In Plain Sight

24 The Fall

Agent Warner lay slumped over the writing desk. Blood and brain matter covered the wall in front of him and he still had a service .38 clutched in his left hand.

“What to do you mean, he’s d—” Sorsha came through the door, but at the sight of the corpse, she turned her back. “Dear God,” she said, her voice heavy with the effort not to vomit. She took a few deep breaths, then turned back to the grisly scene.

“Did he shoot himself to keep from being caught?” she asked. “How did he know we were on to him?”

“Someone might have called him,” Alex said, indicating the phone where it had fallen on the floor, knocked off the table by Warner’s falling body. “But I don’t think that’s it. Especially since he didn’t kill himself.”

Sorsha looked up at him sharply.

“See how the blood is on the wall in front of him,” Alex explained. “He would have had to turn his head and tilt it up before pulling the trigger. That’s the kind of position he’d be in if he heard someone behind him and started to turn. If he’d shot himself while sitting normally, the blood should be here,” he said, indicating the window on Warner’s right side. “Also, that’s a lot of blood and brains for a .38. Looks like a bigger entry hole too. If I had to guess, it was a .45, like the one I carry.”

Sorsha raised one of her dark eyebrows.

“Are you trying to make me suspect you?” she asked. Alex shook his head and put his hand on Warner’s neck.

“No. This body is still warm,” he said. “This happened within the last twenty minutes, and since you and I were together for that time, I couldn’t have killed him. We do know someone else though, who uses the same kind of gun I do.”

“No.” Sorsha shook her head, a pleading, almost desperate look in her eyes. “It’s not possible.”

Alex pushed on unmercifully.

“Someone else who also had access to your suite.”

“He’s been part of my team for five years,” she said, still not willing to believe it.

“Where is Agent Davis?”

“You said he was at the front door,” Sorsha said, her voice distant.

“I’ll bet you a steak dinner he isn’t there now,” Alex said. “In fact, I’ll bet as soon as he let me in, he came up here and killed Warner.” A disturbing thought occurred to Alex and he stepped around Sorsha and into the hall. “If you’re his target, he might still be here.”

“No,” Sorsha said, confidently. “He knows me better than that. We worked together long enough that he’d know his only chance would be to surprise me.”

“So where would he go? He can’t do anything to help his confederates aboard the floaters, so what’s his play?”

“He’s probably fled,” Sorsha said. “He’d know that the first thing we’d do is lock down the building.”

“I don’t think so,” Alex said. “If he just wanted to escape, he wouldn’t need to kill Warner. He’s still in the hotel.”

Sorsha cocked her head to the side and her hair fell across half her face. She looked like she was about to disagree with him, but then her head came up, her eyes opened wide, and she gasped. Her hands gripped her gut and she doubled over in pain. Alex grabbed her arm, holding her steady as she swayed.

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s not in the hotel,” she gasped. “He’s in my home.”

She gasped again, pressing her hand to her stomach and Alex hooked his good arm under hers to keep her upright. Her breathing was coming in ragged gasps and her pale skin took on a yellowish tinge.

“Davis must have had Warner order a floater sent here,” Alex said, helping Sorsha back to the parlor and onto a chase longue. “That’s why he killed him, to give himself time to get up to your castle undetected.”

Sorsha began muttering in that deep, echo-y voice of her spell casting, while rubbing her stomach with her hand. A bright bluish light glowed from under the Sorceress’ palm and spread out over her body. After a few seconds, her breathing became regular and her skin tone returned to normal. She opened her eyes and looked up at Alex, standing over her.

“The kind of magic that protects my home is … intimate,” she explained. “It’s tied to me.”

“What happened?”

“Agent Davis has a spell breaker,” she said. “He just used it to break open my front door.”

“What does he want in your house?”

“He wants to start a war, remember,” she said, standing slowly. “If he drops my house on the city…”

“It would flatten a city block,” Alex said.

“More likely two,” Sorsha said, her composure fully returned. She spread her arms and shook out her hands like a weight lifter getting ready to set a record. “Now stand back. I’m going to go stop Agent Davis.”

Alex stepped close to her, looking her hard in the eyes.

“Not without me, you’re not.”

“This isn’t the time for heroics,” Sorsha said, trying and failing to push him out of the way. “I hardly need your help to subdue one intruder in my home.”

She raised her hands and Alex grabbed her left wrist.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “This isn’t some last act of desperation, Sorceress. Think about it. Davis had a floater brought here before I ever showed up. This was his plan all along. He’s thought it through. He knows he might have to face you to succeed. Whatever his plans are, they include taking you down.”

Sorsha’s face was grim but her cheeks pinked. Clearly she wasn’t used to being so completely wrong about someone, or so thoroughly out-maneuvered.

“I bet his plans don’t include you,” she said with a smile and a nod. “Put your arm around me and hold on.”

Alex slipped his right arm around her slim waist and pulled her against him. He was very aware of her, pressing against him, and he pushed the thought from his mind.

Sorsha raised her arms and spoke a long, complicated sentence in her Sorceress’ voice. The second the echoes of her words faded away, Alex heard a sound like a thousand nails being scraped across plate glass, and he felt his body being twisted like taffy in a puller. It didn’t hurt, but he wanted to vomit. Clinging to the Sorceress, he pressed his face down into her hair. She smelled like strawberries and cream, which he would have found intoxicating at any other moment.

Alex had the distinct impression that he’d been rolled flat in a clothes wringer and slipped under a door. Then, a tremendous light flashed before his eyes and he dropped to his knees on a hard stone surface, still holding on to the Sorceress.

He assumed that she traveled this way all the time, but when he finally looked up, panting and trying not to shake, he found Sorsha leaning against his chest with her eyes shut tight. After a long moment she opened them and gently pushed herself away.

“It will wear off after a moment,” she said, slumping down to sit on the stone in her slinky black dress.

Alex put his free hand on his knee to push himself upright, but a wave of nausea gripped him, and he stopped. When his stomach finally stopped vibrating, and his vision cleared, he tried again, levering himself up to a standing position. Once he was stable, he reached down and helped Sorsha to her feet.

They had landed on a stone balcony with a marble railing running around it. A comfortable-looking chaise longue sat under an elegant lamp next to a side table with a book sitting on it. Beyond the chaise stood a set of stained glass doors depicting a woodland scene with trees, shrubs, and wildlife.

“This is my private entrance, Lockerby,” Sorsha said, reaching out to open the doors.

If Alex hadn’t been looking at her slender hand on the door handle, he would have missed the brief spark of magic that leapt between the two when she turned it.

She pushed the doors open and stepped into a vaulted room with an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. A large, four-poster bed stood on a raised dais along the right side of the room. Its posts were carved in keeping with the theme of the stained glass, with vines, leaves, and forest creatures spiraling around them, up to the canopy. Around the room stood intricately carved dressing tables, chests of drawers, wardrobes, and even a small breakfast table in a round nook with gigantic windows to let in the light.

As grand as the room was, it appeared to be in a state of disarray. Toiletries on the dressing table were left out, drawers were open in the chests, and a trail of the Sorceress’ unmentionables led from the bed to a door Alex could only assume was a bathroom. Alex noted that the pair of lace-trimmed underwear matched the brassiere and the garter belt — all were a light sky blue, like the Sorceress’ eyes. He assumed there were matching stockings, but thinking about that was extremely distracting with Sorsha a few feet in front of him. He reached into his coat pocket and took hold of his pistol, focusing his mind on the task at hand.

“This way,” Sorsha said, leading the way across her bedroom without comment.

She continued out onto a balcony above a foyer that could have fit Alex’s entire office inside it twice. The upper balcony ran around the room in a U shape with carved balusters supporting polished cherry-wood handrails. Thick Persian carpets covered the balcony’s hardwood floor, ending in a runner that descended the wide stair, flaring out at the bottom as the staircase did. The main floor was white marble and decorated with furniture from couch chairs to hall trees to elegant tables supporting Asian-looking vases. Only two things looked out of place in this ocean of elegance, the shattered and broken front door, and the figure of a man lying on the cold floor, a large red pool spreading out beneath him.

“Hitchens!” Sorsha screamed, then before Alex could stop her, she hurled herself over the banister. She spread out her arms and uttered a word and her fall arrested just as she reached the floor. She landed on the marble with a sharp clack from her high heels.

Alex tore off along the balcony and around to the stairs. By the time he reached the bottom, Sorsha had the man’s head in her lap. He looked to be in his late fifties with gray hair, a salt and pepper mustache, and a weathered face. A large purple bruise had spread across the side of his face and his white waistcoat was dark with blood.

“I’m sorry,” he was saying. “He had a spell breaker. When the enchantment on the door broke, it exploded. I tried to stop him but—” The man coughed and blood stained his mustache.

“Don’t talk,” Sorsha said. “I’m going to get you to the hospital. Where are the cook and the maids?”

“Sent them away in the floater,” he gasped.

“You should have gone with them,” Sorsha said, stroking his face.

He looked up at her, as if he were about to respond, but there was no life left in his eyes. Sorsha just sat there, weeping openly. Alex reached out and closed the old man’s eyes.

“Sorceress,” Alex said, trying to rouse her from her grief.

He didn’t have to say anything further because at that moment the entire floating castle trembled and shook. Alex stumbled to his feet and put out a hand for Sorsha, pulling the Sorceress up.

“Where are your spells that keep this place flying?” he asked as she stumbled against him.

“In a vault in the basement,” she said, pushing herself away from him and starting off toward the back of the grand staircase.

An elaborately carved door with painted panels hid a wrought-iron staircase that spiraled downward into the dark. Sorsha kicked off her high heels, then took the stairs two at a time. As she moved down, lights on the inner pole of the stairway lit up to guide her passage.

Alex plunged after her. At first the spiral stair was encased in a wall of rock all the way around, but after he’d gone down a story or two, the rock fell away and it seemed like the stairway floated over a vast, dark expanse.

When Sorsha hit the bottom, lights bloomed in a cavernous room that turned out to be Sorsha’s workshop. Large closed doors occupied one entire side of the room and a massive crane on a metal track sat just inside. Pallets of boxes lined one wall of the room with iron bar stock on the other. A long row of tables ran down the middle of the room with a line of bars, waiting for Sorsha to enchant them.

The Sorceress gave no heed to the workshop, turning and sprinting in her stocking feet to a simple door set in the far wall of stone. Beyond the door, a stone passage ran along straight and then curved to the right. Several doors were set in the wall at various points, but Sorsha ran by them without stopping. At the end of the corridor was a simple, square room with papered walls and walnut wainscoting. On the far wall hung an enormous vault door, at least six feet in diameter and two feet thick. It stood open, revealing a short hallway beyond that led to a wide room. The outer plating on the door had been blasted away and Alex could see the mechanisms that operated the lock.

The sharp sound of a crack, not unlike a gunshot, sounded from inside the vault and the castle shook so hard, Sorsha slipped. She almost fell, grabbing on to Alex’s left arm in an effort to stay upright.

Alex gasped and felt the blood drain from his face. His ribs were healing faster than normal thanks to Iggy, but they hadn’t healed completely. Pain sprouted from his side and spread through his body, making his fingers and toes tingle. He swore, and Sorsha realized what she had done.

“Sorry,” she said, releasing his arm. She moved forward, across the vault threshold. “Stay behind me,” she said.

Alex was about to protest, but Sorsha had already moved into the short hallway. Beyond the end of the hall, he could see the intricate patterns of dozens of spells, swirling slowly. Some were blue, while others were purple, green, orange, and occasionally white. Ethereal tendrils of energy emanated from some, reaching out to join them with others, forming a net of pulsing cobwebs overhead, like a dome. The floor was cut into broad steps, like an amphitheater with spells laid out on each level going up.

Sorsha reached the end of the hall, then stepped out into the main chamber. She raised her hands, and power crackled through her fingers.

“Davis,” she cried, lowering her hand and sending a bolt of greenish lighting off into the room. A sound like a hammer hitting shatterproof glass rang out and Sorsha raised her hand again. Before she could strike, two shots rang out. Alex saw the first shot hit an invisible shield around the Sorceress and it flashed with light at the impact. The second round hit the shield and shattered it. Alex flung his good arm up over his face and turned away as decaying fragments of the shield hit him. Most just slammed into his suit coat and vanished, but one sliced across his cheek, and he felt blood dripping down his face.

Sorsha cried out and Alex turned back in time to see her fall. He couldn’t tell if she’d been hit by the bullet or by shards of the decaying shield, but she clamped her hand to her hip. Another shot rang out as she fell, but it missed its target. Alex darted forward and grabbed Sorsha by the arm, pulling her back into the hallway. He stepped over her and pulled his pistol from his pocket, waiting for Davis to approach.

A booming impact followed by a sizzling sound like a broken electrical cable rang out and the castle shook again.

“Get back,” Sorsha gasped, her face a mask of pain.

“You hurt bad?” he asked, still covering the end of the hall. Sorsha forced herself into a sitting position, a grunt of pain escaping her lips.

“I’m not hurt good,” she gasped, once she was upright.

“Funny,” Alex said. “How bad is it?”

“My shield slowed it down some,” she said. “Got me in the hip. Doesn’t…doesn’t seem too bad. Hurts like crazy, though.”

“Stay put then,” Alex said, moving to the corner. “Where is he?”

“Don’t bother,” Sorsha said, her breathing shallow. “He’s got some kind of magical shield. A charm of some kind, powerful one too.”

“That means it won’t last long,” Alex said.

The ringing gong sound filled the air again and the castle shook.

“What’s he doing?” Alex asked.

“Hitting the central levitation spell with a crowbar,” Sorsha said. “Mus… must have a spell breaker rune on it.”

“Multiple ones,” Alex said with a nod. “Each time he hits a spell, the rune is spent. How much longer can your spell hold up?”

“Don’t know.” Sorsha shook her head.

Alex took off his hat and laid it on the floor, then inched up to the corner with his weapon at the ready.

“What are you going to do, Alex?” she whispered. “Please tell me you have a plan.”

Alex nodded but didn’t respond. A moment later the crowbar hit the spell again, ringing like crystal. This time the note wasn’t a pure ringing tone like it had been before; this time it sounded flat, sour. The moment the blow was struck, Alex leaned around the corner. Davis stood over a large purple incantation in the center of the room. He held a heavy crowbar of some greenish metal in his right hand with runes of fire running down its length. Alex could see the one on the end unraveling as it was discharged. Davis would only be able to use that spell breaker so long as he had runes to charge it, but with at least four charges left, he was likely to succeed in smashing the levitation spell. Already the spell was spinning slowly, like some immensely tiny galaxy, but with a wobble that made it look sickly.

The floor shook, and Davis held on to the next tiered level. Alex braced himself against the wall and brought his pistol up. Davis’s gun was tucked into his holster. He caught sight of Alex just as the room stopped shaking and dropped the spell breaker, going for his gun instead.

Alex fired.

The bullet slammed into the magical shield and it glowed bright yellow for a moment, a perfect sphere around the FBI man.

Alex fired again.

This time, when the sphere glowed, Alex could see cracks spreading out from the point of his bullet’s impact. Davis’s hand closed around his pistol and he jerked it free.

Alex fired.

Davis’s shield shattered with enough force to send the spell breaker spinning away from him and the bullet went through and struck him in the right side of his chest. Alex fired again, and the second bullet caught him in the stomach.

Despite being hit twice, Davis fired back. He wasn’t in much of a condition to aim and his shots went wide, but they did force Alex back into the cover of the hall.

“How?” Sorsha asked but Alex just grinned and shrugged. “You lying rat,” she grunted a moment later. “You told me there wasn’t a spell breaker rune on your gun.”

“There isn’t,” Alex said, picking up his hat. “The runes are on the bullets.”

He pushed his hat around the corner and Davis put a hole right through it.

“That’s pretty good shooting for a man as badly wounded as you are,” Alex called. “You know that belly wound has to be treated soon or you’ll die.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Davis gasped.

“Your plan’s a bust,” Alex said. “Miss Kincaid warned the other sorcerers. They’ll be waiting for those spies you sent up to them. No one is going to die. There’s not going to be a sorcerer war in America.”

“Oh, ye of… little… faith,” Davis grunted through the pain.

“Don’t pull my leg,” Alex said. “If you try crawling over to your spell breaker, I’ll have plenty of time to lean out and finish you off. Give up now and I’ll see you make it to the hospital alive.”

“So your sorcerers can strip my mind of all its secrets?” he said. “No, thank you. Besides, you’re wrong about my plans being done for. The spell holding this castle up is unraveling. It is drifting east and south right now.”

“Empire Tower,” Sorsha gasped.

“That’s right, Sorceress,” Davis said. “This levitation spell should last long enough for us to reach the core, and then…boom.”

“Is he right?” Alex looked at Sorsha.

“Imagine if all the stored energy in Empire Tower were released all at once,” she said through clenched teeth. “The impact of my house falling on the tower would shatter the spells that contain its power. The sudden release of all those forces at once would be like the Halifax disaster.”

“That left a crater over two miles wide,” Alex gasped.

“Think of that, scribbler,” Davis said, his voice weak. “Everyone in America will blame that… on the sorcerers. There will be a war, just of a different kind, as you drive your magic wielders out.”

Alex ducked his head around the corner and pulled back just as another shot rang out.

“All I have to do… is sit here and wait,” Davis said. “I may not have… much time left, but this spell has… even less.”

Alex looked back at Sorsha. “He’s hiding behind the big purple spell,” he said. “If I try to shoot him through it, my spell breakers could destroy it.”

“Why doesn’t he just shoot it?” Sorsha said. “Doesn’t he have a spell breaker rune on his gun?”

“He must have used them up,” Alex said. “Remember, runes disappear after they’re used.”

“I still have enough bullets to keep you at bay,” Davis said. “My only regret… is that I shall miss the glorious… rise of the Third Reich.”

Alex carefully pulled his left arm out of the sling, then struggled out of his suit jacket. He only had a few runes left in his book and one of them was something he hoped he’d never have to try. He’d give a significant amount of his own skin for a flash rune, but he simply didn’t have one, or the three hours and piles of equipment it would take to write one. Even if he had one, there was no guarantee that Sorsha could fix the damaged levitation spell in her condition.

“How on earth are you a Nazi spy, Davis?” Alex asked, gently rolling up his left shirt sleeve.

“I was sent here as a spy during the Great War,” he said. “By the time I’d established my cover… the war was over. I was ordered to stay… in case the day came that I was needed.”

“What are you doing?” Sorsha whispered as Alex exposed the escape rune tattooed into the flesh of his arm.

Alex winked at her. He wasn’t sure himself, and he didn’t have time for long explanations.

“Must have been quite a coup when you got into the FBI,” he said. Davis chuckled.

“You have no idea how happy my superiors in Berlin were.”

Alex paged through his book until he found the rune he sought. It had taken him five hours to write it, mostly with silver ink, and it glowed softly in the dim light.

“My real mission was to bring you back to the Fatherland, Sorsha,” Davis said. “What a boon your mind would have been… to the Fuhrer.”

“I don’t think I would have fit into your new Germany,” Sorsha said.

Alex found a blank paper and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket. Most runes required time and exotic materials to write, but there were a few, like the minor restoration rune he’d drawn so Mary could mend her stockings, that could be done with just a pencil and a few moments. He laid the paper on the stone floor, then leaned over and began drawing a joining rune on the bit of flash paper.

“Of course you would fit in,” Davis said. “You are the perfect Aryan.”

Sorsha’s eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “So was Agent Warner,” she shot back. “I saw how much that counted for.”

“I am sorry about that,” Davis said. “But I couldn’t have you discovering my plans… until it was too late for you to stop me.”

As if on cue, the castle shook and dipped. It reminded Alex of being on the roller coaster at Coney Island. Sorsha cried out in pain as the castle stopped falling suddenly and her wounded hip slammed into the floor.

“It won’t… be long now,” Davis said, his voice thick with pain. “You’ve both been exceptional adversaries. Especially you, scribbler. My only regret is that you didn’t find the Archimedean Monograph for me. What a triumph… that would have been.”

Alex finished the joining rune, then licked it and stuck it to his arm. He lit a cigarette, then licked the silver rune and stuck it on top of the joining rune. Sorsha reached out and grabbed his leg.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I won’t leave while we still have a chance to save New York.”

A sound like glass breaking inside a bell suddenly filled the vault and the floor dropped out from under them.

“I win,” Davis shouted as the castle began to fall.

“Like hell you do,” Alex shouted back and touched the cigarette to the flash paper on his arm. Light blazed from the tattoo etched into his flesh and the world suddenly appeared transparent. He could see Davis suspended in the air over the failing levitation spell, and Sorsha clutching at his leg as the castle fell away from under her. Alex reached down and pulled her tightly to him, then everything collapsed inward, and he felt as if his body were made of rubber, being forced through a long tube.

A moment later he felt his body re-expand, but the castle was still falling, and he was falling with it.