Josie looked at her captive. He was the only she had let live. She needed answers. She couldn’t get that from a dead man.

Maybe she could with the right hero on call. It was something she could try to figure out in the future. Another quest dinged in her head.

She shook her head.

A more heroic version of Jack appeared in a red suit, cape, and crown. He took in the scene with a glance. He lowered his hand.

“Can you watch him for me, Jack?,” said Josie. “I have to find my clothes.”

“Sure,” said Jack. “Do you want to talk about this?”

“Not now,” said Josie. “Maybe later.”

“All right,” said Jack. “We’ll be waiting for you to get back.”

Josie nodded as she left the office. She heard Jack ask about the piece of metal she had wrapped around her captive. She had taken it from one of the dead guards and put it to good use in her mind.

She had ripped through the place like a hungry wolf pack through a herd of sheep. They hadn’t been prepared for the level of violence she had committed to using. She ignored the scattered bones as she walked back to her cell.

She needed her clothes. When her hero ran out, she was back to being naked. Jack wouldn’t mind, but she did. And her Mage shirt was something she planned to give to her kids when she had them.

She wasn’t sure she was going to have them the way she was going. She wondered what the death penalty was like for being a witch in this world. She put that thought aside.

She would probably go down fighting something she wasn’t supposed to be fighting for a world that didn’t even know her.

How did she get dragged into this?

She returned to her cell and let the Vampire go. She searched the sparse room and found her clothes thrown on the filthy floor. She fumed at that. She hung everything up and used Alchemy to clean them with the last of the charge in her watch.

She was glad she killed the dungeoneers. They deserved it for crumpling up her shirt.

She stepped back out in the hall. The girls were still crying in their cells. Had she left them manacled in place? She must have. She had to do something about that before she got on with the rest of her business.

“Hey!,” Josie called. “We’re going to get you out of here in a few minutes. Just settle down. I have to ask the guy in charge some questions, then my friend and I will cut you loose. We’re not going to hurt you.”

That didn’t stop the crying, but it quieted down while she was listening. She nodded. She hoped she could help them. She didn’t want to put them back out on the street if she had better options.

She went back up to the office. She had to get some answers if she wanted to track down the rest of the organization.

Jack was snooping around the office in his normal form. He had pushed the head guy’s chair against the fireplace while he looked around. He nodded at her when she walked into the room.

“How did you find me so fast?,” asked Josie. She crossed her arms.

“I talked to a guy and his slave at the Bell Tower,” said Jack. “Did you know they give the women they take a drug that makes them slaves. The women all have a rose on their back from what she said.”

“They didn’t give me this drug,” said Josie. “Wait. They were going to give it to me before I changed and used I, Vampire.”

“What do you want to do about this?,” asked Jack.

“I have a quest to wipe these people out,” said Josie. She turned her frown on her one captive. “So I need their names so I can get started.”

“I don’t know that so you’re wasting your time,” said the head guy. He grinned at her. “I’m protected. If you do anything to me, you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.”

“We want your people to come after us,” said Josie. “That will make our job that much easier. When we’re done, we won’t have anything to worry about as far as your Montrose is concerned. You’ll all be dead.”

“Actually, where are your books?,” asked Jack.

“Books?,” said the chief. “What books?”

“Your ledgers, your paperwork,” said Jack. “You know. Your records.”

“They’re in code,” said the chief. “They won’t do you any good.”

Jack checked his watch. He frowned at what it told him. He tapped the desk with his fingers.

“I guess that’s fair,” said Jack. “You’re not going to tell us where they are?”

“Why would I do that?,” asked the trafficker. “The next man in my position needs them more than you two.”

Josie felt her face flush as anger coursed through her system. Jack waved a hand at her. She looked at him. She wanted to turn back into the Vampire and use it slowly on this man. She wanted to reduce him to bones as slowly as she could so she could enjoy it.

“What’s your quest, Josie?,” said Jack. He checked the timer on his watch.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I have to kill the hundred plus kay members of the Montrose,” said Josie. “I’m ready to get started with what I have here.”

“How many mages do you have on your watch?,” asked Jack. He tapped the desk again.

“I don’t know,” said Josie. “I think I could count on Zatara and Zatanna because of their names, Sargon, the two Doctors. I’m not sure about the Spectre, or Phantom Stranger, and Ibis would probably turn me into a bird. Maybe Mark Mystic and Ra-Man if I stretched it.”

“There’s probably some edge cases from ordinary guys,” said Jack. “Like Angel. I have the Scarlet Witch for sure. Throws hexes. That’s how I got through the front door so fast. Hexed the door and it corroded away.”

“Is this leading somewhere?,” asked Josie.

“Did you know you could hex a group of people?,” asked Jack. He checked his watch.

“No, I didn’t,” said Josie. “How many people?”

“I don’t know off hand,” said Jack. “I saw it as an option. I might need some help with the size of the group you’re talking about. I couldn’t kill them all in one stroke. That would be asking too much, but I could do something.”

“Could you mark them?,” said Josie. She saw how he was thinking now.

“Maybe,” said Jack. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? You might be killing people for a decade.”

“I said I would commit to a war when I generated the quest,” said Josie. “I can’t exactly take that back now.”

“All right,” said Jack. He dialed his watch in to the hero he wanted. “I want to find the ledgers to help us out with the hex. What do we do about the women?”

“I don’t know,” said Josie. “Can you erase their geas?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I promised the slave back at the Bell Tower I would try. I think I can hex it in person, but not as part of a group thing.”

“What are you two talking about?,” asked the trafficker. He had listened to the

direction of things and didn’t like the implications.

“We’re talking about making it easy to track down your membership,” said Jack. “Then it will be open season like those lawyers in Schlock Mercenary.”

“I remember that,” said Josie. She had thought the snakes in ties apt and cute at the same time. “Didn’t Schlock’s company get an open bounty on them.”

“Yep,” said Jack. “Shoot on sight anywhere and anytime.”

“Oh,” said Josie. “You can’t be serious.”

“I sure am,” said Jack. “I love this magic stuff.”

“I can see that,” said Josie. She smiled. “It’s what I need.”

“You two can’t be serious,” said the trafficker. “You’re talking about a spell. There’s no such thing as magic.”

“We have artificial force multipliers,” said Jack.

Jack hit the button on his watch. He turned into a man in green and yellow. His eyes were black holes stuck in his face.

“Guess what?,” said Jack. “X-ray vision.”

“Really?,” said Josie. “More harassment.”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before,” said Jack. He looked around the room, settling on a wall opposite of where they had left their captive.

“Tequila was involved, and you know it,” said Josie.

“Sure,” said Jack. He switched to the green derelict that he had used to flatten the gold they had taken to the Exchange. He pulled the wall apart to reveal a safe that he casually ripped open with his unnatural strength.

He pulled out a set of books and a box of gold. He put them both down on the office desk. He returned to normal and waited for his watch to recharge. He smiled at the trafficker, who looked sick.

“What do you have there?,” asked Josie.

“A list of people paying and being paid by the Montrose, and money for our war chest,” said Jack. He pushed over the box. “The ledgers are going to help me with my hex.”

“What are we doing?,” said Josie. “We still have those girls downstairs.”

“And the door is gone,” said Jack. “Anybody coming along will see that and want to know what’s going on. I need you to check your magic users. I’m going to need help throwing the hex down.”

“All right,” said Josie. “I can use one to fix the door.”

“Good idea,” said Jack. “Do you think they have some of that geas drug around?”

“There might be some in my cell,” said Josie. “I don’t think they gave me any before I used my watch.”

“See if you can find that and bring it back with you,” said Jack. He checked his watch. “Then we’ll get started.”

Josie nodded as she went back downstairs. She checked her cell. There was a bottle of blue stuff glowing in the pile of bones that used to be a man. She gingerly picked it up. It bubbled when she moved it.

She checked the girls in the other cells. Some of them had empty bottles in their rooms. Some didn’t. There was a mix of crying and silence she didn’t like. She assured them that she was going to get the chains undone in a bit.

She used a small amount of power as Zatanna to put a solid wall where the door used to be. That should keep people out until they were ready to go. She switched back to give her watch time to recharge as she headed back upstairs.

That was when she noticed there weren’t any windows on the bottom floor.

She walked back into the office and put the bottle on the desk. It bubbled some more. It wanted to be used from the looks of it.

“I wonder what the Ghostbusters would make of that,” said Jack.

“It’s a love potion,” said Josie. “They make their slaves love being slaves.”

“Let’s see how long that lasts,” said Jack. “Ready?”

“Full power,” said Josie, after checking her own watch.

“What are you two doing?,” asked the trafficker.

“Full sending a message,” said Jack. “I just need you to hold the hex.”

“I got it,” said Josie.

They hit the buttons on their watches. Jack took on the Scarlet Witch with its red body suit, ruby crown, and cloak. Josie called on Zatanna with its black suit and top hat. The only flash of color was a handkerchief tucked in her jacket’s breast pocket.

Jack raised his hands. Light erupted around the ledgers and the potion bottle. He nodded at the effect he had created. Josie raised her hands and poured fuel into the hex. She noted that the counter on her watch was holding steady for some reason.

“Testing, testing,” said Jack. He smiled when his words seemed to emit from their captive audience. The trafficker looked down at himself in shock. “Hello, Hawk Ridge and beyond. How’s it going?”

Josie frowned at him. He grinned at her.

“The reason you are hearing my voice this fine night is some people decided to kidnap my friend and try to make her a slave and send her to some unknown spot on the map. She decided that she wants to kill all of those people, but we just don’t have enough juice to make thousands of people drop dead in one stroke.

“Lucky for some of you.

“So what’s happening is a hex in three parts. The first part is communication.

Everyone that can hear my voice is sitting within earshot of one of the people we’re targeting. So look around if you can hear my voice. A member of the Montrose is close by.

“The second part of this hex is location. To communicate with you, and to tell you what is going on, the hex is actively searching for every member of the Montrose we can reach. I don’t know what the active range is for this, but I am going to say it’s wide enough to cover the city and part of the forest beyond.

"The third part is transformation. Every member of the Montrose we can reach will be revealed to the public, no matter what disguise they wear. So if you are missing a loved one for whatever reason, there’s a chance these people took them and sent them out of the city so you would never see them again.

“We can’t kill them in one stroke, but we can mark them so we can kill them later.”

He gestured with his head for Josie to get ready. She nodded. He handed the hex over to her while he reached for his watch. She felt the strain, and a glance at her watch told her she wouldn’t be able to hold things for long the way the numbers were counting down.

He pressed the button, and winged light stood at the hex. A flaming sword burned the air in his hand.

“I want you to know this would have never happened if you hadn’t made that one mistake,” said Jack. He reached into the hex with his glowing hand. “We would have been content to go about our business and let things stand as they were, but now we’re going to have to take a hand in things and it won’t be pleasant for some of you.”

He twisted his wrist, and light flowed from him and out into the world.

His watch dinged and he changed back.