Tracking their target had been tedious, frustrating, but incredibly satisfying when they’d finally tagged him. Lucy had gotten a snapshot of the vehicle in question, a motorhome, but no picture of the man coming and going. Still, knowing it was a motorhome drastically cut down on potential places that he could stop, especially given the limited capacity of the tanks.
The bulk of the real tedious work had been tracking him to other places than the gold exchange, which required a lot of running around in beast form, and finding which direction the motorhome had gone. That wasn’t his work, but Lucy pulling traffic camera images from each of the major exits. Eventually, though, they’d found he was going south, and Roy had generated a list of probable stops. It would have been faster if they’d had access to GAR’s teleportation network, but they did well enough on their own, visiting a dozen campsites and taking turns sleeping as they drove from place to place.
When they’d picked him up again, it took a lot more time in beast form to track his scent to a second used bookstore. Roy took a flying leap and decided to check other stores on the southward track, and they got more hits than misses. Neither of them had any idea what their target was looking for, but the pattern was undeniable. Stopping only for gas and snacks, mostly in the form of jerky, they tried to get ahead of him.
Alpha Chester had made it clear that directly approaching him was not likely to go well. He didn’t know that anyone was tracking him and had vanished for a good reason, so showing up out of nowhere was likely to be dangerous. At the very least, it would obliterate the only actual lead they had on him, one they’d been exceedingly lucky to find in the first place.
At one of the used bookstores they actually got a good description of their target, having missed him by only a few minutes according to the scent trail, though it didn’t match what John and Roy had seen in the café basement. Which didn’t surprise them, but it was very useful in giving instructions to local shifters on the Alpha’s behalf.
They got a description of one Denver Brown, and instructions to not approach or ask him anything, but ensure that the owners of used book stores along his path would phone in if they saw him. And that they’d include one of Alpha Chester’s cards.
It wasn’t exactly a long shot, but it was more indirect than he liked. Even if Brown got a card in with his books, it wasn’t guaranteed he’d even see it anytime soon. Or if he did, that he’d call the number. So when he finally got a text that Brown had been spotted, and that one of Alpha Chester’s cards was included with his receipt, John and Roy physically crossed their fingers and waited for a message from the Alpha.
Even if he’d told them not to engage, they really hated not being able to bring in a target for Alpha Chester.
***
Callum spent a good few minutes panicking and not doing anything in particular other than picking up the card, looking at it, and dropping it again. He was suddenly possessed of an urge to drink, or smoke, or something, but he didn’t keep any of those vices in his motorhome so the best he could do was pop a soda and somehow cut himself on the aluminum tab.
He grumbled to himself and wrapped a tissue around it, taking a few sips before heading up front and driving off. There was no way that he could avoid calling that number, but he wasn’t going to do it in the town they’d obviously tracked him to. Even if Alpha Chester wasn’t exactly the GAR authorities, Callum didn’t trust that he was safe to interact with. In fact, Callum would probably have to ditch the magical phone he’d gotten after the call, just so it couldn’t be traced back to him specifically. Which was irritating, because those were a lot harder to get than a regular burner.
Fortunately, there was always plenty of empty space outside of any city proper, small back roads and wooded lanes that were miles away from anyone. He navigated to a point essentially at random, making sure there was nobody nearby with his spatial sense as he pulled off into a small gravel lane. Putting the motorhome into park, Callum teleported the card into his hand and took out the phone. When he dialed the number it didn’t ring more than once.
“This is Alpha Chester,” a deep voice said. “Thank you for calling, Mister Brown. Or should I call you Mister Hall?”
“Brown,” Callum said decisively. Better to stick with his current identity, whatever it happened to be. He didn’t even think of denying it; that would just be stupid. “How did you find me?”
“I can assure you, Mister Brown, I intend you no ill will. If you will hear me out I will tell you exactly how we tracked you down. The why will become obvious soon enough.” Callum had to admit the man had presence, even over the phone. His voice was perfectly calm without being condescending or threatening in the slightest.
“Very well,” Callum said. “I’m listening.”
“While I am aware you wish no credit for it, I owe you for what you accomplished in Winut. Clara is my grand-niece and if she had come to harm, things might have gone poorly. What you may not know is that Winut is not the only place within my territory the vampires have been trying to expand.”
“So you want me to take out other nests.” Callum chewed his lip. “I don’t have any desire to become a mercenary.”
“I don’t blame you,” Alpha Chester said. “But the only talent I know you have is that of delivering death, and you have a willingness to do so outside of GAR’s accords. If I knew more of your capabilities I might have other ways to employ you, but you strike me as a man who prefers his secrets, so I won’t ask.”
“I appreciate that,” Callum said dryly. “Considering I’m not even certain I’ll agree to this job.”
“Let me begin by assuring you that I will not, under any circumstances, tell GAR about you. I’m assuming that sooner or later you will change your identity again, so doing so would only get me your ire, and I do not want that.” Alpha Chester’s rumble remained steady and calm, and Callum had to wonder if he’d rehearsed his speech. “I know a potential asset when I see one, and I could offer you quite a bit in exchange for your help, all completely off the record, of course.”
“I see.” Callum put the phone on speaker so he could rest it on the dash, since his cheek and ear felt like they were almost burning from the combined heat of the phone and stress. “Money isn’t really an issue for me, but I could use information. Lots of information, especially about mages, the way their magic works and their society.”
Part of him hated admitting that much, but he was already compromised with Chester, so it wasn’t really that much of a risk. As Chester had said, if things went badly he’d simply vanish again, though if he had to do that money might well become an issue. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to burn through cash when he had to abandon everything he’d purchased.
“I can certainly offer that,” Chester said thoughtfully, not even asking why he needed it. “I have access to an expert in mages who also does not officially exist. While he is generally reclusive, he owes me enough that I can set up a meeting with him. By phone, I would assume.”
“Possibly,” Callum admitted. He was sorely tempted. Not that he liked the idea of going around killing more people, but when it came to vampires there weren’t any real moral objections. What was more, it wasn’t likely that anyone would be able to link him to them other than Alpha Chester. So really he wouldn’t be more exposed there.
“Tell me about what you need done,” he said at last.
“There are four shifter towns that the vampires have targeted,” Alpha Chester began. “Down from five, after what happened in Winut.”
“But why? If vampires have to prey on humans to survive — they do, right?” Callum asked, and got an affirmative from Chester.
“It’s a political move. The way representation is handled within GAR is complicated, but they are effectively abusing rules and a lack of enforcement to establish nests where they should not and ultimately reduce my influence.”
“Which means that there’s probably all kinds of places with no protections at all against vampire predation,” Callum said. There was a brief silence, as if Chester was actually startled by that particular conclusion, before the Alpha spoke again.
“Yes, though they generally tend to stick to the cities, and GAR places limitations on their immigration numbers.” Callum wasn’t impressed by that. Not that he was going to go even further vigilante, but it seemed to be madness to him to allow any predators of humanity into the world if they could avoid it.
Not that he was much surprised. People were stupid and would ally with the devil himself if he promised them power. While he didn’t know the full truth of vampires, it was obvious they were powerful. Enormous amounts of guns, gold, and goons didn’t come from nowhere.
“So you want me to take care of the other four?” Callum made a face. That was quite the ask and he wasn’t sure he was quite ready for that level of massacre. Or that he had the tools for it. There was no guarantee that he could approach the others the same way as the last one.
In fact, he’d gone over his actions in Winut again and again, partly to just reconcile being able to commit such violence, and partly to recriminate himself over being so careless. Luck had played a major role, since there were a dozen ways things could have gone badly, both with the vampires and the shifters. Even with all that luck on his side, he’d been found by GAR solely because he was still in the vicinity and absolutely couldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
“In short, yes. I understand there is a risk of the Vampire Council itself becoming interested, but considering your circumstances you don’t have anything to fear from them.” Chester sounded amused at the thought.
“Won’t it be obvious you’re involved if these trouble nests of yours are all attacked?” Callum figured Chester knew what he was doing, but it seemed a pretty transparent ploy.
“Possibly. I intend on having the local Alphas challenge as soon as you’ve neutralized the vampires, which should muddy the waters, but I need not admit anything to anyone. The vampires decided to abuse the rules, so they have only themselves to blame.” Chester’s voice changed from amused to cold and hard.
“Is there a time constraint?” Callum teleported his notepad to himself and started jotting down ideas. Part of him was staggered that he was even thinking about it, but he knew he really needed the information and resources and contacts that Chester could offer. Not that he was planning to be a mercenary, but he couldn’t do other things without revealing he was a space mage. And he wasn’t even that good of one yet, either, since he couldn’t do long distance teleportation.
Callum figured he needed knowledge of how to do that plus a solid basis for enchanting in order to be properly independent. Actually, he needed that whole checklist that Gayle had provided, if he wanted to pass as a mage at all. The only way he was going to get that was to do some work for other people. He couldn’t make a career out of running and hiding.
“Some more than others. I will text an information packet to the phone you’re using, if that works for you.”
“Sure,” Callum said, tapping his pencil against his lips. “Access to your expert for the first job, and additional payment for the others as events warrant.” He knew that a targeted hit was probably worth a lot. Millions, in the mundane world, though probably less in the supernatural world. He had no idea how to arrange a dead drop or the like for any other kind of payment, but he could figure it out. He wasn’t going to do it for free, even if he firmly believed human predators needed to die.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“So you’re willing?” Alpha Chester asked, even as Callum’s phone buzzed with the receipt of an incoming text message.
“Probably,” Callum said, looking at the text message. It had an attached picture that, according the message, had his information embedded inside. It wasn’t something he’d seen before, but it seemed easy enough to deal with. He teleported his laptop and connector up front to transfer it over, not too terribly worried about potential malware. It wasn’t like he was keeping the phone, and the laptop got scrubbed fairly often. “I’ll text you after I have the chance to read this over.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Alpha Chester said.
“So, how did you find me?” Callum had almost forgotten the question, distracted as he was by Chester’s offer.
“Ah, I had my trackers follow your scent from the area near Keith’s store. Where you asked him to pass a message. From there, it was a lot of hard work following your movements until we could get surveillance footage. We probably would have lost you eventually if you hadn’t hit every used bookstore on the way south. That’s how I could anticipate you.”
“Ah. I appreciate you telling me.” Callum almost groaned. He hadn’t even thought about how stupidly predictable he was being. Though from the sound of it, the only reason he’d been caught at all was because he violated the golden rule of changing identities. He’d reached out to someone his current identity shouldn’t have known.
“Was there anything else, Mister Brown?”
“No. You’ll be hearing from me soon.” Callum hung up the phone. Once the file was transferred over to his laptop he removed the memory card and cast out his sense to find a good place to discard the phone. Finding a tree hollow, he displaced the phone there and drove away.
Part of him was getting annoyed at having to get a new burner every time, but he’d stopped getting smartphones a while back, so it wasn’t that terrible an expense. Alpha Chester probably wouldn’t bother to tap his phone or trace his location, but Callum couldn’t know that. Nor could he know if other parties were listening in, ones that Alpha Chester wasn’t aware of or hadn’t mentioned.
It was only hours later, driving any direction but south, that Callum parked and looked at what Alpha Chester had sent him. The file was all text, with no pictures of the vampires or places, but the précis was to the point, giving an address, a priority, and a count of assets. There was even a categorization of the type of mage that they had with them, though only two of the four had mages.
That just seemed short-sighted to Callum. He knew what mages could do, and it didn’t seem that shifters or vampires or even fae had any good way to keep mages at bay other than their natural speed and toughness. While he’d still have to check, those two wouldn’t be even moderately dangerous for him.
After teleporting around the town until he found a restaurant with free wifi, Callum searched the locations of the vampire nests, finding them sprawled out across Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Something like eight hundred miles of driving, according to the maps, so it wasn’t something he could do in a day.
Or maybe it was.
He could teleport. Admittedly, his range was maybe five hundred feet at the moment, but a spatial mage teleporting themselves didn’t take all that much mana. That wasn’t even getting into how fast he could potentially go with his gravitykinesis, which had no real upper limit on safe speed.
According to the intelligence briefing, none of them needed to be taken out prior to his next meeting with Gayle, where he was planning to copy the glamour enchant onto a brass plate for his own use. That would make it safe to use the gravitykinesis without getting spotted by bystanders and spy satellites. At least he assumed the glamour worked against mundane surveillance devices; it would be impossible to avoid people noticing, otherwise.
The gravitykinesis wasn’t something he’d used on himself, though, so he’d have to practice a little beforehand. Even if he didn’t use that for transportation, he needed something faster and less visible than a motorhome. His bike was not going to cut it; he needed a motorcycle.
It had been years since he’d ridden one, but it wasn’t a skill that someone ever really forgot. His current license was for cars, not motorcycles, but when he got a glamour that wouldn’t matter. In fact, it probably wouldn’t matter even before then unless he was a complete idiot and wrecked one.
The motorcycle went on his list, and after he got back to his motorhome, he went on a drive to find somewhere private to practice. Without a glamour he did have to worry about other people spotting him, so he had to take himself out to a remote lake where nobody was around so he could try flying. Callum knew it wasn’t going to be easy, which was part of why he hadn’t tried it before. That, and some guy careening through the air was extremely obvious.
He separated himself from the motorhome by at least thirty feet, wrapped himself in his spatial bubble, and then slowly applied the gravity gradient. It started out uncomfortable, progressed rapidly to nausea-inducing, and before he even got halfway he had to quit, doubling over and retching. What he had thought was a smooth gravity gradient wasn’t. At all. He could feel different parts of him being pulled different directions, stretching and tugging and wobbling all over the place, and it was horrible.
Callum teleported one of his chairs from his motorhome and sat down on it outside. Clearly he was not as practiced at this stuff as he thought, so he’d have to figure out some way to get better at it, which promised to be a fairly tedious process. It also made him wonder how bad his other magic fields were. They worked, but so did gravitykinesis, and it clearly wasn’t anything near perfected.
As evening faded away, Callum spent all his time with a spatial bubble around himself, trying to smooth out his filler field. He could keep from getting too nauseous simply by keeping the amplitude low; enough to feel but not enough to apply real force. It was a cheap solution but what he really needed was a programmer and a bunch of accelerometers, so he could get a serious look at exactly what he was doing.
Barring that, he had to settle for the human nervous system and his own magical senses. So far he’d been working on the accuracy of the threads, snapping them into place, and looking at those dense concentrations of mana. The fields were thin and diffuse and required a different perspective altogether. The scope and vagueness was what made it difficult to tell what he’d gotten wrong, like picking out thick lumps of fog from thin lumps of fog.
Still, he refused to believe that it was impossible to sense that kind of thing. It was probably just an aspect that any magical child would pick up during their education that he’d completely missed. It was a good thing that he’d never needed to show off any spells to someone else or they’d probably have wondered what was wrong with him.
By the time he was ready to quit, it was late, he’d missed dinner, and he definitely didn’t feel like dinner. It was probably just as well. With all the driving around and identity changing he couldn’t spend as much time exercising, and he was starting to feel a little flabby. It was probably mostly in his mind, but it wouldn’t hurt him to skip a meal or two.
The question was whether he’d have enough time to practice prior to taking care of Alpha Chester’s job.
***
“I tracked it, but I doubt it’s useful. He pretty obviously ditched the phone.” Lucy waved a tablet in Chester’s direction, but he shook his head.
“If we can’t use it, we can’t use it,” he told her. “I wasn’t expecting much anyway. We’re lucky John was around to get his scent in the first place, so we could pick up the trail.”
“You sure this guy is worth that much effort, boss-man?” Lucy lounged on the couch, gnawing on one of the awful sour candies she liked. How her teeth hadn’t disintegrated yet he had no idea.
“Winut massacre,” he told her.
“Wait, shit. That was him?” She sat upright, looking more interested. “Office betting pool says he’s a rogue black agent. Five to one odds on fae assassin.”
“Don’t waste your money,” Chester said, shaking his head at her. “John said he smells human. It’s not conclusive, but he’s got the best nose I know of.”
“Well, he can’t be mundane. Nobody’s that good,” she said, and Chester didn’t ask her exactly how much she knew. The precise details of what happened were not written down anywhere, but that didn’t mean that Lucy was ignorant of how it had been done in under five minutes. “But what kind of mage uses guns?”
“I don’t know, and we don’t need to ask,” Chester said firmly. “Not to his face, anyway.” He wanted to know more about Mister Brown for the simple sake of understanding who he was dealing with, but only knowledge he could get without disturbing Brown’s aplomb. Or incurring his wrath.
“You run a background check on him?” Lucy asked, and then held up her hands at Chester’s look. “Stupid question, I know.”
“The only IDs we have are obviously fake, and completely mundane.” Chester shrugged. “We’ve only seen one example of his work so far. When we see more, we’ll know more, and maybe figure out who he is.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, sagging back on the couch and reaching for another candy. “If you don’t know who he is, are you sure it’s a good idea to let him talk to Jasper?”
“You aren’t supposed to know what Jasper is,” Chester said with a warning growl. Lucy shrugged unrepentantly. Since she was just human, no shifter, the pack magic didn’t work on her and she had grown immune to shifter stares by dint of long experience.
“It’s not my job to not know things,” she told him. Chester rolled his eyes.
“That’s one you’d better keep deep under your hat,” he told her.
“My black hat,” she agreed, and he groaned.
“Go take your mouth and find a room that can fit it,” he told her, and she laughed and grabbed her laptop before flouncing out. Chester sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Lucy had showed she was trustworthy, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be a pest.
Chester stood up and padded to the door, not having to duck to fit his nine-foot frame through the opening since the entire pack compound had been modified for war form shifters. And beast form shifters, for that matter. There were still doors to private rooms, but everything else was open plan and tough enough to withstand shifter claws and the occasional bit of roughhousing with superhuman strength.
Jasper had his own quarters, a sort of all-in-one apartment off the main complex. What he was supposedly employed for was his prowess as a chef, which was fantastic, but Chester could have hired one of dozens of qualified individuals for that, including some fae. What made Jasper special was his former life as a mage.
Chester rapped on the door to Jasper’s abode, which wasn’t something he tended to do with his own people. The relations within a shifter pack were decidedly nonhuman in places, and sometimes shifters had issues interacting with both mundanes and shifters at the same time. Though as Alpha, it was expected he could do both.
“Oh?” Jasper blinked up at Chester, ducking his head to the alpha. He was a perpetually tired-looking, middle-aged man with pure Swiss blood and the features to match. “What do you need, Alpha?”
“Your knowledge, as ever.” Chester padded through into Jasper’s apartment, letting the ex-mage shut the door behind him. “I managed to get into contact with someone operating outside of GAR. Possibly a mage, but doesn’t act like one.”
“That’s dangerous,” Jasper said mildly, dropping bonelessly into his armchair. “Nobody works outside of GAR. Not for long, anyway.”
“Yes, well. I’d like to get value out of this one while he lasts.”
“And you’d like me to check his bona fides?” Jasper eyed Chester warily. “You know I can barely even sense mana.”
“Not at all.” Chester shook his head. “He wanted knowledge about mages and the way mages do magic. Considering that he’s been hitting mage libraries, it’s not just idle curiosity.”
“And you volunteered me?” Jasper asked incredulously. “When he gets caught I’m going to be next on the chopping block.”
“I’m not stupid, Jasper,” Chester growled. It was far more effective on Jasper than on Lucy. “No face-to-face meeting, just through the phone or possibly online. Either way, I’ll have Lucy provide a voice changer and maybe even a movement rig. He’s just as interested in preserving his privacy as you.”
“Right,” Jasper said with a sigh, running his hands through long blonde hair. “So he’s a mage outside GAR looking for information on human magic? If he’s newly awakened he can’t be more than what, sixteen or seventeen?”
“That’s the most interesting thing.” Chester smiled. “He seems to be somewhere between thirty and sixty, and whatever he is, I don’t think he’s new. He destroyed a vampire nest in less than a minute. In broad daylight. With no bystanders any the wiser.”
“Oh.” A gleam came and went in Jasper’s tired eyes. “A black agent then?”
“Something. He agreed to take out four more nests.” Chester shrugged. It would cause him trouble, but it was less important than keeping his people safe. Besides, the political ramifications of letting the vampires seize the area were far more dire than the trouble of sneaking around the GAR requirements. “I want you to drag out all your grimoires, everything. I already owe the man and I don’t think he realizes how important his work is. GAR would just execute him offhand at this point so he’s never going to have any legitimate source of knowledge.”
“Ugh, and we all know how closely mages hold advanced magic to their chests.” Jasper brooded for a moment. He’d never elaborated on what exactly had led to him being magically crippled, though Chester knew anyway. As an Alpha it was his job to know everything about his people. Which was why Mister Brown was not going to be one of his people yet, and probably never.
“Indeed. I still haven’t put the puzzle pieces together on this man, but I would ask that you at least try to be polite and not to pry. He’s been incredibly paranoid so far.” Chester chuckled softly, which rattled the glass on the coffee table. “He managed to evade a DAI team. They still think he’s an involved mundane.”
“Oh, to be there when they find out otherwise.” Jasper said dreamily.
“They won’t. He already abandoned that identity. They probably already have him listed as deceased.” Chester waved it away. “I just wanted to warn you what the circumstances are so you knew the difference between questions asked in earnest and attempts to find out who you are.”
“Now, that is paranoid,” Jasper said, raising his brows at Chester.
“Things just don’t add up. I think they don’t add up in our favor, but until this man starts making sense I want him treated with all due caution.”
“Even if you’re exposing your most sensitive asset.” Jasper said dryly.
“If anyone asks, you’re my chef.”