Chapter 3

It wasn't easy to find a place where I could watch all three dealers at more or less the same time, but I managed it, after informing my client that none of my three prime suspects seemed to be ripe for pinning the crime on to just yet. This was going to take some long term surveillance I suspected before one of my suspects made a telling mistake.

I had nearly given up for this show when something slightly irregular finally occurred.

Over at Adrian's booth, one of his assistants who appeared to be of more than part Indian blood entered his booth and went into a brief consultation with him. Adrian then nodded and sat down in a chair for the first time and closed his eyes, deep in concentration. His knuckles appearing to turn white with tension as I scooted on over to take a discrete but much closer look.

I hadn't really considered the option before of a duo of thieves working in tandem and suddenly now everything all fit into place. I ran to find Walton and give him the good news; his problem was all but solved. The trick was going to be dealing with a skilled team of both a Wizard and an Adept level partner.

Walton pulled his other two Adepts from door security and the four of us, along with the boss of the off-duty APD officers, sat down for a quick pow-pow so that I could explain how the magic disappearing act was done, and discuss plans for capturing the thieves, without anyone getting hurt in the process.

I called BMA first thing with an urgent request for back-up help apprehending a skilled Renegade Wizard with an Adept partner, and gave the on-duty clerk all of the details that we had. Sunday evening is the worst possible time to get anyone at BMA, especially anyone with any actual authority, let alone quickly. The gal answering the phone thought that the team 'on call' might be along in an hour or two. Upon further questioning she admitted in fact that they hadn't responded yet to an earlier call that she had routed them to several hours ago.

Wonderful. My ass was once again hanging out in the wind, but at least this time I had followed procedure. Besides, I was more than curious about how my new Artifact would hold up against serious trouble. Now it looked like I was about to find out.

"The scam was absurdly simple!" I told my client and our security posse while we were waiting for the last customers to leave and the dealers to start packing up at the end of the show.

"They worked as a well trained team. The Adept assistant pretended to be a customer and selected the items to be stolen. He would place a light magical mark on each item, maybe four or five items at a time from the same dealer table and then return to inform his master the Wizard, who could sense these familiar marks easily and who would then perform the Translocation to send the weapons safely elsewhere."

But where we wondered. Ok, it was a given that the Wizard was a very powerful one, but this is a very tricky skill that gets progressively harder at distance. The hidden weapons stash must be nearby. My guess was that the stolen items would be found inside of his small box truck, parked near the loading dock. The Austin PD guys concurred and phoned in to get an emergency search warrant.

Unfortunately the warrant wasn't expected to arrive for at least an hour, but fortune was on our side — the two front tires of Adrian's truck suddenly sprung large air leaks courtesy of a stout combat knife in the hands of one of Walton's many unknown friends and admirers.

Now we settled down to wait for either BMA backup or the police warrant. Both were extremely late in arriving long after the dust had finally settled.

The gun show closed its main doors and one by one all of the other dealers packed up and left, leaving Adrian, his Adept, and two surly looking gunsels, along with our security team left all eyeing each other maliciously.

Adrian knew immediately that the gig was up, but played it cool. He suspected that we were held up waiting for something and he did his best to get at least one of the spare tires replaced so that he could attempt to limp away on just one flat tire. He tried rolling on two front flats first but the truck was virtually immoveable that way. Unfortunately for him, the air was also let out of his only spare tire. As for the chances of finding an open garage on a Sunday night in downtown Austin ... forget about it!

His options now extremely limited and his escape route closed, Adrian put the final frosting on my suspicion that he was a Deseret Wizard when he went scorched earth. He sent his two gunsels out armed to the teeth with automatic weapons to keep our security forces busy. Then he and his Adept decided to hightail it out of there, but not before he pointed a finger at his doomed truck and bellowed a command of power, causing it to explode up into the air to about the height of the roof of the convention centre. It was pretty impressive actually.

The APD boys didn't need any warrants by this point and the firefight started in earnest.

We all charged up to bottle up the Deseret thieves and started a major conflagration of our own. My two weakly magical partners tried to deal with the Adept while I faced down the Wizard. It was unfortunately a very even fight. The Deseret magicians were battle tested and trained for combat since they could walk, and were very experienced and confident using the arts of magic in war. Us more civilized Adepts, on the other hand, hadn't received much training in that sort of thing and we found ourselves on the defensive fast.

The conventional gun battle was less drawn out. Walton's crew, his own security staff and the APD boys were all expert gunmen, especially the guy in the back with the deer hunting rifle. The pair of gunsels went down in bloody heaps fast, despite the fact that their coats were ballistically resistant, like my own duster coat. The deer hunter was dead accurate at making head shots at a distance of one hundred yards.

This freed up the reserves to put the Renegade Wizards onto the defensive, but before the Wizard put up his protective energy shield to stop the rain of incoming lead, he unloaded a monstrous bolt of raw energy drawn from the Ley lines just across the river, that would have absolutely vaporized me if I hadn't thrown up a sudden protective shield of my own, augmented by my bracer. My Artifact had already saved my life on its first use. A week ago I could never have been able to summon up a shield even half powerful enough to have protected me.

Still, this force was enough to blast me backwards fifty yards up in the air and two hundreds away until I landed with a splash in the middle of the Colorado River in Town Lake. Damn that water is cold, even in the late spring!

This complete pissed me off now! I shook my head clear of floating stars and singing tweetie birds and started to swim for shore, but stopped to try a little experiment. I'd never had any previous skill at Levitation, but then again I'd never been able to channel that much magical energy before. With the El Marvelo at its pair of Ley lines just about in spitting distance, I decided to give it a try. With a little effort I floated right out of the water and soared right back into the battle far faster than I could have swum to the river bank and then run.

The battle was still pretty much a draw. My Adept partners had kept the Deseret Adept occupied until his energy shield eventually weakened. Our friendly deer hunter with the sniper scope then took care of the problem permanently. Everyone else was keeping the rogue Wizard pinned down with bullet fire so that he couldn't open up his shield long enough to either clean their clocks or else make an escape. Now it was too late.

I was back into the fight and just in the mood to open up a can of some serious whoop-ass!

Since what's good for the goose must also be good for the gander, I decided to test out exactly how much unnecessary and excessive power I could now channel into a force bolt at one time. The short answer was 'a lot'. The more precise answer was 'too much'.

I blasted the fucker straight through one of the concrete side walls of the convention centre, marched right into the wreckage after him and blasted him though another concrete wall. His shield failed sometime right after my third blast and shortly before he crashed into a steel roof support beam, which pretty much crushed his spine into splinters.

He didn't die right away, but he was in no shape to hold a conversation.

The battle was over and after counting noses we were relieved that everyone was more or less ok and still in one piece. I was very much the hero of the day despite the fact that deer hunter 'Bob' had the bigger head count. I got my fee, a large cash bonus and a bit later on a gift of a really sweet handgun from Walton. I'd had worse days.