Zero Sight (39 page)

First things first, I told myself. I huddled down close to the floor and closed my eyes.

The first rule of basic defensive magic is fortify-or-fry. Fortifications resonate with attacks to deflate them. That means they’re type specific. Mages don’t get to cast God Mode and repel every type of attack. They have to guess what’s coming or counter faster than the incoming volley. Which fortification to pick was easy. Poor Professor Simons made the decision for me. Anti-K it was. A kinetic defense is worthless against things like explosions, mental attacks, or lasers but perfect—in theory—for stopping bullets. I drew up mana from the leyline and tried to picture a set of body armor. (It wasn’t hard, I’m eighteen and male.) The transmutation formed in my mind, I placed my right hand on my chest and charmed my robe.

At my basic skill level, a fortification spell would hold for about ten minutes. Dunkin McWilliams, our defensive magic professor, said a competent battlemage could shift fortifications in under a second. Both Sheila and Roster excelled in these forms of magic, and Roster had been helping me in exchange for some biochemistry tutoring. I had a long way to go to go before I was switching fortifications on the fly, but Professor McWilliams did say I made one rock solid anti-kinetic charm. No surprise, really. Kinetic modulation had been the basis of my very first cast. I smiled. With the anti-kinetic charm in place, all I had to do was make sure I didn’t get shot in the face.

Thankfully, the stairwell was pitch dark. I prayed none of the steps would squeak, and started up to the second floor. I eased my way up the final steps, took a deep breath, and peered down the hall. A man with another AK-forty something was standing guard at the main stairwell. My gut lurched. No matter how good my anti-kinetic charm was I didn’t want to test it out against an assault rifle.

I went over my options again. I could go all out and conduit a simple explosion from the ground floor. That would take the gunman out easily, but probably eliminate half the second floor in the process. That didn’t seem like such a great idea. This was a rescue mission, not a group barbeque. A directed energy attack was another option. I needed a direct line of sight for that, like when the tall man had when he electrocuted Rei. The problem with that plan was I was on the second floor of a building. The manaflow of a leyline is tied to the surface of the Earth. My ability to attract mana decreased exponentially as I moved away from it. I would have to expend a tremendous amount of energy to attract the mana I needed. That would take lots of time and leave me exhausted. Now, if I thought that the dude was a lone gunman, I might have considered it, but what were the chances of that?

And why not just use some mana from my reserves? True, mages have their own internal reserves of mana, but I’d learned that my own internal reserves were pitifully small. At Elliot, I was a pen light in an ocean of lighthouses. My talents rested in attracting and conduiting large quantities of mana, not storing it. Big conduit. Tiny battery. Jules insisted that it’s the motion of the ocean that counts—but Jules is a terrible liar.

I rolled through more options:

If I were Monique, I would convince the fool to fall down the stairs.

If I were Dante, I would…

I scratched my chin.
That
just might work. There was even a certain symmetry to it. By training me, Dante (assuming he was still breathing) would save his own rear. And as my inspiration to learn the trick, Dr. Simons was about to get his revenge. I went over the transmutation in my head. It had taken Dante three weeks of Polimag lectures to teach me it properly. (It was a great illusion if you didn’t want to stick around for the last few minutes of class.) I just needed to combine Dante’s spell with a type of entrapment field I knew all too well. Now, Dante’s spells were never easy. He had a quirky way of thinking. Forming the conduit took me a full minute of focus.

With Dante’s transmutation prepped, one question remained: If I were a gunman, where would I aim?

What a freaking question.

My nerves were no good, and I wasn’t going to be able to keep the conduit stable much longer. I closed my eyes and tried to stop the shaking. I told myself that he probably had really bad aim. I told myself that if I screwed it up, I wouldn’t have much time to spend regretting it anyway. I took another deep breath, hoped it wouldn’t be my last, screamed, “Fuck it!” and swung into the hallway.

The gunman was well trained. There was no fumbling. He had his rifle trained on me in an instant. A round already chambered, he fired a single shot at my chest.

It came so damn fast. My hand outstretched, the round thwapped right into me. My body shuddered to a halt, but the gunman didn’t waste time. He followed with a triple-tap. The window behind me shattered as the bullets punched through my torso.

Heart racing and adrenalin pumping, I screamed, grabbed him by the jacket, and threw him down the stairs. By the time the gunman realized what was happening, he was already colliding into the landing. He should have wondered why the first round didn’t break the glass. He should have noticed the blur to his right as the real me continued down the hall. Mine was shoddy cast, but staring down the scope of a rifle had given him tunnel vision. I looked back at my dummy. Me 2.0 was losing its cohesion, and my own hands were gradually re-appearing.

My chest heaving from the effort, I leaned against the wall. I had bested the bastard, but I felt no satisfaction. In all likelihood, the guy who taught me that trick was dead. I needed to do whatever it was I planned to do next—and fast. Catching my breath, I rushed down the stairs. From the thug’s belt I swiped his supply of twisty ties and hogtied him good. Next, I grabbed the cylindrical grenades from his shoulder. I recognized the make. They used to have a bunch of disarmed ones at the army surplus store back home. They were called flash grenades. Big bang. Little hurt. Ideal for rescuing hostages. I grabbed his rifle next. The weight of the weapon surprised me. Pretending to know what the hell I was doing, I checked the bolt and safety. Red meant ‘on’ if I remembered correctly. I didn’t dare check the bullets in the clip. I had no idea how to get it back on. Gun at the ready, I hustled back up the stairs. I needed to hide somewhere and plan my next move, but on the top step I ran smack into nothing.

The nothing crunched off my forehead and swore.

“
Damn it, Dante,” I said, rubbing my noggin’, “I thought you were dead!”

“
Shhh!” he whispered. His invisible hand grabbed hold of my shoulder, and the world around me drained of its color. I could see him now. He had drawn me under his shroud. His lower lip was dripping blood.

“
Sorry,” I whispered. “I, uh, didn’t see you.”
Way to go Captain Obvious.
I smacked my own head.

“
Forget it, bud. Come on!” Dante urged.

We rushed into the nearest room and closed the door. I could hear footsteps and voices coming down the hall. They were moving from room to room. We stood quietly in the corner until our own door flew open. A second gunman swept the room.

My eyes met his, and I mouthed a “holy shit” to Dante.

Seeing nothing, the gunman yelled, “Claro!” and slammed the door shut.

“
There are three of them left,” whispered Dante. “I got pinned between the gunman you took out and the rest of them. I was waiting for him to start walking down the stairs to give him a nudge when you did it for me. Nice dummy, by the way. I thought you didn’t have enough mana for that kind of spell.”

“
I don’t.” I pulled the spent round out of my pocket and placed it in his palm.

Dante looked at me warily. “Bud, are you okay in the head?”

“
Um…mostly,” I said, fully aware of the past hour. I gestured to my new toy. “And now I’ve got a machine gun.”

Dante shook his head.

“
Anyway, what the hell is going on?” I asked. “And where’s Dean Albright?”

“
Far room. It looks like the faculty managed to erect a barrier before they were overrun.”

“
Professor Simons is dead, Dante.”

“
Yea, Greggs and Conroy too.”

“
Wait, the ones that teach The Healing Arts and Advanced Hex Defense? Weren’t they Jules and Sadie’s advisors?”

Dante nodded. “From the look of it, Greggs was surprised, but Conroy was able to buy the rest enough time to set up a barrier. A frameshift, most likely.” Frameshifting is a method of abstracting space. Once a frameshift is set in motion, anything within the range of the shift leaves the material world. Nothing can act on the shifted space, and vice versa. It’s an excellent method for containing extremely nasty things, but not so helpful as a defense. You have to shift back to normal space eventually, and then you’re at the mercy of whatever’s waiting for you.

“
How long will the shift last?” I asked.

“
No idea, bud. Shifts are extremely unpredictable. What matters is what happens when they do. The bad guys are setting up some sort of bomb.”

“
A welcome home present?”

“
Yep.”

“
Okay, so we need to move before then, but how do we do that without getting Swiss-cheesed?”

“
We need some backup. Let me—”

A tapping came from the window. The invisible me swirled around, Kalashnikov at the ready. Dante snatched a flash bomb and made ready to toss it.

“
Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said with relief.

“
Hardly,” said a muffled female voice from outside. “However, I appreciate this new attempt at deference, my most vulgar junior.” Rei was staring at us through the window, holding onto—okay, so I wasn’t exactly sure what Rei was holding on to—the gutter, perhaps. She had ditched her Elliot robe in favor of the cap, tank, and army pants she seemed to prefer. Dangling by one hand she asked, “Can I come in?”

“
Whoa,” I whispered. “Seriously?” The oddest question popped into my head. Outhouses. Did outhouses count as part of the domicile or were they fair game for vampires?

“
No, my most contemptible walking swath of destruction, but I do not wish to bust in the window—bad guys with guns and all.”

Dante looked at me in surprise. “Hold up,” he whispered. “She has a sense of humor?”

“
Debatable,” I replied, “but she is attempting to update her jargon with a journal on modern humor.”

I walked out from under the shroud and unlatched the window. Rei landed like a feather and crouched low to the ground. She looked in the general direction of Dante’s shroud and smiled.

“
Good evening, lieutenant.”

“
Lady Bath—I mean, prin—I mean—”

“
Rei is fine, lieutenant. I am your charge.”

“
Right. Thanks. Um, okay then, Rei, um, if you don’t mind, how did you find us? I mean you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Just professional curiosity.”

“
Not at all, lieutenant.” Rei pointed to her nose. “You’re shroud is perfect, but you two still stink. Mind, it’s mostly Dieter who stinks.” She turned to me with a cheerful smile. “My most flammable compatriot, the smell of napalm suits you.”

Strange, I thought, Rei was much more lighthearted than usual.

“
A-n-y-w-a-y,” I whispered. “We still have a bit of a problem here.”

“
Is Dean Albright in danger?” Rei asked. A flash of fury danced across her features.

“
Not right now. The surviving faculty frameshifted. But there’s a bomb waiting for them when they shift back.”

“
How many of the prey are left, lieutenant?”

“
Prey?
Oh…Dieter got one of them, so that leaves three by my count. There aren’t any mages among them. Imperiti only.”

“
Then the task is simple enough. Lieutenant, can you provide me a shroud?”

“
Whoa,” I objected. “Simple enough? They’ve got some serious firepower, Rei. Are you nuts?”

Rei smiled genially. “I do appreciate your concern, Dieter, however you suffer from some misperceptions.”

I was about to object when an ice-cold aura pressed against my throat. In the same instant, Dante’s shroud melted like butter. He stood frozen, his face a mixture of confusion and terror. I could understand why. The mask of humanity had slid from Rei’s face. Her features had lost their color, and only a cold, dispassionate stillness was left behind. I had to look away. Her expression burned my eyes. It was like staring into a blast freezer. All the while, the space around me was compressing. I recognized the sensation. Rei was hitting me with her glamour—and she was hitting me hard.

“
Your error is understandable,” she explained in an emotionless hiss. “But, Dieter, you have
vastly
misgauged me. I am a
Pure
. What you witnessed in New York was merely a shade, a Nostophoros on her seventh day without food, awake well past her bedtime.”

I gasped for air, but my diaphragm contracted against my will. What the hell was going on? Rei wasn’t just denying me my speech. She wasn’t just denying me air. She was cutting of my capacity to form cogent thoughts. This wasn’t even in the same ballpark as the last time.
This
was major league power, I realized with a shock. Frustrated by my miscalculation, I struggled against the intense urge to remain silent.