It was eleven in the morning when Lucy got to the warehouse, and she whispered a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t had time to eat. Simpson hadn’t been as lucky. Operatives were no stranger to death, but the stench triggered something inhuman inside a person, something knotted and grotesque, that made itself known in the nearest bucket, bush or functioning toilet. She’d be back in a few minutes.
One of the cleanup crew passed Lucy, nose-deep in a clipboard and clad in sanitised white plastic and masks. Lucy flagged them down,
“Where’s the worst of it? And where’s Callahan?” He pulled his mask down to answer,
“It gets worse towards the house, and Callahan left an hour ago. Something in Exeter, I think.” He left in another direction before Lucy had a chance to ask any more questions.
What had they been storing at this location, Lucy wondered. The warehouse around them didn’t seem to hold anything important, everything dangerous was either in Edinburgh or the Isle of Skye, this was only one of the safehouses. Misdirection, detours, covers. Make sure nobody had enough information to leak. If there had been anything at this location, it wouldn’t have been there more than 30 hours in total. That left two options, and Lucy’s stomach dropped like a stone. Either the witch that did this got unspeakably lucky, or they had someone on the inside.
Lucy’s world shrank down till it was touching the hairs on her arms. Who was it? Were they still here? Lucy Granger was a brave woman, but her throat clenched at the thought that a witch was nearby. Her gun was in the car, the car was around the corner. She panicked for a moment, wondering if she should go get it. No, displaying suspicion would be the worst thing to do. If there was a mole, she would be condemning the entire site to death by acting. Lucy made a mental note to check the records of who had been in or near the site.
The smell got worse the closer she was to the house, cleanup crews had started pouring bleach which ran red almost immediately and burned in her nostrils. She avoided anyone in a plastic cleanup suit, which meant taking a few detours around shelves. She tried to look deliberate while she did, as if she were examining the warehouse.
Halfway down one of the detours, Lucy found a body. The left side of his head was cavernous, spatters on the wall ten feet away evidenced a gunshot, but there hadn’t been signs of a struggle, no bullet holes anywhere else. Lucy crouched, and used a pencil to move the head to the side, his tongue lolled out. The entry wound was in his right temple, the man’s gun was in his right hand. His eyes were glassy, but his intent in his last moment was clear. Death was preferable to fighting a witch. Technically an act of cowardice, but Lucy felt for him.
“Hey!” Lucy called out, “Someone get this one!” She closed his eyes with the pencil, the trail of blood it left made it look like he was crying.
The windows on the house had been smashed inwards and one wall had been blown to shrapnel, all the corpses had been moved but cleanup hadn’t reached this bit yet. Simpson was there, talking to another plastic-suit. She saw her, and made her way to Lucy, skirting the edge of the room.
“I checked logs and asked around. Only thing missing is a grimoire. They knew what they were coming for.”
Lucy nodded in response and pointedly avoided mentioning any moles. Morale was low enough without having everyone looking over their shoulders.
“Were there any survivors?”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Two. One outside with a bitch of a headache, says he was pounced on by two women, knocked out, missed the whole thing. The other’s still unconscious. Went to check on someone that went quiet and got his spine snapped clean in two. No way of telling whether he’ll make it or not.”
“There were two of them?”
“At least. They fried our systems, there’s no camera footage past oh-four-oh-three ”
“When did first responders arrive?”
“Jamison and his team got the call at oh-four-thirteen, they were here by half-past. By then there was no sign of the witches.”
Lucy ran the numbers. In no more than about 20 minutes, two witches had managed to kill ten trained guards, bring down a building and get out unscathed.
“Any leads on them?”
“Jamison?”
“The witches”
“Oh, nothing yet. We’ve got someone checking speed traps, surrounding CCTV, that stuff though. Should have something soon.”
“Good, put me in contact with them.”
“Right.” Simpson shifted. “You don’t think that someone… maybe there was-”
“We’re RWHS, Katie.” Lucy interrupted her, trying to think of what Callahan would say. Something about bravery, belief, unity. But Lucy wasn’t Callahan, “We don’t get bent.”
Sipson pursed her lips and nodded. She looked up to Lucy, those words would hold more meaning to her than they’d been spoken with, but for all the effort in the world, Lucy couldn’t make herself believe. She would run covert interrogations throughout the week, nothing on paper, but nothing needed to be. Lucy could tell when people were lying to her.
A few hours later, back at the outpost, Lucy faced a corkboard, laden with red string. It was cliche, sure, but Lucy worked best with physical objects. A map of Greater London, with all confirmed witch attacks since 2012 marked with thumbtacks. A row of images lined the top of the board, linked to various attacks. Witches, confirmed to be tied to various attacks. Some had names, some were mugshots, a few of them were crossed out on red, witches they’d managed to kill. They left them up there as symbols of hope; no matter what they could do, no matter their powers, they could be killed.
This was the forty-third witch attack in the last nine years, forty-ninth if you included unconfirmed attacks. Lucy gazed up at the row of pictures. Thirteen dead, twenty-one alive, twelve of them named. All the confirmed attacks for Francis Grey were too far north, it didn’t fit her pattern; petty theft and slit throats. The last known information of Jean North had her on a flight to Belgium, Callahan had wanted to follow but MI6 couldn’t risk the trouble. Brigette Grabowski fit the bill, she cast a wide net, especially towards the south, and she’d been known to work with other witches. In fact, everywhere she went she seemed to have her own little coven. Jess Naaji and Laila Reynolds were both nine years dead, killed by Callahan on her first mission that had since passed nearly into legend with the newer recruits, but she’d been linked to at least 3 other witches in the time period they were looking at. Lucy drew a blue string, blue for uncertainties, and tied Grabowski to the scene. Lucy silently hoped it wasn’t her, She’d heard the stories, Grabowski was an animal, a force. Satan himself followed her steps, the pickings were always ripe there.
She picked a brown envelope off the table next to her, it had been delivered an hour ago, collated information that the analyst had managed to find. Two images, both new. One brown woman, and one white woman with bluish hair. They were grainy, zoomed-in from bad quality cameras, but they were enough. Callahan pinned them both to the top row. No names, yet, but they would come in due course.
Lucy looked over the board again. Something about the girl with blue hair didn’t settle right, she was familiar. She wracked her brain until it hit her, so obvious she nearly pinched herself. The apartment block shooting, a few months ago. Eight dead in the middle of the night, and no sign of anyone afterwards. She’d moved out, presumably to a new flat and had gotten lost in the paperwork, but the case had finally been assigned to Lucy and her team. She got out strings and markers, red for certainty, and tied the girl with blue hair to the apartment block shooting and to the warehouse, before writing her name on the glossy photo paper. Dorothy Ferguson. She’d killed nearly twenty of her people in less than three months, God would have words with her. It fell on Lucy, then, to introduce the two.