Chapter 21: It’s Nine O’clock. Three Hours to Seattle

I spent the next forty-five minutes getting inside of a Stripper Helmet, and reaching out to talk with woman I knew as Cecile Henrard. And after the first five minutes I knew it really was her. She shared the memory of me cracking the shield around the Fae and applying the clarification to the entire thing to make both sides visible. From the perspective she had standing there with me.

In the next half hour, I got from her all of the things that were shared with her. And I got a picture of the savage beast that was my opposition.

“Hank, I cannot believe it is you. Of all the people in all the world I wanted, you were not even a mention, but you come here like a white knight on a white horse and bring me some level of peace. Thank you.”

“Cecile, I don’t know yet how to reverse this damage to you, but I pledge to you that we will put all possible effort into it. We will undo this thing that was done to you, if it is at all possible and within my power. I want you to talk with some people we have here to get more information about who captured you. And I want you to know we are getting you out of this.”

Coming out of the helmet, I could not believe it. I must be in Seattle with Pat and Victoria at noon, too few hours from now, and this new hot turd is dumped in my lap. There is no way I can work on the inventory and miss the meeting that Pat has arranged with his doctor and the director of the Mayo Clinic transplant unit. We haven’t found a spell that lets me be in three places at once yet, but it’s sure looking like another research project.

“Hank. I don’t know that I am the best person to run these interviews. I know what I want to ask, but I don’t know enough about people to be able to run a good interview. Could we get Natalie to do this? She has Lech to help her.” Paula said to me.

It took thirty minutes to get Natalie down here to meet with me, go over the controls, understand the runes and spells needed to communicate with the crystals, and get her and Lech ready to communicate.

I really wanted to continue this myself, but Paula raised some rather strenuous objections. Along with Brimstone, Brynstan, Ogrenaut, and the two gargoyles in the room. And I did have a trained lawyer on hand. A good one. Natalie told me to not worry, and then put on the helmet. And got a look of concentration for a moment and then a look of delight. She was in.

Time passed and it became eleven thirty, I had to get ready to go to the left coast with Pat, and Natalie was still deep in thought and discussion. Lech reached out to me.

“Hank, the history of this is involves the most dangerous Fae/Human hybrid we have ever encountered. Natalie is finding out about things that are betrayals, plots, backstabbing plans, and a whole host of other interesting tidbits for the Archive. Cecile is very calm right now and Natalie is fine and wants you to go to get the information you need from the doctors, and we are composing an information plan to help Paula and Jeffery. Go. We have this.”

I hate being left out. But Natalie and Lech could handle this. If they could handle three senior mages, one person in a bottle should be no problem. I needed to get the information we needed.

Seattle, and medical education. (RTFM)

Pat arrived with Victoria, his nurse, and they grabbed me and walked to the wall, which dumped me in a waiting room in Seattle. Where another nurse grabbed Pat and hustled him to the exam room, and Victoria and I grabbed a seat in the waiting room.

“Doctor Meyerson will be here shortly. He got hung up on a conference call.” Atkinson’s nurse said. “He’s a norm, but a knowledgeable one. Not a magic user but he knows what it is, who does it and some of what it can do.”

“Ok. I promise to behave.”

“Don’t do that, Hank. Pat never expects that from you. Polite, yes. Behave? Never.” Victoria said with a laugh.

Shortly, Dr. Meyerson arrived and what followed was a long and torturous question and answer period where Dr. Meyerson was trying to pick my brains more then give me access to his. He must have asked “Why do you want to know?” over two hundred times in the next two hours, before he would launch into long winded and technical statements that showed he knew what he knew and I could not possibly ever understand. The only seriously satisfactory piece of information he gave me was that “Some individual cells can be grown in a medium and that Stem Cells specifically have an affinity to grow into almost any human body cell, if given the chance.”

When he was asked “who in your department would know about such cells and their behaviors” his blustering reply was to say “Check out the medical journals. I’m sure you will find it there.”

Pat coming out of the exam room was a relief. “Pat, everything ok?” I asked.

“Doc says everything is fine. He’s going to get in touch if he has any ideas.”

“Ok. Dr. Meyerson, it’s been an experience. Thank you for your time. I’ll see myself out.” I said and then touched my watch, shipping me immediately back to my Condo in Augusta. I was pretty aware that I probably caused an upset.

Left behind

“Where did he Go?” was the first words out of Meyerson’s mouth. Followed by “How did he do that. What just happened?”

“What just happened was that one of the top wizards in the world, a power Wizard of almost unmatched ability, got fed up with your Q&A cycle that showed you know everything and don’t intend to share anything. He’s gotten pissed and left.” Victoria said to Pat and Dr. Atkinson. “Every question he asked you got a “Why do you want to know” answer and then was followed by five minutes of technical jargon that was probably dismissive and had nothing to do with what he asked.”

“Danny, what did you do?” Atkinson asked.

“He was just a teenager. I thought he was some kid off of the street who is a friend of your patient.” Meyerson said.

“Who I watched grow nerves in an almost broken spine back together like they were magnets seeking each other. He came here to get some information, not a brush off.” Atkinson said.

“Pat, I’m. sorry. Please let Hank know I apologize for exposing him to this example of medical hubris.” Atkinson said.

“No problem. He’s been getting a lot of that lately, and I guess he’s got some better things to do.” Pat said. As he and Victoria also jumped to Atlanta.

I did have better things to do. I did take the last thing Meyerson said to heart. Medical Journals. Time to put my research people to work. But first, to plan.

Sunday afternoon and evening

After my great conversation with Dr. Meyerson, I was happy to get home. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and I was starving. I had to grab a peanut butter sandwich. After I did and then went downstairs to the Lounge and looked in to see what was going on. And entered a madhouse.

Natalie was huddled with Grace and Paula. And they didn’t even acknowledge me entering.

Amelia and William were working over documents with Jeffery and Peter. Wow, I bet that would be a good group to break into.

Helen and Wendy (when did she get here?) and Melissa Gordon were all sitting at a table sketching out some diagram of sorts.

And two Gnomes were running rounds of finger food, snacks and drinks to the tables to keep them fed, busy and occupied. One of them (the Gnomes) came over to me and asked, “Can I get your order, master Hank?” He asked.

“Carl, it’s you, right? I guess you got roped into waiter duty” I said.

“No, No. Sunday I take off and do things here in the Lounge. Me and the others like it here because we can drop the Geas because only Fae and Mages are here. And sometimes some Wizards.”

“Well, I am glad if you are happy. I’ll take whatever you are serving and ask if I can please have a cold beer?”

“Certainly, a sample plate and a Lager.” He said as he went to the bar.

When my plate and stein got to my table, so did Peter, who broke away from the research table (I guess that’s what it was) and came to me. “Hank, do you have any job openings for a fired / quit warlock?”

“Depends. Is it someone I know?” I asked biting into a sausage sandwich. “I might have an opening. You know it comes with free room and board”.

“I’ll take it. I already like your health plan and the food’s great.” Peter said.

“What happened?” I asked between bites.

“Well, there were a few people somewhat upset about crimes not being prosecuted. Burglary for one. Theft of stolen property for the other. And a failure to appear to answer for your crimes.” Peter said. “And before I could even think about mentioning to anyone what happened, Cecile evidently had a lot of information about Who, What and When. No How. And Cecile wanted to brush over the “Why”. I got a little sharp with him, and Sir David got sharp with me, and I used that blade to cut the ties. So, do I work for you, or Reggie again or freelance?”

I swallowed. I gave a look like I was thinking about. Then I said “Yes. All the above. Get Delores to set up a billing schedule for you. You like your office?”

“Hell yes.”

“Good. Keep it. But I think you won’t be in it much.” I said. “Things are going to probably get a little intense in a little while.”

“Paula said that she had some surprises.” Peter said.

“She hit me with one just before I left.” I said, finishing my sandwich. Just in time for Natalie and her friends to break up.

And with that, Natalie stood up. “Ok. Folks, If I can grab some attention? I have some discoveries that I made that I want everyone here to know. But it’s closed loop. No outsiders. This is top secret, Clan Lambert only.”

I knew right then who my Second in command was. And would be. For as long as she and Lech lived. Suddenly, I was struck with a revelation. Lech was a Familiar. He flew to her to find sanctuary. Bit by bit, through encouragement and his work inside, and positive work from the outside, Natalie will grow. Maybe not to become a Mage, or wizard. But something else. Something “Natalie”. Unique to herself, and alone among many. We needed to make sure that the loneliness didn’t overcome her. I made a silent note to self.

“We have been digging today and we have very reliable information about what is going on, who is behind it, where they are, some of the how and why.” Natalie said. “And we have a lot to discuss.”

And so she began. It was interesting. Not nearly as painful as Seattle.

First off, our primary enemy was known by many names. Karudorich was the latest one. He had gone by many before. He once had been known by the name of Loki and was one of the original Norse Gods. Only he wasn’t. He was the offspring of the Fae King, and a human Mage. The fact that the Elf King spawned a half human embarrassed the king so much, that he hunted down and killed the woman early in the child’s life. The Fae King then felt guilty and gave his son two gifts to let him try to survive before abandoning him in Finland.

One was the ability to change shape and form. He could become virtually any other creature on earth almost instantly. It kept him alive a lot.

The other was VERY insidious. He could alter the memory of people who looked at him and superimpose his current appearance over the memory of someone they knew before. If you were a woman, and Karudorich felt you should remember that person as a Man, then you did remember them as a man. Women became men because he had no value of them. “Breeders and eaters. They are nothing more” was his bywords. This allowed him to do some amazing things. His first big impact was at Masada. Where the Romans entered a castle that would have held them back for years, only to find every man, woman and child dead. He later did the same thing as Jim Jones in South America. Killing by suicide was a great mental exercise. He had orgasms over doing this. He had to deploy control over a mass of people all at the same time. And it kept his hands clean.

Over time, he has grown and fabricated one of the most complex pieces of spell craft ever done, because it projected restructured memory. And it had to sneak up under the different the Geas that Magic users (Fae, and Mage and Wizard) used to protect themselves. This was to allow subtle changes in the memories without alerting the owner. It was far more insidious than a simple camouflage spell. But you had to get a lot of the memories of the subject you were going to imitate. You had to have answers to every possible question, so you had to have the memories of your assumed role to complete the disguise. Hence his need for the Ripper.

While he was growing up, he slept beside a fumeral pool when he was a child in the Balkans (sound familiar?) and that affected him in a lot of different ways as a Mage as well. When all this is totaled up, you have a dangerous person. He had a very strong capability in terms of Illusionist, Spirit and Mentalism. These were his central power.

Karudorich was in fact the current stand-in for Cecile Henrard, as a male version, and all of the people who had known that woman remembered her as Him when they met. (Something I knew from firsthand conversation.)

It also explained some of the recent behavior of Sir David. He was not knowing this new person who was imitating his friend. But his memory kept jogging back to the female when he was looking at the male. Confusion to the enemy. He felt something was wrong, even though the spell kept rebuilding his memory.

And like serial killers everywhere, Karudorich kept trophies. Pieces of the body, usually a ring finger of either hand. Except for the Fae he had trapped. Those he took hair from. Hair didn’t dissolve when it was separated from the owner.

And those trophies? They were in the British Museum. In a set of locked boxes in an ordinary locked storage room. Including the latest two. One for Cecile, and one for a young woman from Georgia.

Mister Nagy was a totally separate person, just as evil. Maybe. Nagy was more of a hands-on henchman. He was the one who killed Maggie, Carrie and my mother and father and kidnapped Cindy so Karudorich could suck out her mind. After that, he put her body in the oil drum full of degreaser.

When Karudorich was living with him, he loved to go into the vault under the study and play with his “Toys”. He knew that he could do that with impunity because Nagy needed him to keep the Mages in line. Including his cousin, who was the Russian Federation Council leader. Who recycled the worst of the worst back into society after helping them amend their looks and reputations. Which was another reason that the idea of an Archive was so badly hated. Finding the bad would be easier with the use of an archive.

“So, this is what I have gotten from the immersion in the mind of Cecile Henrard and some other victims.” Natalie said.” What we do with all of this is the question I want to get an answer to from all of you. I believe we need a plan of attack to work to do three things. One, recover the trophies to be able to restore the crystal souls. Two, find a way to restore those bodies from the trophies. Three, IF the crystal captives wish it, work to return them to those bodies and let them resume their lives.” Natalie said.

Looking around, Natalie looked for objections. Finding none, we outlined our next actions. Our first stop, the British Museum. We had some trophies to collect. And the clock was ticking because Peter had already delivered the note to the artificial Cecile that we were undertaking this project, and that only stumbling on Cecile first gave away what was the risk.

And the next thing to do was find some damn good genetic professors and find a way to recreate the bodies that these minds could belong to.

While the Recovery team (Grace, Paula, Melissa, and Natalie along with her partner Lech) did inventory of the crystal prisoners, the Research team (Helen, Wendy, Amelia and William) were going to be doing research in the basis of genetic growth of a body. Possibly several different types.

While this was going on, we needed to do another burglary. Only it was for 39 separate objects currently in the British Museum. The genetic imprints of the crystal souls.

“Ok. Before we do something that may be stupid, do we have a way to have these artifacts come here, like the books and scrolls have so often? And once we do get them, what do we have in the way of containment to prevent them from being pulled out of here?” Peter asked the group.

“We have the retrieval scripts, but they currently are too generalized. When we asked for Cecile Henrard, we got a lot of papers and some personal items. We can probably get the things we need from the comb and toothbrush. But what about the others?” Paula explained.

“I have a question. When we pulled the individual crystals, how were they identified?” I asked the group.

“They were identified by runes on the outside. Most of the writing was a duplicate, but not all of it.” Natalie said in response. And her face lit up when the light bulb went off.

“Paula” Natalie said. “What if we substituted the runes identifier from the crystal to the retrieval spell we are trying to use to recover the associated artifact?”

“Shit. If may be that the rune is not just a language substitute, but an individual branding of the individual item. Let me see.” Paula said.

It took almost five minutes to do the proper editing of the runic spell and insert the different rune definition of the target, and when Paula enacted it, she said “This thing is fighting the retrieval. This spell is sucking up a lot of power. It’s got a tight hold applied somewhere. But I feel it’s coming.” Paula said.

“Let me add to your power” Brimstone said. And suddenly, on the ledge of the fumeral a small box appeared. It was shimmering as if it was fighting being there, but after a few moments, it gradually solidified.

“Grab it” Natalie said. “Take it to the shielded cells of the warehouse and put it in one of the cages. And put this label on it quick.”

An eight by ten-inch piece of paper was taped to the outside of the box and one of the gnomes carried it across the hall to the warehouse.

“One down, and 38 to go” Peter said. “Time is wasting, folks. I dropped these suppositories on the two Council heads yesterday, and its’ been over twenty-four hours.”

The thought that someone would be trying to additionally shield these boxes spurred Paula, Natalie and Jeffery on.

For the next two hours, Natalie, Paula, Jeffery and Brimstone along with two gnomes and two armored dwarves did shuttle duty, retrieving and then hand carrying the sample chests (the older ones were very ornate examples of elven work) across to the warehouse room where the prison cells that we had enclosed the dwarves we had fought with were secured. The “White Room” cells were quickly modified that boxes could come in, but not leave. And two Gnomes stood watch along with two Gargoyles.

“We need to have a ripper of disguise for every member of Hank Lambert Clan. This is a risk we cannot afford. Time to wake up the dwarves. “I said.

“We probably need some additional runes, avoidance spells and other security measures for our fourteen gargoyles, six dwarves, nine gnomes, and a pair of young dragonets. All without the few human residents of the building catching on to anything.” Paula said.

A lot of hard work. While this was going on, Pat and Victoria came by. “I want to apologize for the rude treatment you got” Pat started to say.

“Don’t’ worry. You got me what I wanted. Now I have to find a resource to actually do what I needed to have done. “I said to Pat.

“What’s going on here?” Pat asked as another chest suddenly appeared on the ledge in front of Brimstone.

“Some classified work that we need to get done. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t explain right now.” I said. “Pat, we are going to have to tighten up some on our security here. I hope you don’t mind but, in the future, we are going to ward this room, and everything but the foyer against drop ins. If you don’t come through the foyer, you cannot enter any of the stores here.”

“Ok. I can understand you tightening things down, but can you give me a hint?” Pat asked.

“I’ll be briefing Reggie in person tomorrow. And we want to verify identity before we start to discuss.” I said.

“Verify Identity?” Pat asked.

“Yes. We have uncovered some very uncomfortable things that we need to be able cover and secure against. There is a chameleon alive and among the Mages. Able to assume anyone, and almost anything. We need to get a detector of some sort operational, and we need to do it now.” I said.

“YIKES. We ain’t talking about normal shields then.”

“Nope. Pat, you are my oldest and first friend. I need for you to keep what I just said to yourself until I can get to Reggie tomorrow. And I need you to forget everything you see while you are here tonight.”

“Ok kid. I’ll wait for it. You are owed at least that much”.

As I looked around, and saw my friends, and thought about this last year, I felt a lot of things. Good for the Arch Park. Bad because of my parents, Bernie and Lynn. Hopeful for Cindy. Astonished about Cecile Hanrard. Comfortable about the trust that Arno gave me. Disgusted about the problems with Sir David and the other elders. And totally buoyed up by the friends and families I had here in this little square in Augusta.

A conference among Mages

“I really don’t want to bother you by keeping you in the middle. Just Give me his Name.” Cecile said, with a spell around the word Give.

Sir David sensed the compulsive twist in the mental push on the word Give. Shaking his head, it dissipated.

“Cecile, I must go. I’ll talk to you later. Send me the list of the item numbers and I will get with my friend and see what has happened.” Sir David said. Ending the chat.

What the bloody hell is going on? How dare any Mage attempt to compel a Wizard. Who did he think he was? And what the hell was going on?

Seven PM on Sunday

This will take some adjusting for me. But it could be very good in the future.

We had all thirty-nine boxes snug as bugs in a sweater in the number one prison cell. With the Shields and power sucker amped up to max, there was no possibility of an outside force finding and removing them. At least not by transfer. Physical force was another matter. For that, we increased detection of intent, blocks of memory alteration, and geas manipulation as needed.

Grace, Paula, Melissa and Natalie got started on a research project to modify the runes of the amulets to add the additional spell blockers to prevent memories being altered. These amulets all had to be removed, modified, and reattached to the individuals who worked in the building.

It was a long night, a lot of work, but by sunrise Monday, everyone had runes modified on their amulets or collars that demasked and prevented artificial memories. This was in addition to all of the normal shields for spells, energy, objects and intent.

We had recovered the gems; we had recovered the associated artifacts. And we had the ripper and the restorer. Now we had to contact the people in the crystals, evaluate them as individuals, and look at what species they were and where they could be restored. Some would never be able to be restored to their original state. Some Fae would possibly have to transform to Human or other kinds of fae.

That was a problem for later. First, we had to do some security improvements. I put Peter and Jeffery on that, figuring that between them, they could come up with protections that we would be able to support as well as protect us. And I started to look into my father’s alma mater for biomedical and other biological courses. Dad was a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech. And one hell of an engineer.

Another Monday Morning.

Monday Afternoon

I slept the whole day. I woke up with a start at two thirty local time, hungry and a little groggy. But I had to get going because I had to be at Reggie’s in two hours with Natalie and Jeffery. I thought that Natalie would be the best person and most up to date doing the presentation to Reggie, and Jeffery would be a good second source of information. Paula’s advancing pregnancy made me reluctant to want to take her into any situation that had any possibility of any risk.