We did the best we could, packing people into public shelters, trusting Tamerlane to protect anyone who was willing to sign up.
Each portal started as a bare glimmer of red and slowly expanded, slower than any portal I had ever seen before.
I was standing in Boston Common with the other members of Bluestar 7, standing in the middle of the place with the highest concentration of portals, the same place Nergal had spawned from fifteen years ago.
Harrison hadn’t had much luck recruiting other heroes to come and help us, since a dozen other cities were dealing with demon attacks of their own, as if the demons were reminding everyone on Earth who was actually in charge here, even if Boston was expected to get the worst of it.
Minerva and Bluestar 2 were dealing with some kind of demigod villain team that had picked this exact moment to launch their first big attack, while Bluestar 3 had a hundred drug-addled mutants charging checkpoints all at once. And the DMA had him locked down so tight, I couldn’t even get Sonny on the phone.
Tamerlane had been true to his word, sending hundreds of guns and robots to reinforce corporate shelters all over town, while DMA was dispatching their own robots to protect the public ones.
I was really hoping Arthur Walton would come out of retirement and solve this whole problem for us with a wave of his hand, but he wasn’t answering his phone, either.
I thought he might be ignoring the whole thing, but a few hours before the attack, eight doors opened around the circumference of his tower, revealing a wide, green paradise beyond.
He had turned the entire base of his tower into a giant portal to another plane, providing shelter for anyone who could pass through. He probably saved ten thousand people with that trick.
We had another thousand people clustered at the sites of old churches, praying for intervention from the Angel Gabriel, but as the hours ticked by and the glimmering red portals got bigger, it was pretty clear the human race was on its own.
The attacks we had been seeing for the last few months had indeed been a test, a series of dry runs testing portal locations in some kind of pattern that I wouldn’t see until it was too late.
I counted four shimmering red portals slowly opening in seemingly random positions around Boston Common as a fleet of DMA assault drones flew in a crisscross pattern above us.
I had all my stuff set to Do Not Disturb, but I was suddenly interrupted by a call from… me? My optics said the call was coming from my own apartment. My heart was in my throat as I took the call and heard Lydia’s voice.
“Timothy, is this working? Can you hear me?”
“Lydia? Why are you using a phone?”
“Whatever lords are coordinating this, they’re locking down astral space across the whole city. They’ve got packs of Hunters patrolling the gray, too many for me to sneak past. I can’t come to you. I can’t even communicate for fear of giving myself away.
“Timothy, please. Whatever you think you owe these people, you do not owe them your life. Please come to me. Please come home. There are places we can hide. Places we can run. Please, make some excuse and come to me, before it’s too late.”
“Lydia, my team needs me. And this whole thing is my fault. I can’t just abandon these people and let them fight my battle for me. Why would you even ask?”
“My whole purpose is to protect you, my whole life has been spent protecting this bloodline, and if you fall today, that bloodline will end. I can’t come to you, so you have to come to me. Please. There’s still time if we leave now.”
“Lydia, you can’t protect me from this, and you’re not immortal anymore. You want to help me? Find Denise. Go to Denise and protect her. Denise and her mother are setting up a shelter at Berkeley Street. Make your way there and ask for her protection. Her mother won’t like it, but they won’t turn you away.”
“You love her that much? You love her city that much? You expect me to guard her while you stand there and die?”
“You’re not just protecting her, she’s protecting you. You’re protecting each other, because you are the two people I care about most, and you guys are more vulnerable than I am. I’m standing here with a fleet of drones and a full team of superheroes behind me. I need you to go to Denise and watch her back, so she doesn’t get jumped by something while she’s helping everybody else.”
“You are not my Master, Timothy Kovak. You cannot command me to do this.”
“And I never would. I’m not commanding you; I’m asking you. Please. Protect yourself and protect Denise. I can’t fight like I need to fight if I’m worried about the two of you. Keep her safe and keep yourself safe until I can get back.”
“I could refuse you,” Lydia said.
“Sure, but you know me, and you know how my powers work, so you know the best way to make sure I’ll come home is to make sure I’m not distracted worrying about the two of you.”
“Damn you for making me do this,” Lydia said, almost weeping on the phone.
“Lydia, promise me. Promise me no matter what happens, you will go to Denise, and you will stay with her until I get back.”
“I will do as you ask,” Lydia said.
* * *
The magic students had all sheltered in Newbury Tower, counting on the ancient defenses to keep everybody safe inside. Even a few of the regents had come back to defend the place, while the rest phoned in thoughts and prayers from their vacation homes in Florida.
My mentor, Evan Coleridge, should have been there coordinating defenses and keeping everyone calm, but Evan had been gone for months on some grand quest that was taking him all over the world. He was a couple continents away when his city was attacked, and he would carry that guilt for the rest of his life.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
But whatever quest he was on, Evan had not brought his companion with him. Evelyn was sitting in Evan’s office with half a dozen other mages and witches, people she thought of as her core group of friends, including Simon and two of his disciples.
Simon was the fattest wizard I had ever seen, the only fat one currently in Evan’s program, intentionally avoiding carb blockers and potions that could keep the weight off, as he adopted the clothing and mannerisms of Bartleby the Immortal, dimension-hopping caretaker of the Great Sphere, like he had stepped right out of the old BBC show.
He walked around in Gilded Age suits, showing off a magnificent mustache that made him look like Teddy Roosevelt. He had showed up to Evan’s office with the rest of them, listened to a few DMA briefings to assess the scope of the threat, and disappeared down the hall.
Simon was a legend in the magic program, one of the few healers in history who had actually gone to medical school. He had made it all the way through school at UMass, but when Match Day came, and all the other students got selected by hospitals, Simon was passed over and told that no hospital in the country would accept the liability of a healer who “thought” he was a doctor.
Simon had publicly declared his intention to create techniques that could heal things magic usually couldn’t, like cancer and drug addiction, using modern diagnostic tools and scientific methods to precisely direct where the magic went, in ways no traditional healer ever could.
Simon technically had an M.D., but the degree was useless, since he would never be allowed to practice medicine in a reputable hospital.
Simon finally accepted that his dream was dead and enrolled in Evan’s magic program. He got a full scholarship from Trinity Healthstar and turned his attention to research. He found a way to use magic to speed up blood tests, but instead of making a million dollars, Trinity claimed his project as “work product” and took all his research for themselves.
Simon was caught between a medical program that wouldn’t take him and a magic program that ripped him off. Everybody expected him to hitch a ride to South America and become personal physician to a dictator, but he just kept showing up at the tower, riding his scholarship, continuing research that would never generate a penny for him.
He started the Bartleby thing as a joke because he thought the whole magic program was a joke, a consolation prize he had to settle for now that he had been robbed of the life he really wanted.
As a doctor and a wizard, he should have had women throwing themselves at him day and night, and he did, until his medical career abruptly ended, consigning him to a long, boring future in a research lab, barely making enough to live on.
The Bartleby thing had been his way of poking fun at the situation, saying “If I’m gonna be undatable I might as well get fat.”
With his outrageous costume and boisterous personality, Simon had become a kind of guru in the magic program, becoming a mentor to the younger men who gravitated to him the way planets attract moons.
But the day of the demon attack, Simon disappeared into that bathroom and came out as a whole new person, or rather, he came out as the person he used to be, before the world chewed up his dreams and spit them back at him.
Simon walked back into that office and the Bartleby persona was gone. He had shaved the mustache and washed all the gunk out of his hair. He had ditched his Gilded Age suit and slipped into a pair of ill-fitting scrubs in Bluestar blue. The badge around his neck said, “Supervising Healer.”
“Hardy and her mom are setting up a shelter at Berkeley Street,” Simon said, “and we’re gonna turn it into a clinic. I’ll take anybody willing to come with me. Don’t worry if you don’t know a healing spell, I’ll give you a simple one when we get there.”
Evelyn was never my favorite person, since she had straight up tried to kill me a couple weeks after we met, but I have to give her credit, she was the first one to volunteer. All the students stood up and followed Simon out of the office.
By the time he arrived at Cecilia’s clinic, he had twelve people behind him.
* * *
It’s amazing what robot labor can do in twenty-four hours, if you’re allowed to use it. Humanoid robots had been banned shortly after the corps took control, but the DMA and other government agencies were still allowed to deploy them in emergencies.
The empty offices of the old police building had been turned into makeshift hospital wards, filled with ancient medical equipment and olive-green cots, like Boston was getting ready to be bombed by the Germans in 1944.
Denise had most of the building wrapped in vines, ready to lash out and protect the occupants from anything that got too close.
Denise was standing guard outside while Cecilia tried to do the work of ten people with four volunteers, so Denise was the first one to see Simon come around the corner with a squad of witches and wizards behind him.
Denise didn’t recognize him at first, but she responded instinctively to the badge.
“Thank god you’re here,” she said, then as he got closer, “Holy shit, Simon? What did you do?”
He grinned a little, enjoying the look on her face. “Have you ever tried to put a mask over a soup strainer like that?” Then he got serious. “Where do you need us?”
“Simon, that badge says you outrank everybody in that building except Mom. Where do you need me?”
“I brought healers, not fighters, so I guess you need to stay right where you are. Right now, I need a big room with a whiteboard I can write a spell on.”
“Ask Mom for whatever you need,” Denise said. “And Simon, thank you for doing this.”
“Everybody you see here is a volunteer who made their own decision today. All I did was change clothes.”
* * *
Cecilia Hardy was running around barking orders to robots, trying to be six places at once, when Simon walked in and saved the day.
Simon ran up to the nearest whiteboard and carefully inscribed eight symbols of a healing spell on it, making sure each student could cast it correctly, while Cecilia continued setting up her clinic, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be needed.
She had been surprised to see him, but Simon was not the biggest surprise she would get that day.
* * *
Denise was still at the front door of Berkeley Street when she saw a blonde woman in jeans and a yellow blouse walking toward her down the street. She scanned the woman’s aura by reflex and did a comical double take before she recognized Lydia.
Why was Lydia here? And why was a demon walking? Physically walking instead of just popping out of the gray?
Lydia held her hands up like she was surrendering to police and said, “Timothy Kovak has sent me to protect you.”
“To protect me? You should be protecting him.”
“I agree,” Lydia said, “but I have already lost this argument. Timothy says his magic will work better if he knows we are both safe, and I must reluctantly agree.”
Denise frowned and worked through the details, looking for a flaw in my logic. “And you’re walking because we’ve got a thousand Hunters patrolling the gray right now. Tim sent you here because he thinks this is the only place in the city where they can’t get you, and he’s probably right. But I don’t need a bodyguard, I need healers. Can you heal people?”
“Will you allow me to heal people? Your society requires consent for this, yes? Will your patients be desperate enough to accept healing from a demon?”
“If it gets real, we will not have time to ask, but if word gets out that we let a demon put her hands on people… Go talk to Mom. She’ll figure something out.”
Lydia shook her head, “This building is protected by faerie pacts. I cannot enter without permission.”
Denise summoned her mom with a quick message and Cecilia appeared in the doorway.
Lydia stepped up and said, “Timothy Kovak has sent me to assist you.”
Cecilia didn’t blink. “You will obey our commands, and you will not harm any human beings while you’re here. Give me your Word.”
“You have my Word.”
“Good,” Cecilia said. “You have my permission to enter. Go talk to those students by the whiteboard and find one who’s willing to draw magic from you.”
Lydia walked inside like she was afraid she would burst into flame, but nothing happened.
“Everybody listen up!” Cecilia said. “This demon is here to help, and it’s safe to work with her as long as she’s in this building. Think of her like a spare battery. Who wants her?”
The other students hesitated, scared to touch Lydia, until Evelyn stepped up and took her hand. Whatever those assholes at Delphi had done to her, Evelyn was not scared of demons anymore.