Chapter 11

We appeared in the tunnel at the entrance to the Gardner Pingree House’s basement. It was the house that Captain Joseph White had bought from Nathaniel West, and where he was murdered in 1830. Louisa DuPont made a contribution to the Essex Museum in the early 1900s to have the White name removed from the house, so as to not embarrass her husband, Frank B. Crowninshield.

On arriving, I cast the listening spell on the wall closing the entrance so we could hear what was being said.

“Just because we have to agree to do what they want doesn’t mean that we need to actually do ALL of it. As soon as we get a chance, we turn the tables on them, and take them prisoners if possible. If not, we beat it out of there when we get a chance,” we heard Lew say.

“They won’t suspect that?” another voice asked, which had to belong to Al.

“Naw, we’ll act real friendly. That should convince them that we will obey them,” Lew told him.

“Perhaps they need a little convincing,” Jill said, as I canceled the listening spell.

“Yes, perhaps a little tour of Hell will change their minds. In any event, we will keep our wards around us all of the time, and I’ll have a freeze spell cast with only a single word needed to activate it,” I told her before casting the transfer spell to appear in the basement of the house, startling both men.

“Have you explained the agreement to your friend?” I asked on appearing. Both men were still recovering from the shock of our appearance, so they didn’t respond immediately.

“How ... how do you do that?” both gasped on recovering.

“Magic,” was all that I said, before changing the subject.

“We are going to take you on a little trip, so you understand just how serious we are about what we are doing,” I told them.

“Move closer together,” I told them next, and we joined them as they moved together, before casting the transfer spell. We vanished from the basement of the Gardner House and instantly appeared in the closed section of the tunnel along Central St.

Both men were shocked by more than the sight that was before them, which was frightening enough itself. More importantly, they were staggered by the smell which had intensified from the heat. It was so bad that both of them were close to vomiting from it. We, of course, didn’t notice it, as I had used the spell earlier to keep us from smelling it.

“What in God’s name is that awful smell?” Lew asked while trying to keep from gagging.

“A number of the prisoners were a bit sick when released from the pain spell. Much of it wound up in the fire,” I told him pointing to where the flames of the Magic fire still leaped and danced, which called it to their attention. They could also see the members of the Anti-Magic League in their frozen positions. There were several that they immediately recognized.

“What are you going to do to them?” Al asked cautiously.

“We will deal with them in our own way when we are ready. Until then, they will remain here,” I told them.

“Are you ready to return to your former location?” I asked.

“Yes, before we puke too,” Lew told us, as the two of them moved closer together on their own. I cast the transfer spell leaving the tunnel area behind us, and we reappeared in the basement of the Gardner House, where I immediately cast a freeze spell but held it ready.

“We’ll see you late tomorrow morning,” Jill told them, as I threw the freeze spell at the two of them, freezing them in place.

“Are you ready to quit for the night?” Jill asked right after that.

“Yes, but we need to air our clothing out before returning to the room,” I told her. “They would surely contaminate it,” I reminded her before transferring us back to the closed tunnel section.

“Good, let me turn those lights out so the batteries don’t run down, while you drop these glamours,” she agreed.

On finishing, I transferred us to Central Wharf for a time to air out our clothing, and also used a strong cleaning spell on them. We didn’t remain overly long as it was a very cold night, and we weren’t dressed for it. I also canceled the spell protecting our noses, so we could tell when our clothes were relatively smell free. On returning to our room, we took a good hot shower, but separately because of the small size of the shower and the bath room.

Following donning our sleepwear, I reheated the remaining food, and we finished every bit of it. We had used a lot of Magic tonight and would use a lot more tomorrow, so we ate all that we had, before going to bed but only to sleep as it was already late.

Wednesday morning, we were up at a reasonable hour and hurried through our morning rituals to leave for a really big breakfast at the same place we had been having breakfast since Sunday. We had an extra large breakfast today. We had made sure that the security cameras in the lobby recorded us leaving.

On finishing, I transferred us back to our room to change into our working clothes, before transferring us to the closed tunnel. I had reset the glamours of our red clothing and the spell to keep the stink out of our noses before leaving our room. On appearing in the tunnel, the smell was even worse, as it had had time to age and was really awful.

“Who do we start with?” Jill asked once she had turned the lights on, and we had checked the area to be sure no one else had been here.

“Pick one, it doesn’t matter, as we’ll need to question all of them,” I told her. She selected a man, and we moved him closer to the burning flames of the fire, but not too close. On changing his freeze spell to a partial one, he instantly threw up just from the smell, so it was several minutes before we could question him. Even using the Truth spell, he knew little.

Over the next couple of hours, we unfroze and questioned the others. Most knew very little about the inner workings of the League, so that it was more of an exercise in futility than anything else. They were all sure that Magic users were the spawn of the Devil and needed to be eliminated. They were all disappointed by the slow progress that was being made to accomplish that by the current leadership, but realized that it was because of the shortage of money needed to advance the cause. This was why most of them didn’t see the Heroin deal as a bad thing.

By the time we finished, it was just after 1100. Jill collected most of the battery powered lights and returned them to our hotel room, leaving only one for us to see by. While she was gone, I canceled the current Magic fire spell and all of the glamours along the length of the tunnel. It was much darker in there now.

When Jill returned, I cast a glamour around myself using George’s image and then one around her using Joe’s image, before moving all of the prisoners closer together in the middle of the tunnel. Once they had been collected in a tight group, I cast a ward around them that went down both tunnel walls and across its width at both ends of the group, before canceling all of their freeze spells. This was followed immediately by much gasping and choking from the smell before they realized that they were confined in a rather small space. Panic set in then as they tried to escape from the wards, which wasn’t possible for them. We eventually turned on the remaining light so it shown on the two of us. I had lowered the glamours, so they saw just the two of us as we actually are. Silence soon followed.

“All of you are responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of my two small Sons, and all of you will pay the price for that crime. You are also all responsible for the crime of distributing large quantities of illegal drugs, and you will all pay for that as well as the other murders that you ordered.

“Shortly the two of us will confront the people coming to obtain those illegal drugs, and we will deal with them just as harshly as we will now deal with all of you,” I told them before casting the spell for Magic fire again, but this time it was confined inside the ward I had cast. The screaming started immediately, as the flames began devouring them; burning off their clothing, bubbling and burning their skin, and finally burning the remainder of their bodies.

Later after the last of them had ceased to exist, I allowed the flames to burn for several minutes more to ensure that there was no trace left of any of them, before canceling it and the wards. There was nothing to see in the now empty tunnel, and we transferred to Central Wharf again, near the rigging shed to air out our clothing. It was 1115 by my watch, and it had warmed up into the lower forties. We spent a half hour walking around on the wharf in the glamours of George and Joe, before transferring back to our hotel room to change into our normal clothes.

“We need to eat,” Jill insisted once we had a quick shower and changed clothes.

“Yes, I could use something to eat,” I assured her. We had lowered, but not canceled the glamours while showering and changing, and hadn’t pulled them back up yet.

“Let’s try the place where I got the food last night. Those big burgers were quite good,” I told her.

“Yes, but no beer, cola instead,” she insisted. After transferring to the area near the bar and grill where I had gotten the food last night, we had a really good meal, but it was getting late by the time we finished.

“We need to collect our two workers and get things moving,” I told Jill, as I paid the bill. We transferred back to the basement of the Gardner House following that.

“Pull up your glamour,” I warned her before canceling the freeze spell on Lew and Al. They came awake with a bit of a surprise on seeing George and Joe in front of them.

“It’s time to go to work,” I told them.

“How did you escape?” they both asked.

“They didn’t escape and are no more. They burned like the vile creatures they were,” Jill told them to shocked looks from them, as they were startled by a female voice coming from the image of Joe.

“Burned?”

“Yes, you saw the fire burning last night. I only needed to expand it to burn all of them. There aren’t even any ashes of them left,” I told the two to see the color drain from their faces.

“It’s time to get to work, those men will be here soon,” Jill reminded them.

“Move closer together,” I told them before transferring all of us to the basement of the Marine Hall near the storage room where the Heroin was stored.

“Get the pallet jacks while we open the door,” Jill told them, while I opened the lock on the door with a small spell. The two pallets were still inside. It was the first time that I had a good look at them, and saw that each pallet had ten packages on it all shrink wrapped together. Each package therefore weighed twenty-five kilos or fifty-five pounds. Each package was plastic wrapped and vacuum sealed and was composed of twenty-five individual one kilo packages.

“Get those pallets out of there; we need to get them up to the dock. The delivery vehicles will already be up there,” I told them to hurry them up and not give them time to think.

The pallet jacks slipped right under the pallets, and it was easy for the two of them to pull the lightly loaded pallets out of the room on the smooth basement floor, before heading for the elevator. We trailed them, as we hadn’t checked on the location of the elevator. Lew pushed the call button for the elevator, and when it arrived, I made sure that I was the first one on it, much to Lew and Al’s disappointment. Jill followed them on. Lew pushed the button that took us up to the dock level. Jill was the first one off the elevator, and I followed them off. We needed to move single file down the somewhat narrow corridor to the dock area.

On entering the inner dock area, we could see that there were two large roll up doors at the back of the inner dock, which had room enough to deal with the largest delivery and break it down into its individual pieces. Al was the one who opened the right hand roll up door. There were two men there waiting for us, and they were rather upset.

“You’re late, where the hell have you guys been?” one of them demanded, before seeing Jill and me in our glamours of George and Joe.

“Sorry boss, but they were supposed to be here at 12:30,” the mouthy one said.

“We were delayed, but we still have time to load the merchandise before the buyers arrive,” I told him.

“Sure, we got the back doors of the vans open,” he told us, as he and the other man turned back to the outer dock, and we all followed. There were two small commercial delivery vans parked at the area of the dock that was the correct height to easily load the pallets into the back of the vans. They were painted and lettered in the colors used by a well-known delivery service. The drivers were dressed in the same colors.

There were steel plates on the dock that crossed the gap between the dock and the back of the vans, so the pallets were easily loaded into the the vans before the pallet jacks were removed and pulled back onto the dock. The steel plates were also pulled back and the back doors of the vans were closed and locked. Lew and Al were standing on the dock looking at the vans and the drivers. Jill and I were blocking their way back into the building.

“We’ll wait in the vehicles. We don’t need to see anything. We just deliver what is loaded,” the more talkative of the drivers told us. Jill and I moved to allow Lew and Al to move the pallet jacks back into the building before speaking to them.

“Leave the pallet jacks here. We’ll need them to move the money when it’s delivered,” I told them, and they moved them back out of the way, and were eyeing the hall back to the elevators. I hit them with the freeze spell that I had been holding since we arrived in the basement of the Gardner House.

“Watch things here while I deal with the drivers,” I told Jill before turning toward the door. At each van, I cast a freeze spell on the driver sitting behind the steering wheel and locked the doors by just touching the vehicle and thinking lock.

Back inside, I moved Lew and Al back closer to the open door before transferring the glamours of George and Joe to them while casting glamours of people in working clothing around Jill and myself.

Shortly before 1:30, I canceled the freeze spell on Lew and Al. On recovering, they were shocked to see each other looking like one of the bosses, but were even more shocked on seeing Jill and me standing there looking like museum employees.

“What are you doing?” Lew managed to ask after a short time.

“The two of you now look like George and Joe. When the Russians have a demand or a request, you will agree to their request, and we will be the ones to handle the actual work. I have cast a ward in the walls and the corridor leading from the loading dock. The only way off of it will be through the Russians. Do you understand what that means?” I demanded.

“Probably getting shot. Drug dealers are usually very nervous during an exchange,” Lew said in understanding. Al just looked confused and frightened.

The delivery time (1330) came and went with no one arriving. Another twenty minutes went by, and no one had shown up. It was just after 1400 before a large Mercedes sedan pulled into the area behind the museum. Following it was a small Mercedes commercial delivery van. The sedan pulled up to block the two delivery vans sitting at the dock, while their van turned and backed up to the dock.

Two men in expensive suits emerged from the sedan as well as the driver. At the same time, the back doors of the van burst open and two men with AK-47s moved onto the dock. The driver of the van also got out with an AK-47. The driver of the sedan also had one. They were obviously the guards. The two in expensive suits were just as obviously the ones in charge. They were all tall men at six foot or so, and would weigh around 210 pounds, more or less. They also all had blond crew-cuts and looked unhappy.

“Was difficult locating way in here,” one of the Russians, the younger of the two bosses, said in accented English, as they approached.

“That’s okay,” Lew in the glamour of George assured him.

“Where is merchandise?” he demanded next.

“It’s in the delivery vans,” the image of George told him.

“Open, so we can inspect,” the Russian demanded, and I stepped forward onto the outer dock to do just that. I had cast the ammunition spell before 1330, so wasn’t worried about their AK-47s. What I wanted was to get them all in a group, so I could hit them with a freeze spell.