Once outside the vault, Sergei turned to me with a card in his hand. “Call this number at any time. Your code name is Mercury. Use that and they will reach me anywhere at any time. Then I will put you on with him. Got it?”
The card said Sergei Vessier, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff. I memorized the number and handed it back. “Got it. I need transportation.”
He looked at the card, then me, blinked twice, and nodded. “It’s arranged. There’s a car out front waiting to take you to a jet. You’ll be in Burlington in an hour. Oracle has an agent there who will take you to Castlebury. Getting onto the witch’s property is up to you,” he said, all the time leading me to the door to the building as a Secret Service-type handed me my phone.
Fifteen minutes later, I was buckling into a seat in a small Gulfstream jet, piloted by two Air Force captains. We were wheels up ten minutes after that. Our descent into Northern Vermont probably happened before the presidential briefing was even over. A black Dodge Charger was idling on the tarmac when the copilot opened the door and unfolded the stairs. A tall black man in business casual leaned against the vehicle, arms folded.
“Agent West,” I said.
“Agent Jensen,” Mike West replied. “Congratulations on that, by the way. High school senior to FBI agent in record time. Jumped right on past college.” He held out a hand to shake.
“I had a bit of college. The Bureau waived the degree requirement, as my early education was much in excess of any normal schooling.” I said, meeting his squeeze and increasing the grip load incrementally. He grunted and backed off his own grip.
“I’m sure. We’d have likely done the same thing if you had gone the Oracle route. Climb in; I’ll drive you to the O’Carroll place. Not sure how you’ll get in though,” he said. I held up one hand, a strange sound hitting my ears. High-pitched whine, Dopplering our way at a scary fast speed. A small black orb flashed across the airport pavement, stopping motionless right between us.
“Caeco, it is good you are here. I need your help with Father,” Omega said from the orb’s surface. “Agent West, please transport Caeco Jensen to Rowan West immediately.”
I looked at Mike West, he looked back, and then we dove into the car. The orb shot inside when I opened the passenger door, taking up a floating position between the two of us as the powerful car shot forward.
“What happened, Omega? Why do you need me? Same reason he needed me for you?” I asked.
“I do not know what fully happened. We transported to the Aleutian Trench, to the location he felt the elemental inhabiting. My drone dove beneath the surface and we dropped deep. Father was meditating, a practice that he has honed for touching the thoughts, such as they are, of elementals. He has been increasingly successful with all types, including Water elementals, one of which approached the drone as we descended. Five hundred feet from the bottom, my sensors went wild as the tectonic plate we were over displaced by approximately ninety-eight feet. Father yelled, his body shook as if in seizure, and then he collapsed. Stacia was unharmed and immediately administered a vial of Chris’s blood. Father’s vitals have been stable but low, and his brainwaves are flat.”
“Cortical brainwaves? What about hippocampus activity?” I asked.
“The cortex exhibits flat EEG. However there is some sign of activity from the hippocampus. Additionally, Stacia is adamant that her mate bond is intact. Ashling O’Carroll has diagnosed energetic overload. Thus I postulate that use of your nanites may help reach Father.”
“What does Ashling say about the overload? Is it survivable?”
“She indicates that in about half of all cases she is aware of, the victim recovers. The other half results in death. Also, there is a very high possibility that overload may permanently impact the witch’s abilities”
“Like he could lose his ability to manipulate magic?” Mike West asked, expertly guiding the fast car through the Vermont nighttime countryside.
“Affirmative.”
“So he might live, and if he does, he might be a null?” I asked.
“Yes to both possibilities.”
“Can she tell?”
“Negative.”
None of us spoke for the remainder of the ride. Myself, I was wrestling with the idea of a powerless Declan. Would he even want to live if he couldn’t manipulate magic on some level?
The tiny town of Castlebury appeared suddenly and just as quickly disappeared, and then we were pulling into the Rowan West parking lot, the restaurant lights dark but the living quarters lit up brightly. A Chittenden County Sheriff’s cruiser parked next to a new Tesla and an older model Prius.
“Whoa, someone likes alternative energy,” Mike said, admiring the silver Tesla.
“Father purchased it for Ashling. She still drives the Prius most days.”
“Demidova must pay well,” he said.
“Probably more to do with having your investments managed by a quantum computer,” I said, opening the door to get out.
A high-pitched screech from atop the building had me crouched with my issue Glock in one hand before my brain identified the sound.
A deep, rocky rumble sounded off to the left of where Mike West also crouched. A massive, blocky silhouette rose in the darkness. West was shaking, his hand on his gun.
“It’s Draco and Robbie. No worries,” I said to him.
“The elementals? No worries, you say?” he questioned as if I had just snuck out of a psych evaluation.
“Yes. If there were worries, we’d either be burnt to a crisp or smashed to red jelly by now,” I said.
He just looked at me, eyes wide, the whites gleaming in the lights reflected from the windows. The door opened and the stocky form of Darci, Ashling’s partner, stood outlined. “You guys coming in or what?”
I slipped inside, West almost stepping on my heels. Darci closed the door behind us and then led the way into first the kitchen and then the living room. A sofa bed had been unfolded and Declan lay on his back on one side of it, the other half taken up by the enormous white wolf that lifted its head and growled at me.
“Hush now. No call for that, now is there, what with Caeco bringing her little medical machines right to me very doorstep,” an attractive brunette said from a chair just to our left. She looked to be almost thirty, but Ashling O’Carroll was really just shy of forty. Declan had told me that she would likely always look much, much younger than her actual years. It made me wonder how Darci, who looked every bit of middle-aged, felt about that. Across the room, two more people were sitting on a loveseat, a man and a woman, both young and both fit. Holly and the new wolf I had heard about, Devaney. On the wall, a flatscreen was showing the news, volume way down, some expert talking about how much earthquake and tsunami damage there should have been.
“Did Omega explain it to ya then?” Ashling asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Mike West shot me a surprised look. What? Don’t think it’s a good idea to be respectful to the witch? Better think faster than that, Mikey boy. Ashling was one of the most powerful Air witches on the planet. “He indicated that an infusion of nanites might allow him to connect with Declan, much as Declan did when Omega was under attack.”
“That’s it square on the head. Me boy shows every sign of acute energy overload. But he’s still breathing and this one,” she waved at the massive wolf, “is still connecting through her mate bond. That might be all that’s holding the boy in place. So, quickly now, how do ye get yer machines into him?”
“He got them through saliva once and blood once before. The blood method is better. The concentrations are greater,” I said, pulling my Benchmade automatic knife from a pocket, blade springing out to poke through my fingertip. As I moved closer to the bed, Stacia stood up, her massive jaws opening.
“Stop that. None of that now,” Ashling said, moving up as if to grab the werewolf. Instead, the big wolf flashed forward, her jaws clamping my arm and dragging my hand over Declan’s slightly open mouth. He was pale, even more so than usual, his skin so translucent, I could see blue veins under the surface. Breathing was shallow and his heartbeat slow and weak. Dark red blood ran down my fingers, dripping off and onto his face, into his mouth, and even on the white sheets of the bed. But the wolf’s jaws were like steel clamps, sharp white teeth pushing hard but not breaking my skin. Her positioning adjusted to become exact, the remaining drops hitting his partially open mouth even as the blood slowed, the wound being knit shut by the very technology we were trying to get into him.
The drips stopped and Stacia let go of my arm suddenly, her tongue flashing out to lick my blood off my own hand. Before I had time to object, she turned away, all of her attention focused on the boy on the bed. Ears forward, yellow eyes gleaming, big white furred head tilted.
“Is it enough then, is it?” Ashling questioned.
“That’s easily the biggest dose of them he’s ever gotten, “ I said. Her eyebrows went up. I shrugged, looking at my now clean finger. “They seem to respond to my thoughts. I was concentrating on having them cluster in that fingertip.”
“So jest what happens with them now?” she asked.
“We gotta give them a few minutes to get into his bloodstream. Then we can attempt contact,” I said.
The wolf shook itself and Shifted, the change happening in seconds, leaving a naked Stacia lying alongside Declan. Mike West’s jaw dropped open, whether at the speed of the shift or the perfect naked body displayed in front of us, I don’t know. Probably both.
“Nobody’s that fast,” he said, then jerked his eyes away from the platinum blonde, who stood up without giving him a second glance. That showed some serious discipline on his part. I’m not into women, but Stacia is just as beautiful as Tatiana, which is saying a lot. And beauty is beauty, so most people would be excused for staring at someone who comes so close to the human ideal of physical perfection.
Across the room, Holly casually threw Stacia some clothes, which she caught and put on without ever taking her attention off Declan. Suddenly she froze, right in the act of adjusting her pullover shirt. Then she turned her now green eyes on me. I had just felt it. A soft snap that ran through my body and mind, like a puzzle piece snicking into place. I nodded at her.
“Okay. That was faster than I thought,” I said, my own attention turning to the boy on the bed.
“Yes,” Omega said through a Bluetooth speaker on an end table.
“Alright, let’s see what happens,” I said, closing both eyes and sending my thoughts outward.