Chapter 1

The following characters appear through the entire story:

Gregory O’Brien (Greg)

Senior Master, retired business man, 5’-9’’ tall, 175 pounds, 72 years old, mostly gray hair, blue eyes

Amelia Mullins

English Lit Degree, prostitute, 5’-1’’ tall, 115 pounds, 36DD-23-36, 24 years old, long flaming red hair, green eyes, only a few freckles, beautiful, top heavy

Sylvia

Mage, Veterinarian, 5’-4’’ tall, 125 pounds, 34C-26-34, 32 years old, short brown hair, gray eyes

Wednesday 13 April 2072

It was a fine spring day here in Charleston and the 329th birthday of Thomas Jefferson. I was sitting in my favorite restaurant in a downtown historic district hotel having lunch on the mezzanine when the commotion broke out below me.

A young woman with an exceptional figure, which was revealed by her scanty clothing, rushed out of one of the side hallways of the hotel into the large lobby running for the front entrance and the street beyond. She almost made it before collapsing in a boneless heap to the carpet.

Being an ardent admirer of the female form, and a Senior Master Wizard, I immediately transferred down to her location to see if I could be of any help. On appearing next to the young woman, it was immediately apparent that all was not as it had initially appeared, or anything even remotely resembling normal.

The young woman had scratches and welts from a beating on the exposed parts of her body. There was an electronic control collar locked tightly around her neck like those used to restrain dogs. She was barefoot and breathing very heavily, more heavily than her somewhat short run would normally produce. Additionally, she had a very large Talent, but I could detect no Magic from her.

To top the situation off, I could detect the rapid movement of several large individuals hurrying down the hallway that she had emerged from headed in our direction.

A touch on the collar released its lock, and it dropped to the floor, as I used a spell to lift the young woman into my arms before using another spell to transfer us out of the hotel. We vanished just as several men in suits burst out of the hallway at a run.

We reappeared in a back alley some distance from the hotel, and I lay the young woman down on the cleanest patch of pavement that I could find. The burn marks on her neck from the collar were now visible, and I had to wonder how she had ever made it as far as she had with that collar constantly discharging against her neck. She was still unconscious and now breathing rather shallowly. Using a medical spell, I checked on her condition and found several things.

The first was that she had been given a very powerful drug to reduce any pain that she felt, and the second was that she had two radio tracking chips buried in her body. I knew of no White Magic spell that would remove the drug from her body, and I feared that the dose of the drug that she had been given would kill her if something wasn’t done to counter it. The second thing was that the tracking chips would soon lead those chasing her here. Several things needed to be done if I were to keep this young woman alive, and out of the hands of those after her.

While I didn’t know a spell to remove the drug, I knew someone who might be able to do that. I had gone through a part of my Magic Training at the University of Georgia in Athens with a young woman who was a Mage. While her Talent wasn’t as strong as those of the O’Connell Women running the Agriculture Department, she had a good Talent, but it leaned more toward the care of animals then growing plants. She was currently a Veterinarian, and I would need to convince her to help me with this young woman.

Of course, we wouldn’t be able to use her veterinary clinic due to the tracking devices in the young woman, instead I would need to leave her somewhere while I talked to my Mage friend. Fortunately, I was aware of a place to hide her while I was gone, and it was far from this alley. Using a spell again, I picked up the unconscious young woman, and we vanished once more.

We instantly reappeared in a rundown and abandoned business park on the outskirts of Charleston. One of the buildings here had held an electronics testing and repair facility, and they had a large Faraday Cage in the building. When they went out of business, the cage had been left in the building. I could leave the young woman in the cage, and by combining it with a spell that I had developed to reduce radio frequency interference, the two trackers that she carried would be unable to get a signal out, and those after her would be unable to locate her.

After assuring that the young woman was reasonably comfortable in the Faraday Cage, I cast a preservation spell around her before transferring to the reception area of my friend Sylvia’s clinic startling several customers, their pets, and the receptionist.

“I’m Senior Master Gregory O’Brien, and it’s imperative that I see Sylvia immediately,” I told the receptionist while using a compliance spell. My rank had been necessary as I was wearing a business suit, so she wouldn’t have realized that I was a Wizard otherwise.

“I ... yes sir, go through the double doors; Sylvia will be in the last treatment room on the right,” she told me while those sitting there appeared rather upset by my immediate admission to the back of the office.

I found Sylvia in the room indicated with a rather elderly dog which was not in good shape. Sylvia was not happy to see me.

“I’m busy Greg, not now,” she told me on looking up and seeing me.

“I need your help,”

“I’m busy. This dog is in bad shape, and I don’t know if I can do much to save it,” she said in a tired voice. I checked the animal with my Magic senses, and found that indeed it had serious problems due to its age.

“There isn’t much that you can do for it,” I told her after a couple of minutes, but this was holding us up.

“The owner is a little girl who will be heartbroken if her pet dies,” she replied.

“I have a young woman who will also die without your help,” I told her, and a thought occurred to me, but it would take time, time that the young woman might not have even with the preservation spell.

“I’ll work on the dog, if you will go with me to help the young woman,” I told her.

“What stray have you picked up now, Greg?” she asked with a bit of a smile, as she knew me very well since we had gone through Magic training together for well over a year.

“I’m not sure, but she has a fine strong Talent that I would hate to lose,” I told her.

“And she’s good looking also,” Sylvia said with another smile.

“As a matter-of-fact, she is, but that doesn’t count as much as her Talent which is very strong, but she apparently isn’t aware of it, as she appears to have no knowledge of Magic,” I told her to a startled look.

“All right, I’ll go with you, but you have to work on the dog first,” she told me, knowing how much I regretted not knowing Magic when my Wife was sick.

“Fine, but he’ll need to be on the floor to work on him,” I told her, as I called blue chalk to me, before using a spell to move the dog from the treatment table to the floor. Sylvia moved the table while I turned him so his head was to the north, before I drew a circle around him large enough for the two of us and the dog to occupy but left it open.

Next I chalked the the necessary symbols for the spells around the dog before I turned and addressed Sylvia.

“Sit on the west side of the dog. I will sit on its east side and close the circle before we begin. Extend your hands to mine then, and I will start the Medical Spells needed. They’re for humans, but should work well enough on a dog,” I told her, and we proceeded to do that.

As I began the spells, the flames appeared, but they were a different color than the usual blue and yellow flames that the Eternal Flame sent when healing people. These were more red in color, but that could have been because of the dog, or the fact that Sylvia was a Mage and her Magic was different than mine. Still, the flames consumed the vapors that rose from the dog’s body during the healing.

We were finished in a short time, and the dog sat up and wanted to move to both of us. I used a quick freeze spell to keep him in place, while I broke the circle and then used another spell to remove all evidence of my work. On canceling the freeze spell, the dog happily danced around us and licked both of us several times.

“I’ll need to take him out to his owner, and then we can leave to see about your young woman,” she told me, then led the dog out to the reception area. I hoped that we hadn’t taken too long, and that the young woman was still alive. Sylvia returned several minutes later.

“Thank you, Greg, little Denise was very happy to have her dog back,” she told me before asking, “Where are we going?”

“To an abandoned business park, where I have her hidden. I didn’t dare take her to my place or bring her here, as she has two tracking chips buried in her.”

“Why didn’t you just remove them?”

“Because they could just find some other way to locate her then, and I have a plan for those chips,” I told her with a smile.

“Shall we go?” I asked and cast the transfer spell around the two of us. We vanished from the Veterinary Clinic.

We instantly reappeared in the building with the Faraday Cage in the business park. Sylvia looked around at the building and the Faraday Cage for several minutes.

“Can you work in there?” I asked, pointing to the cage.

“I don’t see why not. It doesn’t keep Magic from working, does it?”

“No,” I answered with a smile, “Magic works deep underground, under water, or anywhere else. A metal cage is no challenge at all,” I assured her, as we both entered the cage and sat by the young woman. Sylvia took her hand and started a mantra after I canceled the preservation spell. Several minutes passed before she looked up at me with a concerned expression on her face.

“This woman has been given a large dose of a drug to negate pain. I believe it’s the one called ‘Panacea’. She also has a number of other drugs in her system, one of which is to keep her from becoming pregnant, but it’s not totally dependable. She has also been abused in her vagina and rectum as well as her mouth. Additionally she was also beaten with some kind of instrument, and there are serious burns on her neck from something. Do you have any idea of what it was?” she asked finishing her diagnoses.

“Yes, it was an electronic control collar. I removed it before transferring us to another location,” I told her before asking, “Is she pregnant?”

“No, she isn’t.”

“I will use the pregnancy prevention spell on her later then,” I told her.