Chapter 2: “Oh no, oh no, I get a strange magic”, Strange Magic, Electric Light Orchestra

Le Havre Hospital, February 12^th

Sophie paced back and forth in her office, waiting for some sign that Charisma was aware of where she’d moved to, but the laptop screen remained unchanged. Again she peered out the window, and for the tenth time there was no sign of anything. She turned away, and the knife caught against her leg again; she hurriedly snatched it out, slipping it into the long pocket of her bag, and made to start pacing again.

“Who is coming?” she muttered, forcing herself to sit. If she couldn’t do anything about it, she rationalised, she could at least appear to be working. She’d barely put her hands on the keyboard when someone rapped on the door and opened it without waiting for a response.

“Mr Ramage.” At least now she knew who it was.

“Doctor, do you have any idea who WatcherGen64 is?”

“Spying on my conversations?”

“Obviously. Answer the question, please.”

“Why?” Despite her nerves she sat back, realising that he was nervous, as well. Or perhaps not nervous, but maybe anxious, or pressured. His hair wasn’t quite as immaculately brushed, the shirt had creases around the collar this time - probably the same shirt from this afternoon, hurriedly put back on.

“This is a potential National Security issue, Doctor.”

“Really? Which nation?” She leant forward, eyes narrowing. “How does a few random killings represent a National Security threat? Is there a pattern to the victims?”

“Your own report suggests that someone has developed a bioweapon,” he reminded her.

“Yes, and we’ve spent lots of money buying guns for soldiers to use against them...”

“Doctor...”

“No, Mr Ramage, unless you’re actually going to engage, I’m not going to keep reacting to your veiled threats and your harassment. Leave me alone. If I find something I think you should know you’ve left me a number to contact you on. Now if you’d please leave, I have work to do.”

Ramage tilted his head and narrowed his eyes for a moment, then turned the gesture into a lopsided nod of acknowledgement.

“Very well, Doctor, I shall leave you be ... for now.” He rose from the chair smoothly; the outfit might be a little ruffled, but he showed no signs of a long day having slowed him down, despite the late hour. “But if we do not have any luck I may need to come back and ask you some more questions.”

“You can e-mail me, I’ll find some time in my schedule.” She assured him. She was pushing her luck, she knew, and his slight grin told her he knew it too.

“Good night, Doctor.” She affected an air of disinterest until the door closed, and then she held her breath for a few seconds before letting it out in a quivering gasp.

Dr Barthez... The letters flashed up on a window that popped up on her screen.

Charisma?

Yes. The person you contacted on the message board works for one of Gilgamesh’s companies.

He’s dead, though.

Not all of his associates are, however. Sophie slumped back; she’d hoped that was long behind her.

I am unable to access that location. Doctor, your computer use is out of character, you should close this terminal and use your phone, I can continue the conversation there. Her phone pinged on the desk with an incoming message, and she shut the laptop down entirely before picking it up.

The message was blank, and she saved the contact details.

You can probably call me Sophie. she noted, slightly clumsy with the smaller keyboard.

Thank you, Sophie. You should probably know that DCPAF officers have shot and killed an individual matching the description of the Type III coming ashore at Deauville. The body is currently at the Customs Building in Ouistreham. Sophie hadn’t driven that route before, but she figured it was about an hour.

Perhaps not. That seemed enough of a reason in itself, although it did seem as though she wasn’t going to be able to get away from the mess until this issue with the ... creatures ... was resolved.

Can you help?

I can utilise the fact your name is on file with several agencies in relation to the ongoing enquiries to suggest that you’ve been sent to investigate but it may not be effective for long.

The night air was bitterly cold, despite the north-easterly winds from the North Sea picking up a little heat from La Manche and the Gulf Stream that fed it, and she pulled her thick coat tighter around herself as she scuttled across the damp car park to her little green Citroen. Her phone slipped into the holder on the dashboard, and she took a moment to plug it in to the charger, the destination already set, and had to wait for the windscreen to clear of mist before she pulled away.

The drive was uneventful, the road parallel to the coastline but set several miles back for the main part, only the bridge over the Seine showed any signs of the ice that would likely be a problem on the return trip. If she got to make it.

Navigating the unfamiliar town of Ouistrehave was a little slower, but she pulled up at the small building, little more than a hut, only ten minutes later than the phone had suggested she’d be arriving.

“Dr Barthez?” She froze, half-way out of the car, as the uniformed man poked his head out of the door.

“Yes.” she answered, feeling the pause as she waited for her heart to start again probably gave her away.

“We’ve only just had notification you were coming, Doctor,” he apologised, emerging out into the cold and immediately wrapping his arms around himself. “Sorry, was there anything you needed?”

“Just access, for now,” she assured him, grabbing her laptop from her bag and tucking it back beneath the passenger seat. “And access to any details you’ve already got.”

“I’ll have a copy of the file made ... it’s not big.” She nodded, locked the car up and hurried through the cold.

“This way, Doctor.” he opened the door and directed her towards the right, the seaward side. “Would you like something to drink?”

“A hot chocolate, if you have it?” she smiled. Despite being inside, it didn’t feel much warmer, and she kept her hands tucked deep in her pockets, clenching the laptop under her armpit with her elbow.

“I doubt it, but I’ll look. If not...?”

“Coffee, white with no sugar.” He nodded, and pointed behind her.

“It’s in there.” He disappeared into the office space, where a few muttered voices could be vaguely heard and as she walked past she realised there was some sort of heater in there, warm air spilling across her cheeks.

Through the door she’d been directed to, though, all thoughts of the warmth of the office disappeared, and she stepped up to the makeshift trestle table, harshly lit by a spotlight that looked as though it might be dragged off one of the patrol boats. Or perhaps a spare. It cast a few unexpected shadows, but was more than good enough to let her take in the details.

Slimmer and less overtly muscular than the creatures she’d seen at Marduk’s laboratory - Georg Roffmai’s laboratory, she corrected herself - this was yet another female, although the breasts were flattened out, almost stretched as though the chest had broadened. She slipped on a pair of thin gloves that she’d liberated from the first aid kit in her car, and opened up her laptop on the adjacent desk and began to make her notes. Grateful that she’d charged her phone in the car, she took photos from every angle she could before she started lifting and moving the body, checking the articulation of the joints, confirming that it was broadly human.

A mutated human, or at least altered somehow. Checking over her shoulder towards the door, seeing the now cold cup - she couldn’t tell from the colour if it had been coffee or chocolate - she slipped the glove off her left hand and held it over the body. Reaching through the knife she felt for the power that she’d stolen from Camael, trying not to think of the noise and the feel of the blade as it plunged through his skull and failing. Closing her eyes and taking a shuddering breath, she pushed the memory back down and reached out again - she wasn’t sure what the hand gesture did, it simply felt right - and tried to sense the body.

Slowly, delicately, without really understanding how, she began to get a sense for the changes; the hormones were wrong, the levels awry, and there was something else, something foreign in the system which was, fundamentally, human. This had been a woman, at some point, perhaps in her late twenties to judge from the condition of the joints, although the growth plates had been artificially reactivated ... which might confuse the guess at the age ... but then she hadn’t reasoned out the age, it had merely been the impression from the knife. Moving slowly around the body she started to develop a picture of the changes, the sequence, at least some sense of how it had been done ... the foreign substance was distributed throughout, but seemed to be slightly concentrated in one of her arms.

Sophie lifted them both, comparing the two, and saw the characteristic puncture marks of injections in the affected limb; without even thinking about it she shifted the flesh, and the remnants of the substance oozed from the skin and she quickly let it drip into the glove she’d taken off.

Noise from the corridor behind her caught her attention, and she stepped away slightly back towards the laptop to record the injection marks.

“Dr Barthez...” Ramage’s voice echoed in the empty room, causing her to jump a little as she realised how much trouble she might be in. Feeling weak she turned and leant against the low brick wall supporting the back edge of her makeshift computer desk, careful not to trap the knife between her leg and the bricks.

Except that the knife wasn’t there. She’d taken it off in her office, put it in her bag. Which was in the car.

Which meant, she realised, that she hadn’t sensed the body through the knife, hadn’t used the magic in it to drag the drugs out of the poor girl’s arm. She’d just reached, she’d used her magic.

Ramage suddenly seemed the least of her worries.

The Dalles, Oregon, February 13^th

Caerys jolted awake with a start, panicked for a moment as she tried to narrow down what had caught her attention, only to realise a moment later that it was a delivery, or perhaps the waste collection, rumbling by outside the window. Stretching her cramped legs she dislodged the notebook and the tablet, before easing herself from the bed and slumping over to the narrow desk where the coffee machine rested. She set the machine and detoured to the bathroom, the mirror confirming that despite the sleep she was nowhere near as rested as she needed to be.

The book had been increasingly confusing, mismatched references and nonsensical statements, a jumble of ideas in sentences that worked grammatically but didn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Grabbing her notebook as she shuffled back into the room, she could see that it was just rows of question marks, ideas that went nowhere. Setting it on the narrow desk she poured a coffee, and settled into the worn armchair to stare at the original book, back in its protective bag and sat on the bedside table.

Settling herself she shifted her gaze, turning her attention away from her eyes and towards the inner sense she had, feeling the world around her. There were lines of power, thin tendrils weaving their way through the ground beneath her, and she could feel that pull of the power of the river, but all of it paled against the bright, golden glow of the book. There was power there, she knew, and there were spells she’d utilised and spells that she’d not yet had the chance to deploy but which she understood, but there was nothing in there that equated to that level of power, nothing that justified that much of a glow.

Which meant there was something she was missing, she knew. Snorting in disgust she sipped at the too hot coffee and leant back, opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling without really seeing the slightly faded paintwork. She needed sleep, needed to hit this better rested, and if nothing else at least she had a plan for that. Packing everything away in her backpack, she slipped out the back of the hotel and headed up the road, checking the phone periodically until she narrowed in on the art supply store. A few simple purchases and she was back in the room before the coffee was cooled, setting up on the desk. The morning was spent practicing, and after a hurried lunch and an enforced nap she closed the curtains, called up a playlist of nature sounds, and sat down to work.

The inkwork was delicate and detailed, the requirements exacting, and she had to dispose of two of the narrow canvas strips before she had four complete. Eight, she knew, would be better, but she could rest tonight and regain the energy to produce another four tomorrow ... Behind her eyes waves of pain surged at her as she squeezed the last drops of energy that she had for the day into the work, feeling the enchantment settle into the scrolls. Her back cracked twice as she leant back, her neck once as she straightened, and her stomach threatened to rebel as she brought the coffee near her face, but it was cold anyway.

Pushing away from the desk she lifted the small pack of wax from her purchase and rested the stamp she’d carved earlier on the hotplate of the coffee maker before adding the deep purple seals to the four ofuda. She could let them dry, seal them with the spray varnish after dinner, and hang them around the bed to protect her overnight. She was as drained as she’d been the previous days, perhaps a little more, but the power in these wouldn’t be lost, she’d be able to put them back up tomorrow, and the day after, and on until something punctured the boundary they erected.

Smiling to herself she nestled down on the bed, and awoke with a start to find the sun high in the sky and warming the end of the bed where her bare feet lay. She stretched, more rested than she had been for months, and smiled up at the four hanging canvas strips, and only paused to put the kettle on before she nestled herself back at the narrow desk to start on the next set.

Three days passed quickly as she built up her strength again and crafted more of the expanding circle of protective wards until she felt that adding more wouldn’t bring about any more benefit. She awoke on that third morning knowing that it was time to move, she was as rested as she was going to get.

She packed away resolutely, wrapping anything and everything in clothing as she stuffed it into the pack, determined that nothing would rattle or knock to give her away. The final thing into the pack was her mother’s book, not just wrapped in its ziplock bag now, but wrapped in a crudely embroidered square of heavy canvas; her craftsmanship could use some work, but the weave very effectively muffled the obvious power emanating from the tome which still continued to frustrate her attemtps to fathom its depths.

With everything packed, she slipped from the room, settled her bill at the desk and slipped out into the cold. The snow that had been threatening still hadn’t made a show, which was to her benefit - it would be much harder to hide her trail in snow. She waited at the local bus station for a while before hopping on the service going her way, gnawing gently on the inside of her cheek as she worried that someone might recognise her as she got closer and closer to her old home.

Not that home was the right word, but ... well, it was home for all the good it had done. She stepped off at her chosen stop, immediately familiar with the surroundings. Trees lined the winding road, and as soon as the bus was around the first turn she perched on the road-side barrier, kicked her legs over the top and edged her way up the steep slope. Dipping a hand into the pocket of her waterproof coat she pulled out the thin, protective strips and clipped them on to the various buttons and clips of her coat and pack until she was comfortable that she was surrounded by the masking effect.

Then she set herself and began the real climb; despite the cold she was sweating heavily by the time she crested the ridge, looking down into the clearing where her father’s house lay. Taking a pair of binoculars from the side-pocket of her pack she checked the position of the low sun before lifting them to her face and taking a good look a the compound. Nothing appeared to have changed since she’d left; the outbuildings were still a mess, Nadal’s ‘stable’ littered with gnawed bones and filth. She spied a few anonymous guards, black suits and ties, machine pistols on straps about their necks, probably homonculi, nobody that she recognised.

She lowered the binoculars and lowered her hand to the ground, feeling out with her magical senses for the alarm lines she knew were in place about the valley, and moved between them to reach a better vantage point. Half way to her chosen spot she heard noise from below, and settled behind a tree to pull the binoculars out again. By the time she’d checked the sun to avoid reflections there were figures in the central yard, struggling to drag one of the deformed experiments from Marduk’s lab across the packed dirt.

“Get that damned thing under control!” The voice was familiar, although the irritation in it was unusual, and she quickly refocussed as she tried to ignore the way her heart was suddenly pounding. The shape was familiar, the voice was the same, but part of her didn’t want to believe that it could be him, she’d seen him die. Trying to force herself to calm she took a slightly shuddering breath and shifted her sight, looking not into the light but into the ether, viewing the souls around her.

Sure enough, as grey and twisted as most of the figures were, and as strangely red and angry the soul of the twisted abomination looked, it was the familiar, gnarled virulent green form that she recognised which convinced her.

Gilgamesh was alive, somehow.

Even as she recognised him, he turned, and she slipped back into the normal sight as he reached for a charm on the chain at his wrist.

“Elise!” he yelled, searching the treeline. “Elise!” She scurried from one of the outbuildings, clutching what looked like an inkbrush. “Seer, somewhere in the vicinity.”

“Caerys?” Elise asked, placing the brush aside and gathering herself.

“I don’t care. Find them.” Elise began muttering, something that didn’t carry up the hill, but Caerys began to feel the effects. The distorted tattoo on her chest started to warm, the flesh beneath it writhing, and her stomach started to churn.

She felt herself start to panic, tears coming at the thought she might be killed or, worse, recaptured. Her pack shook, and she realised that the book was vibrating, affected by whatever Elise’s magic was doing, but the ofuda strips were unaffected. Which meant it was targetting only white magic. She couldn’t stop being what she was, but she could mask it.

She reached down to the Earth again, and spoke her own spell, a harsh, gutteral spew that felt oily on her tongue and left her with a taste of copper and vomit. The plants around her withered, the needles of the tree she was hidden behind shrivelled and fell about her, but the queasiness settled and her tattoo and the book calmed.

The tears continued, though, as Caerys wrapped her head around the ease with which she’s reached for dark magic.

Belgorod Oblast, Russia, February 16th

Gabriel replaced the lid on his pen, settling back from the desk and steepling his fingers as he waited for the ink to dry and replayed the events to ensure he’d captured everything relevant in the battle-report. For all he’d wanted to start looking immediately, he had to clear up following his take-down of Absolom and his immediate entourage.

He and Charisma, through a combination of firewalls, physical sabotage of communications equipment and one well-placed bullet, had managed to keep the news of Absolom’s death from spreading beyond the compound, which gave him a small window to take those compounds down. The first had been a simple holding area in the dock at Singapore, and he’d managed to follow his initial plan precisely; work around the perimeter, one guard at a time, without alerting anyone, but the facility hadn’t been well guarded in favour of hiding from the authorities. Placing a call to the Port Authorities, who were not subtle in their approach, attracted the attention of the few remaining men. Three of them tried to man a barricade whilst the last, probably the man in charge, tried to escape through the portal. With their attention elsewhere it was easy to take them down.

He’d taken a while to study the portal before calling the authorities, and it was an instinctive action to break down the magic and close the doorway.

The other three locations had been more difficult, better manned and with better trained guards. He’d needed the range and the stopping power that guns provided, but that put stealth off the table and for one man against many stealth was his best tactic. That was a dilemma that no-one had been able to overcome, and although he’d managed to improvise a few instances with the teleport power he’d taken from Absolom, it wasn’t something he’d planned for. That would change, now, it was a useful tool in his arsenal, but it wasn’t the fix for all his problems.

Satisfied he’d accounted for everything he folded the book closed and stared out into evening sky, fixed on the white stone tower that dominated the horizon. He was still learning how the portal power worked, and although he thought it should be possible to create a portal anywhere - it was unlikely that Absolom had stumbled upon somewhere that had so many conveniently located sweet-spots - it definitely felt like there were some places that were easier than others.

Some places he felt he could just reach out and open a door to immediately - his first posting at Bickleigh, the Stirling Lines SRR base, his father’s house at Portsmouth - but others he had impression of direction. The strange, unreal place that he’d visited to find Giselle was one of the latter, and by careful triangulation had narrowed the focus down to here, Prokhorovka. The name was vaguely familiar, site of one of the major tank battles of the Second World War, but he had no idea what made this place especially significant.

On arrival he’d toured the town, taking in the magnificent spectacle of the gleaming white cathedral, the equally gleaming war memorial in a similar style, though neither of them had resonated quite rightly. He’d worked his way out from the town, not intending the theme but finding war memorial after war memorial until, stood amidst a field of decommissioned tanks and bronze busts on pedestals he found something in the shadow of another of the gleaming white stone towers. The bell in the tower sounded twice during his short visit, as he scoped out the territory, and decided where he was going to try.

Back again, though, in the cover of darkness, he nestled on the parapet roof boundary of a nearby building and eyed the throng mingling amidst the memorial elements. Stretched limbs, slightly hunched, and distorted,, elongated heads, he recognised the mutated figures of his father’s experiments, and settled in to try to determine why they were there. It seemed too much of a coincidence that they turned up as he did.

His preparation hadn’t been as extensive as it usually was, but he’d not had any reason to expect to find a complication like this. He’d left the guns behind, not seeing a need for them; Light and Dark were with him, the longer weapon inside a mocked up telescope, but he’d brought them because he was unwilling to leave them where they could be lost, not because he’d expected to need them.

The decision should be easy. He had every reason to think that Giselle was in no immediate danger, she’d not appeared harried on his last visit and she’d been in that strange place for years. He had no idea why these things were here, no idea of their capacity, their numbers, if they had support or leadership ... The sensible thing was to pull back, observe, learn, and formulate a plan of action.

And yet he was reluctant, so close to getting back, so ... desperate. It was an unfamiliar feeling; he realised his foot was jiggling with his impatience, and that more than anything convinced him he wasn’t thinking straight. He hoisted his pack again, slipped it over his shoulder, and slipped around the corner of the roof, keeping below the crest.

“There!” He was dropping low before he registered the voice, a deep, sonorous voice that was vaguely familiar. He lifted his head a fraction above the roof edge, sighted the adjacent roof and popped across the gap, retaining the low crouch as he turned back to the street trying to locate where the voice had come from.

A pack of the twisted figures gathered in the street and Gabriel had a bettern chance to examine them; the stretched heads and distorted physique were at once familiar and yet different. The figures from his father’s project had been overmuscled, hunched and hulking, but these were leaner, longer limbed, the stretched skulls a different profile. The same technology, the same process but refined, perhaps.

He was confident he’d been quiet, but two of the figures turned to stare up, their eyes reflecting yellow from some light source, and one of them pointed. Who it was had shouted he couldn’t make out, but he didn’t have time to try and locate them as three of the figures leapt- up towards him. None of them reached the parapet, though it was closer than he would have expected, but the impact on the wall was accompanied by the scrape of metal on brick, and no sound of anything falling back to the floor.

He backed up a few paces, cracking open the fake tube of the telescope and pulling Light out into the open just in time to parry a lunging sword that lanced over the lip of the roof. Either side of the sword two figures eased lithely into view and he backed up a pace again, gauging their speed and movement. They moved in tandem, their timing aligned but without any obvious plan, and when the strikes came they were clumsy, apparently unfamiliar with the weapons they wielded, odd looking swords with inward curving blades. He parried easily, not risking a counter-strike as he assured himself it wasn’t a clever piece of deception, but when they mindlessly waded forward swinging he leaned inside lashing out twice to remove a leg and an arm and then leapt over them to pummel the hilt of the spear into the head of the third as he heard more making their way up the wall.

Voices inside the building yelled in Russian, and he followed up the stunning strike with a low sweep that cut the feet from the first figure that had stabbed at him. He popped again, back to the roof he’d left and then immediately popped again to a new location. The magic was tiring, especially as he still wasn’t that familiar with it, so as much as he wanted to put some distance between himself and following crowd he settled to a more normal mode of movement, slipping along the roof edge.

It was quickly apparent that, as quiet as he was, they were tracking him - not gaining, but he was running out of building to scurry along, and their numbers would start to tell in the open space beyond the end of the road. His options were decreasing rapidly, but then across the perimeter of the memorial he heard a siren sound once and someone call out in Russian. The pack below didn’t change their path, but other clusters turned towards the newcomer, and the middle ground around the memorial itself cleared.

As much as he wanted a well-planned mission, sometimes events overtook you and it was necessary to improvise. Leaping off the edge of the roof with a yell he caught the attention of the pack below who surged forward, but as he pulsed sound into the floor ahead of his descent to kick up dust he popped into the gap between two of the tanks behind them and left them slashing at the empty space as he broke for the memorial.