from the Old Testament.

It might be something the Society would eventually assign them in the course of their

days. She didn’t want to wait that long.

The magic books might be part of the same problem. By themselves, she had no

problem with people arming special forces. Coupled with the torture and potential

world ending disaster in the mix, she might have to do something about them if she

got a chance.

And Jack had given her some ideas to use with his use of the Stargate rings, and Star

Trek teleporter pads. She thought she could nuke someone if a showdown like that

happened.

Elaine’s letter came back while she was thinking. The model stated that the Queen

was close to them. She couldn’t pinpoint where exactly the menace happened to be.

“Elaine said the model says our circle is still here,” said Josie. The women started

vanishing. She frowned. “Now I have to ask her if the circle moved.”

“Go ahead,” said Jack. “Our bad guys are surrounding the temple. They’ll be trying

to get up here to stop us from pulling the plug eventually.”

“You would think they would run,” said Budd. He looked over at the neighboring

building. He had his bow in hand, arrows on the top of the wall in front of him. Once

he saw a target, he would grab an arrow and shoot. The move would only take a

second.

“Why?,” asked Jack. “No one who has seen us at work lived to tell the tale except

maybe the one guy Jo punted out of town. That was a good shot. I wonder how much

those personal shields can take before we crack them.”

“Make them drop the book if you can,” said Josie. “I killed the one after he dropped

his.”

“That’s an important note,” said Jack. “If you wind up fighting some guys throwing

red beams of death at you, and holding a glowing book, knock the book out of his

hand. Then you can stab him as much as you want.”

“Elaine wrote back,” said Josie. “Whatever was going on with those women, the

source is still here with us. So we have to find it and knock it out of commission

before the Shemmarians wake it up and sic it on us.”

She threw out a firebird. It soared across the town. It landed on another building that

was a cube of gray blocks and no windows. It landed on the roof, and poofed out of

existence.

“I can take us over there,” said Josie. “Then we have to break in and do what we got

to do.”

“Everyone ready?,” said Jack. He had let his watch recharge as they came up with a

plan. He had a way to knock down walls at hand.

“Cover the accesses when we arrive,” said Fass. “Lou, keep an eye on things. As soon

as they realize we moved, they’ll be swarming that other building to stop us.”

“There is a force already over there,” said Lou. “They are blocking the ground floor

doors.”

“Good thing we’re going in through the roof,” said Jack. He grinned at the assembly.

They had seen that expression before and it bode an ill will being applied ahead.

“All right, guys,” said Josie. She wanted to make things interesting for the troops in

town. She concentrated and flung a bird up for everyone around her, marking the

combatant dots on the pad as the firebirds streamed into the air like giant fireworks.

Her group appeared on the other roof as their birds reached it. She made sure that she

teleported over first to clear the way for them. She only had to hold the area for a

minute before her birds reached their destination and dragged their passengers after

them. Fass’s Fighters, and Jack, appeared a second later after she arrived. They went

on guard, but no one challenged them.

“They are all disappearing,” reported Lou. “It looks like the town is clearing of

combatants.”

“That’s my best friend,” said Jack. He pointed at Josie in her Zatanna persona. “I

taught her everything she knows.”

“You couldn’t teach a dog to bite,” said Josie. “Let’s do what we can before they try

to regroup and stop us.”

“No doors,” said Fass. “Do we transport down and go in through the doors now that

the building is empty?”

“I got it, Eric,” said Jack. “We’ll just have to find inside stairs. Try not to touch

anything since we still don’t know how all of this works.”

Jack touched his watch. His giant derelict formed up in his tattered suit. He knelt and

brought one fist down on the roof. He punched through the stone. He dropped

through and looked around.

“Budd, go,” said Fass. “Lou. Cover the entrances. We don’t know how long we have

before the army gets back. Emily, Cord, clear the top floor and start working your

way down. Bosk, Cord. Ern, and Tave, hold the roof. Keep an eye out for the enemy.

Anyone who sets up on the nearby buildings, shoot at them to keep them away from

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

us. Shoot them on the ground if you have to do that. Stick with me, Case. We’re

going to help search and keep things running smoothly.”

Josie waited for Fass’s Fighters to break up and start on their tasks. Aviras flew down

to ride on Jack as he moved through the building. He hadn’t said anything, but he

hadn’t stayed with Emily.

Josie let Zatanna go and walked to the hole. She dropped to the next floor. The others

were already sifting through everything. She followed along slowly. She doubted that

their problem would be on the top floor, but you never knew.

It would have been easy to send out a firebird. That would have taken her right to the

source of their problem. She considered it as she walked down to the staircase at the

end of the hall. She started down to the ground floor.

The implanting of the seeds bothered her. What were they for other than control? Did

they lead to the Lich Queen coming into power? What happened now that they were

gone?

Had Jack made them the targets of the Queen’s reprisal by killing her children?

She foresaw Jack and her going to the capitol of Shemmaria and dealing out some

rough justice to the government for this. And she didn’t care because all she could

think was letting the bodies hit the floor.

She reached the bottom floor. She paused at the layout taking up the entire ground

floor. She saw Fass making sure his fighters were at the edge of the thing. She

approved of that.

There was no need for them to be close while she and Jack tried to figure out what

was going on with what the Shemmarians had built.

They had built a pit in the center of the ground floor. A woman lay in the pit. A tree

had grown out of her naked chest. Marks covered her body. Her mouth had been

stitched shut. Blood circled her body, inching over the sides of her body. Her eyes

were closed.

“I don’t think we can fix her like we did the others,” Josie said. “Just the thing

growing out of her would kill her as soon as we try to take it out of her with your

teleporter trick.”

“I have no idea what we can do,” said Jack. He scratched the back of his head. “I have

never seen anything like this. Has anybody seen anything like this?”

“No.” said Fass.

“There’s the Goblin Tree story, but I don’t know if this is close to that,” said Emily.

“We need something before she wakes up and tries to kill us,” said Jack.

Josie punched him in the arm. The last thing they needed was fear of the unknown.

They had to figure this out and do it in such a way they left nothing for the

Shemmarians to recover.

“The story goes that a young maiden was talking to her true love and they decided to

run away together,” said Emily. “At one point, they were attacked by a tribe of

goblins. They were separated and the maiden was taken. The lover, a knight and

adventurer, pursued the goblins. When he caught up with them, they had turned his

love into a tree. He began to hunt all the tribes down in his grief.”

“No solutions?,” asked Jack.

“Not in the story,” said Emily. “He burned the tree down from what the story said.”

“Which is what we might have to do here,” said Josie. “I would like to meet the guy

who thought this was a good thing.”

“You and me both,” said Jack. He frowned at the woman in the pit. “I think we are

going to need to separate this out into component parts and hope she doesn’t wake up

and try to kill us with all the dead people outside.”

“Stop,” said Josie. “Let’s start with a scan to see what we can do. Then we go at the

weak points to whatever this ritual is. I’m going to close the building up first so we

have time. Eric, take your guys upstairs. You don’t want to be around for this.”

“Two of us have to be here in case something goes wrong,” said Fass. “Lou, take a

station by the exit. Budd, take the others upstairs and guard the approaches.

Remember you will have to make any of these wizards drop their books before you

can kill them.”

“Don’t get killed,” said Budd. He waved at the others to head up the stairs in front of

him.

“The witches will protect me,” said Fass.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Jack. He looked around the room. “Go ahead with your

idea, Jo. Maybe once we learn something about this, we can pick out the weak spots.”

Josie pulled on Zatanna again. She closed all the doors and any windows with rocks.

She wanted to fight her way out, not let her enemies rush in while they were trying

to fix what they had uncovered.

She called on a book of knowledge and asked for the parts to be evaluated. She

frowned at the tree process description. It required a lot of blood to grow the tree as

big as it did. It gave back seeds to put in others with careful harvesting.

At least they knew why they needed all the women they had bought from the

Montrose. They had no way of getting back any of the women who had been

processed. They had extinguished all those lives for this.

Josie felt her face putting on her mask. Someone would pay for this. The ding of a

quest enacting filed in her mind to remind her of what she wanted to do. She nodded

in her fury.

She was glad the Society agreed with her because she was going to do it whether they

liked it or not.

“We can’t do anything for this woman,” said Josie. “This tree will throw seeds out.

If they get into anything living, they take over, form trees, and give the victims an

ability to command dead bodies to start working to bring it more victims to take over,

or infect if they have another seed inside. We are looking at a zombie invasion.”

“Walking dead?,” said Jack. “I hate that show. Everyone is so stupid.”

“I like it,” said Josie. “But that’s what we’re looking at if this gets out. We’re all

going to have to be checked out.”

“I got it,” said Jack. “How do we deal with this?”

“We are going to need to burn everything to the ground,” said Josie. “This whole

town has to be destroyed.”

“The whole town has to be burned down?,” asked Fass.

“It has to be taken apart and cleaned,” said Josie. “A seed from one of these trees

could reproduce and start the potential end of the world. And we might be too late

getting here and dealing with this.”

“I got this,” said Jack. “I know exactly how to take everything apart. Get everybody

back to the quinjet and look them over, Jo. I’ll fix the rest of this.”

“Are you sure?,” asked Josie.

“I’ll keep Aviras to protect me,” said Jack. “We are going to add the people behind

this to the Montrose. Something has to be done.”

“All right,” said Josie. “I can grab everyone and send us back to the jet.”

“Be ready to fly out of here if things reach out that far,” said Jack.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” said Josie. She gestured for Eric and Lou to start up

before her and get the others ready to go.

“There are two kinds of people in this world,” said Jack. He didn’t grin at her. “The

dead and the dying. Go ahead. We will be right behind you.”

Josie didn’t like that look in his eye. She had seen it in school right before he tried to

throw the head school bully down the steps in their middle school. She hurried after

Fass and his helper.

She had never thought of Jack as someone who got angry easily as they matured, but

maybe she had been wrong.

She sent out birds as she ran for the roof. She needed to move the others and check

them out before Jack did whatever he planned to do. She nodded as the spells caught

hold and sent the others away one by one. She hoped Eric kept them organized as she

teleported herself away from the doomed town.