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Rain had resumed lashing the ground outside headquarters as I entered the CIA’s block of offices. Zeus was starting to wake, and a countdown had begun.
The whole place was still quiet and empty, with agents either out on the field or in the interrogation room. It was my first time to be here, and I tried to contain my anxiety as I looked down the rows of doors that lined up the long, high-ceilinged hallway. Don't panic. You can still solve this in time, Blair.
“Are you in?” Lana’s voice whispered out of my earpiece.
“Yes." I kept my voice low.
"Ready when you are."
My footsteps fell silently against the floor as I slowly moved forward, fingers curling helplessly against my thighs as I mentally lamented the loss of my wand. Without it, I was reduced to manual spells and hand-to-hand combat, two things I were absolutely not good at.
Looking back, I counted five pairs of doors that I had walked past. “Still nothing?” I asked under my breath.
“Just keep walking,” Lana urged.
Using the IP address provided by the Craigslist posting, Lana had wielded her kind of magic to hunt down our anonymous perp in the form of a GPS-tracking virus. After, she had installed a program in my phone that would allow her to locate whatever agency-issued device or equipment the perp had used, now made identifiable by Lana’s virus.
It was honestly too complicated for my not-so-technical mind to understand, but right now the only thing that mattered was that I trusted Lana – and the fact that we had so little time left before Zeus ended up torching the whole of New England with his thunderbolts.
"Stop."
Lana's half-shriek had me jerking as I forced myself to a screeching halt. "Cast it, Lana," I muttered, "you didn't have to shout."
"I know, I'm sorry, I'm just...you're near," she ended lamely.
We were about halfway down the hall, and I had one door on each of my side. I walked towards the left when Lana suddenly said, "Not that. The signal's weakening."
I backed up and moved towards the right door.
"That's it.” Lana’s voice tinged with trepidation.
The knob vibrated under my fingers as its identification spell worked on verifying my credentials. A clicking sound followed as the door unlocked itself, and I exhaled, realizing only at that moment I had been holding my breath the whole time.
Even now, as I advanced warily inside the office, I had a hard time believing it was truly a CIA agent responsible for poisoning Zeus. Why would one of us do this? It just didn't make sense.
With the shutters drawn, I had to make my way in the darkness, heart thudding against my chest. Lightning flashed outside the hallway, illuminating the entire office for but a moment. I made out an iMac on top of a large desk – the only one inside the room, and my stomach turned upside down in dismay. So we weren't just up against any ordinary agent but a ranking officer to boot?
The windows started to vibrate, and I almost jumped when I heard a thunderous boom explode outside. It's started, I realized bleakly. Squaring my shoulders, I moved forward more quickly, this time determined to get to the bottom of it. I had to find out who it was –
Lighting flashed once more, and I jumped back with a gasp when I saw a figure sitting on the chair.
What was that? Was it real? Or did I only imagine it?
"Blair?" Lana demanded worriedly from the earpiece.
Outside, another thunderbolt hurtled out of the heavens with a loud boom, the sound too close for comfort, and my eyes squeezed shut as trauma tried to seize control of my mind. Memories invaded my thoughts, and I shuddered as I recalled the blazing heat of Zeus’ thunderbolt.
You’re okay, Blair. You’re safe. You’re alive—-
Blinding light struck my eyelids, and I opened my eyes, confused and disoriented at seeing the office suddenly ablaze with light. A moment later, I saw someone reaching towards me, and I scrambled back, but it was too late.
Fingers pulled my hair, and I screamed as I shoved my assailant off, heart pounding, and the side of my scalp stinging. I touched my left ear and realized that whoever it was had ripped my earpiece off, effectively disconnecting me from Lana. I slowly looked up, a thousand possibilities running through my mind, but when my gaze collided with the other woman's, I realized that I would never have guessed the truth.
"I thought I’d find you here."
It was Agent Tamara Gries, and she had a gun pointed straight at me.
A Level 1 witch versus a Level 5 one was like pitting someone who took a single Kumon class against a mathematician. It was pointless and hopeless, but even so I gave it my best shot.
My gaze flew to the window behind her, and I screamed, "Paul, now!"
Tamara whirled around.
Ha! Sucker!
It was a childish thought, but cut me some slack. I was fighting for my life here.
Wasting no time, I took advantage of her momentary distraction and tore out of the office. Her scream of fury bounced into the hallway, and the hairs behind my neck stood up. That was the sound of one pissed off murderer if I ever heard one, and I had just shot straight up to the top spot of her kill list.
Tamara blasted a hole out of her office wall and began firing at me. It was a grand entrance, I’d give her that, and I would probably have told her so if I hadn’t been too busy deflecting both her spell bolts and bullets.
Thank God and Gaea for shield spells, which was the first thing our Self-Defense instructor had taught us. They probably knew it was a neophyte's best chance of surviving, in the event they had a student foolish enough to go up against an advanced-level witch.
Case in point: yours truly, who was now trying her best to talk her way out of certain death.
“Don’t do this, Tamara!”
“I will certainly do this, with much pleasure.”
It was hard, arguing with a madwoman while manually whipping out one shield spell one after, but I managed. It wasn’t like I had a choice.
“You can still give yourself up—-”
“How about taking your own advice and not making this hard for yourself.” Tamara took aim again and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Cronos save me, but that would have been a headshot it not for my shield spell doing its job.
“Why are you doing this? Did Zeus dump you? Is that it?”
"You bitch!"
"Uh, no, that would be you, I think?"
Tamara tried to shoot me again and howled in outrage when she realized she had run out of bullets. She was making so much noise a whole squad of agents should have come to my rescue by now, but with a poisoned Zeus creating his own kind of havoc outside, I knew it would be futile to even try dialing for 911.
Tossing the gun aside, Tamara went after me again, snarling, "I'll kill you! I swear I'll kill you!"
"And you're psychotic, I swear, I absolutely swear you are." I knew – of course I knew I was better off keeping my mouth shut than provoking her like this, but I couldn't help it. I turned snarky when someone was trying to kill me. It was stupid, and I hadn't known about this part of me until now, but it was the truth, so there.
Tamara blasted another spell bolt at me, too fast for me to ward off with a shield spell, and I ended up jumping out of its way.
Unfortunately, I hadn't thought of checking which way I would end up, and when I felt my back hit something cold –
Uh oh.
The windowpane shattered at the impact, and I started to fall.
Double uh oh.
A moment later, I saw Tamara jump out of the window, her cold-blooded eyes trained on me.
Triple uh oh.
It was official. The other woman had lost her mind, hell-bent as she was on killing me that she would even risk her own life –
And then I saw it, a long brown stick peeking from between her legs, and I realized she had been able to summon her broom before flying out of the window.
Cast it.
Not so insane, after all.
I mentally braced myself for impact as I continued to fall while the electric purple sky zoomed out in seeming slow motion. They say falling to your death wouldn't cause a person any kind of pain, the impact too massive that the loss of life would be instantaneous. I really hoped that was true because otherwise I’d have to feel my skull crack against the ground, and I doubt that would feel anything but excruciating.
Tamara's eyes locked with mine. “You should have minded your own business.”
Maybe. But even now, with just seconds left before I lost my life, I couldn’t make myself regret it. If I had to do it all over again, I knew I would have done the exact same thing.
But if I could ask for one miracle, though –
“I want to see Paul,” I heard myself whisper foolishly. It didn't seem right that the face of an insane murderer was the last thing I'd see before I died.
Then open your eyes, agapoula mou.
My chest heaved in a sigh at the familiar sound of Mr. Handsome’s voice. That was it, then. I had died, I was in heaven, and an imaginary Paul was my reward.
Strong arms caught me just as the sound of spell bolts violently clashing against each other had my eyes flying open. What in the lair—-
Oh!
Golden hair, chiseled features, and a powerful body sheathed in an immaculate dark suit –
"P-Paul?" I stammered.
"Hello, Blair." But his gaze remained straight ahead, and as I dizzily followed his line of sight, I saw a demented-looking Tamara balanced on her broomstick and her hands moving wildly about in a casting frenzy: one to keep her shield spell up, and another to hurl a barrage of spell bolts towards us.
She put up a heck of a fight, in other words, but it was just as clear that nothing she did would ever be enough to beat off the INTERPOL detective clasping me to his side with one arm around my waist.
“It’s over, Agent Gries.” He advanced towards her at a steady pace, his demeanor terrifyingly calm as he used his one free hand to deflect her spell bolts and fire his own at the same time.
“Never!” Tamara’s hysterical scream rose over the cacophony of blowing winds and rainstorm. “I’ll make him pay—-” A shudder of rage shook her form, and she screamed as she fired another torrent of spell bolts, all of which Paul deflected with a wave of his arm.
Seriously, how strong were these INTERPOL detectives? Were they secret descendants of Hercules? Achilles? Maybe even the biblical Samson?
“I won’t stop until I make him pay——”
Paul suddenly twisted to the side, and I barely managed to hold on to him as he flew – oh my Gaea, where was his broom – us away from Tamara. “What—-”
And then I saw it: a thunderbolt finding its mark as it raced down from the heavens, and even though I knew there was nothing I could do, and that if our positions had been reversed, she probably would have let Zeus’ murderous bolt spear its target –
I could never wish a person dead.
“Tamara, look out!”
But it was too late.
Tamara’s lips parted in a soundless scream of agony as the bolt tore through her body.
Fire claimed her in the next second, and I knew the exact moment she died.
We all knew.
Impossible not to, when the stormy skies vanished at her last breath, and the wind gods fell from the skies, released at last from Zeus’ orders of pillage and destruction.
Apparently, the antidote we were looking for was nothing more than Agent Tamara Gries’ death.