VoodooMoon (2 page)

I used the dagger that rested on my hip to cut two lengths. First, I tied the mages feet and hands. Then, I tied two of the crystals to the bindings and looped the third around his neck. Each crystal was charged with a powerful binding spell. The ropes would keep him from running, and the magic in the crystals would keep him from working magic.

With him secured I moved on to the other two. The first thug was awake and just starting to struggle against his magical bindings. Now that I had more visibility, I could see that he, too, was barely more than a boy. I had no way of knowing if he was a Shifter or not. He hadn’t shifted, but the magical bonds I had wrapped around him would have prevented the change. He glared at me as I tied him up.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“Well, Mr. Fuck You, you are bound by law under my authority as an Agent of the Black Blade Guard under the jurisdiction of the Paranorm Council of Elders.” I almost felt sorry for him as the blood drained from his face. He was smart enough to realize the trouble he was in.

It was apparent they had thought I was nothing more than a random traveler with a few fighting skills. He’d likely figured he could escape or bribe me into letting him go. Even if I were a Guard from Nash or one of the small villages in the area, sent out to hunt down the highwaymen that had been plaguing the travelers on the road for the past three months, the most they would face was a few months in prison or on a work crew. But the fact that I was a Blade changed their fate considerably. They would be taken into Nash City, but they would not be handed over to the City Guard there.

The Blades fell under the jurisdiction of the Paranorm Council of Elders. The Council and the Blades took a much grimmer view on paranorm crime. They would be tried by a tribunal of Blade judges and, if found guilty, they could face years of hard labor on a work crew, or execution. Because they attacked a Blade, there could be no doubt of them being found guilty. What he didn’t know was that I had been sent out on a mission to find and capture them. This meant they had become enough of a nuisance to draw the attention of the Blades, and reduced the likelihood of a light sentence. I almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

“Rance.” His voice shook. “My name is Rance. Please, we didn’t hurt anyone. Don’t kill us!”

I bit back a smile. A scared kid. “Well, it’s not my call. You guys stole a lot of merchandise. That can’t go unpunished.”

“We only stole from merchants. They are rich enough to replace their stuff!” His tone was defiant.

“Really? Did you know that many of the merchants that use this road come from deep in the mountains? That they work for months to dry the meat and create the handcrafts they bring in to market? Did you know that the money and food they get in return will have to feed their clans for months until they can make the next trip to the market?”

“Umm. No. But..um. We only stole enough to sell to feed ourselves.”

He was near tears, now. Though I was feeling sorry for him, I didn’t let it show in my voice or demeanor. There was more to this story, and I wouldn’t be able to help them if he didn’t tell me. The only way to keep his tongue loose was to keep him scared.

“Is that so? According to reports you’ve stolen enough to feed you three scrawny boys for several months.”

His face went white and the reality of the situation dawned on me.

“How many of you are there?”

The defiance was back in his face, if not in his voice as he visibly struggled to be believable, “There is just the three of us. Do with us what you will, Blade.”

I couldn’t help the pang of sympathy that slammed through me. I knew what it was like to be young and have people who depended on you for food and comfort. I could see it in his eyes.

“Look, Rance, I can’t make you many promises, but I can make this one. If you tell me the truth, I will make sure that whoever it is you are protecting is safe. I give you my word as a Blade. Think about it this way…who is going to take care of them if the three of you just disappear?”

His expression was stony.

“Okay, don’t tell me right now. I’ll let you talk it over with your buddies once I get you back to Nash City.”

Leaving him to ponder on the deep shit he was in, I moved on to Thug Two, and groaned. He had changed back into human form and was now lying naked in the mud. I grabbed the mage’s cloak and wrapped the naked boy in it before binding his arms and legs. He had shaggy beard and looked to be a couple of years older than the other two, but was still a kid.

Once they were all tied, I used my magic to float them to the middle of the road, side by side. I didn’t dare remove the strands of energy that encased them. The mage was pretty well neutralized, but the ropes were not close to strong enough to hold a fully shifted Werebeast of any kind. The thin strands of energy were the only thing keeping them from shifting. Now I had to figure out how to get them back to the city.

“Mal, watch them. Stomp on them if they move.” The eyes of the conscious boy went wide as the horse snorted as if in agreement.

“He won’t really stomp us, will he?” He stammered.

“We’ll never know unless you try to escape. If I were you, I wouldn’t test him. He’s in a bad mood over having to be out in the rain tonight.” We had that in common.

Leaving Mal to watch over the three boys, I headed into the woods. There had been a time when this area had been a highly populated suburb of the metropolis of Nashville. But that had been over two hundred years ago, when the city had spanned over 500 square miles and boasted almost a million inhabitants just within the city limits. Now most of the buildings and homes were gone and the woods had overtaken everything. The nearest village was more than ten miles away. That meant the gang had to have a hideout or transportation nearby. Though they were young and stupid, I doubted they were attacking people close to where they lived, especially if they were providing for children younger than themselves, as I suspected.

Horses were expensive and most petty thieves couldn’t afford them. But this gang had been preying on merchants for months. Reports said they had stolen dozens of horses, mules and oxen. It was likely they had sold most of their ill gotten gains, but odds were they’d kept some of the animals to get around.

I tromped through the overgrown brush, my senses open to detect if there were anymore of the gang hiding somewhere. The reports consistently indicated there only being three of them, but I couldn’t be two careful.

About a mile from the road, I felt the presence of three more beings. I knew immediately they weren’t human. I’d found the gang’s horses. The underbrush was too thick to ride through, so I had to lead their horses back to the road on foot. By the time I got back, it had started to rain again.

“Well,” I thought. “At least the rain will wash away some of this mud.”

As quickly as I could, I loaded the now awake gang onto the horses, tossing them over the saddles like sacks of grain. I tied their reigns together and then attached a longer lead rope. I climbed onto Mal’s back. Leaning down, I rubbed his neck.

“Come on, Big Bad, let’s go get some of those crunchy oats.”

He was off like a shot. This time I used magic to keep the rain off of me and Mal, and to light the way. I didn’t bother covering the gang.

A little over two hundred years ago in the year of technology called 2012, the North and South poles shifted. Though the shift wasn’t exactly 90 degrees, it was close enough for East to become North, North became West, and so on. The shift caused a climatic cataclysm that pounded the world with storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters for more than forty years.

Damn Mayans.

Whole cities were destroyed and governments crumbled. Famine ran rampant. Widespread panic caused wars which killed even more than the natural disasters and starvation. When the smoke and weather finally cleared, the world had changed drastically. What had once been the Eastern United States was now a peninsula called Appalachia made up of a range of mountains in the west and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the North and East as well as the newly formed Mississippi Sea in the south. Only two major cities, what had once been Nashville and Atlanta, remained partially standing. From those ruins rose the autonomous city-states of Nash and Atlanta. For more than fifty years after the start of the Cataclysm, every city, town, and community was at war with each other and internally. Finally, the Paranorm Council of Elders stepped in to bring peace and unity. While the two city states were completely autonomous in rule, they were allied under the Council of Elders along with three other city states; Okie City and Sanlou to the south, and New Winnipeg in the west. Many areas in the south and west had resisted the Council. Some set up legitimate governments of their own, but many others were ruled by warlords and tyrants.

The city-state of Nash claimed jurisdiction over several small fishing and farming villages in the neighboring countryside, but the main part of it was built around the heart of the original city and separated into two main parts; Nash City and New Nashville.

The walls of Nash City rose up out of the ground like a lumpy, gray fortress. Sentries marched along the top. The path and most of the materials for the walls of Nash City had once been a vast highway that looped around downtown Nashville. But when the Cataclysm began mages and other paranorms used it as the building blocks of a wall to protect the people who huddled within.

The road up to the North Gate was crowded with travelers and merchants waiting to get inside the city. I scanned the crowd discreetly as I moved through.

There were a few travelers as well that carried only themselves and a pack. Some had horses or donkeys, and some were on foot. Some of them would seek a job and housing in Nash, but most of them would stay a night or two and then move on. Those who chose traveling as a way of life usually formed gypsy caravans because it was safer to travel in a group.

Most bands of gypsies were harmless and could provide market wares from far to the North. But there was one group that I always kept an eye out for. They hadn’t ventured back into Nash City in more than fifteen years, but I always watched for them. I wasn’t a child anymore and I now had the power of the Blades behind me. If I ever laid eyes on any of them again, I would make them pay for what they had done to my sister.

None of the travelers I saw looked like they were together. Satisfied, I wove Mal and the gang’s horses past wagons and carts loaded with baskets of assorted fruits and vegetables, bolts of cloth, wood and clay dishes, and other assorted goods. I smiled and nodded to the merchants as I passed. I recognized most of them as inhabitants of nearby villages who came to the market several times a week. Others, the ones that were much more roughly garbed and looked a bit unkempt, I knew were from much further away. They only ventured from their mountain dens every couple of months to bring their wares to the city to sell.

I reached the gate and approached the guard tower where the gate guard sat in a tiny room. Behind him, a large window opening allowed him to be on eye level with anyone requesting entrance to the gate.

"Fiona Moon of the Black Blade Guard requesting entrance," I called to the gate guard raising my arm to show the black and red fleur-de-lis over crossing swords tattoo on my right wrist.

“The gates open in one hour.” The guard called back.

“You will open them to me now.” I raised my voice slightly.

“I can’t. The crowd is too thick. If I open, they will all rush in. I have strict orders from my captain to let no one in before the dawn bell rings.” His voice was young and nervous and I could see the distress on his face.

“Okay. Apparently you’re new,” I said, trying not to get too pissed off. “I’m going to repeat myself one time, and one time only. I am Fiona Moon of the Black Blade Guard and you will open these gates, now.”

I nudged Mal several paces closer to the guard’s tower and held my arm up again, this time muttering a spell to illuminate it in the pre-dawn haze just to make sure he saw it.

“I have three fugitives that I need to take into Blade Headquarters,” I continued, my calm tone edged with steel. “Because you are new, I will explain this to you. This tattoo identifies me as a Blade. As a Blade, I have a higher authority than your captain and every other officer in the City-Guard, for that matter. Protocol dictates that you immediately let me enter, no matter the time of day or night.”

A hoot of laughter echoed through the air and I looked up to see a mage-guard on top of the tower I recognized as Carter. He had been the gate guard for many years. He must have gotten promoted when this newbie took his place. Only the best mage-guards were assigned to the towers. He wasn’t even trying to hide his laughter.

“Burke,” he called down between guffaws. “If you don’t let her in you will have much bigger problems than the captain!”

“Um…okay. Sorry. You can pass.” Burke said nervously. I could tell he was horrified at his mistake. In a much stronger authoritative voice he called out, “Everyone stand back. Only the Blade has permission to enter the city. Anyone attempting to pass will be arrested.”

Clearing his voice, he called out to the guards behind the wall. “Open the gates a quarter.”

There was a loud creak and groan as the intricate pulley system worked to slide the heavy gates. The groaning stopped when the opening was wide enough for a horse to fit through. I led the horses through the narrow opening without another word to the guard. Once we were through, the gates creaked and moaned again as they closed with a thud.

I called an absent “Thanks” to the guardsmen on either side of the gate pulling the heavy ropes, but I didn’t feel the need to thank the gatekeeper. As I rode away, I heard the laughing tower guard let out a hoot and call down to the gatekeeper.

“Wow! Of all the Blades to piss off on your first day on duty, you had to pick Moon! You are lucky she wasn’t in a bad mood.”

“She didn’t seem so tough!” The gatekeeper called back, either thinking I was out of earshot or not caring.

“Stop a minute, Mal. I need to teach someone a lesson,” I whispered so that only he could hear. He pulled to a stop and turned slightly so I could clearly see the guard tower.

I pulled my hanbo from its sheath across my back and pointed it towards the tower. Concentrating, I pulled in power then shot it out the end of the hanbo in a visible line of white light. The energy shot straight through the bars on the gatekeeper’s room and hitting the stone wall barely three inches above Burke’s head. The gatekeeper stared opened mouthed as I moved the line of energy in a pattern. When the energy bolt dissipated, there was a Blades symbol identical to her tattoo permanently etched into the stone.

I held back the laughter that threatened to bubble up as the look on his face went from shock to fear.

“There, now. The next time you see that mark, you will know to let the person in. Have a good day.” I called back, loud enough for Burke, Carter and all of the guards in the vicinity to hear.

Mal snorted, clearly amused, as we resumed down the road. Behind us, I heard peals of laughter erupt from several of the guards. Poor Burke wouldn’t hear the end of it for a while. I almost felt sorry for him. But I had a reputation to uphold and if I’d let his ignorance and rudeness go unpunished, I would have been opening myself up to ridicule from the whole City Guard.

One didn’t become a member of the elite Black Blade Guard by being kindly or easy. Blades were the toughest, most powerful paranorms in the world. A Blade had to be willing to back that reputation up with action. That went double for women. Though there were many female City Guards, there were few female Blades, and even fewer of those were non-vampires. Having super strength and speed commanded a certain amount of respect, but I had to gain and keep respect by the demonstration of my power and ability to use it. And I had done just that. Since joining the City Guard when I’d turned fourteen and being appointed to the Blade before I even completed academy training, I’d worked hard to obtain and maintain my reputation as the toughest mage in the Blades. The same reputation my mother had before me.

****

The lower part of the Black Blade Guard Headquarters building held stables and a temporary prisoner holding area. Nine floors beneath the main building where made of concrete and steel and had been built to house the huge metal, gas burning cars people had once used to get around. Now the top two levels were used to stable the horses and mules owned by Blades or, like the three I’d hauled the gang in on, had been confiscated from criminals. Those animals would be temporarily stabled here, and then taken to the public city stables to be sold.

I paused at the stables, handing off Mal and the other horses to a stable-hand to be brushed and fed the promised oats. Luckily, all three teenagers were awake so I didn’t have to float any of them along on a current of magic. I untied their feet and used the rope as a lead. I wasn’t surprised they followed along meekly. Fear was a palpable cloud hanging around them.

I led them down a flight of stairs to the processing area of the temporary prisoner holding facility. While the upper level of the stable areas had wide open spaces between the walls that was covered only with wire mesh, the lower levels were completely underground making them perfect for holding the dangerous paranormal criminals the Blades apprehended.

The criminals were held here until a tribunal was convened to decide their fate. Then they were either executed or transported to one of the prison compounds outside the city in the Outer Zone to work off their sentence.

I looked back at the squirming boys shuffling along behind me. As strong and powerful as they were, I doubted they would survive long at a prison compound. The Blade’s established the work compounds as a way to contain paranormal criminals while making them contribute to the welfare of society. Each compound had a specialty: farming, manufacturing, or mining. The inmates worked to produce food or goods that were made available to the city-state district the compound was located in. The conditions were barely livable; the guards were cruel and the prisoners more so.

While there were other work farms established by the City-State’s Senate ran City Guards, the criminals housed there were norms or non-violent, low-level mages. The prisoners at the Blade Compounds weren’t the worst paranormal criminals society had to offer. The worst offenders were executed with little delay, but they were only about one step down. You only went to a Blade farm once. If you offended again and were caught, you were executed.

While they had robbed dozens of travelers and merchants over the past few months and made quite a nuisance of themselves, these were not hardened criminals. They had only caught the attention of the Senate when the wealthy merchant cousin of one of the Senators was robbed. Normally, the City Guard would have taken care of such a minor offense, but the Senator had thrown such a fit that the Black Blade liaison to the Senate had agreed to send one of the best Blades out to investigate.

Thus, I had mucked through the mud and rain for hours tonight. As annoyed as I was I couldn’t see condemning these kids to death, and I was sure that a Council work farm would be as sure of a death sentence as execution.

Once I got them to the processing area, I split them up and interrogated each of them separately. The Werepoodle was Ralph and the mage was Simon, and they gave the same story as Rance. They had also clammed up and become defiant when the subject of others in their gang came up. The fear energy they gave off ramped up a few notches at the same time.

That, in itself, wasn’t uncommon. A lot of the gangs roaming the Outer Zones kept their members in line using fear and control. Ratting out your gang was a death sentence. That wasn’t the vibe I got off these kids, however. It was fear, but more like a concern for, not fear of.

I can’t explain why I was sure of that. It was one of the more peculiar manifestations of my power. I’m not an empath; I don’t feel the emotions of others. When I concentrate I can see the energy patterns that radiate from them, almost like an aura. While I’d met only a few mages with ability to channel energy into offensive bursts I’d never met another that could “read” the type of energy people gave off. But then, I hadn’t asked either. Even in this day and age where magic was a scientifically proven fact and a part of daily life, having an unusual power could be dangerous.

It took me almost two hours to get the three of them questioned, processed and into holding cells. Once they were settled in I headed upstairs into Blade Headquarters. Though I sorely wanted a long, hot soak at a bathhouse and a clean change of clothes, I needed to report the success of my mission to my boss, Sam. I also needed to talk to him about the fate of the three boys I’d hauled in.

The building had been built in the height of the Tech Age and was thirty-three stories high, in addition to the nine underground levels. The building housed the headquarters of the entirety of the Black Blade Guard for the region. There was a headquarters in each of the Paranorm Council allied city-states. While a few Blades from other regions visited Nash occasionally, I had never been to the headquarters for any other region.

The headquarters’ offices were on the top five floors. The levels between held rooms and apartments for Blade operatives to use when they had to visit headquarters as a home base when not on assignment. Some, like me, chose to live in their family homes within the city, but many did not live within the City-State or did not have permanent homes elsewhere. The building also housed a healing clinic, a bathhouse, combat training facilities and barracks for Blade Cadets.

I used the stairs to get back up to the ground level then crossed to the main stairwell to go up to the main entrance of the building. From there I crossed over to the crystal powered lifts. The main staircases were used primarily by cadets who lived on the first few floors and did not have clearance to access other portions of the building and vampires that didn’t get winded just by the prospect of trudging up thirty flights of stairs.

I pushed up the barred gate that served as a door to the lift. Once inside I pulled down the gate and flipped open the smallest pouch on my leather belt and pulled out a small piece of intricately cut crystal.

On the wall there was a series of numbers and beside each a hole. I pressed my crystal into the hole next to the number 30. The etchings on the crystal and the special spell charged into the crystal by Blade Chargers worked together to activate the clockwork gears that pulled the lift car up and down via thick ropes and pulleys. A series of clicks then a loud grinding filled the small chamber before the lift lurched and began to slowly rise. After a few moments the lift rumbled to a shuddering stop and I stepped out.

“Moon! Get in here!” Sam Harrison’s voice rumbled through the scry-crystal mounted on the wall next to lift.

I hated when he did that.

Muttering under my breath I made my way down the hall. Though the glow had gone out of the scry-crystal meaning it was no longer activated I knew that even over the clicks from typewriters and ongoing conversations in many of the offices on the floor he’d be able to hear me.

My boss used his keen wereleopard senses to monitor the comings and goings on the floor. It was a good practice, I supposed, but it always felt weird, especially since there were two long hallways and ten offices full of people between the elevator and his office.

I opened the door to Sam’s office without knocking and walked in without an invitation. His office, though the biggest on the floor, seemed small with the massive wooden desk in the middle of it and the just as massive man sitting behind it. Sam appeared to be in his mid thirties, though since he’d looked the same since I was five I guessed he was older. A lot older. Shifters usually aged a little slower than norms and had a life span of around 150 years or so, but there was something different about Sam. I had once worked with a four hundred year old Vampire that had been trained as a Blade shortly after he’d been turned. Sam had been his trainer. Everyone knew he was different, but no one knew exactly how, and no one questioned it. Even in a world of magic, vampires and shifters, no one dared question a six-foot four inch two hundred pound man with super-human strength and the speed and senses of a leopard.

“You’ve really got to stop doing that! You’re never going to get a woman if you make us all feel like we reek.” I said as I plopped down into the wooden chair in front of his cluttered desk.

“You do reek. Did you take a mud bath?” he scrunched his lean, olive toned face in mock distaste.

“As a matter of fact, I did. Courtesy of the highwaymen on the West Trade Road.”

“Don’t tell me they got away.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know me better than that!”

Sam’s laugh was rich and deep. “I take that to mean they are safely in the prison hold awaiting tribunal.”

“Yes,” I shifted in the chair, leaning forward to rest my elbows on the edge of Sam’s desk. “They are in the hold, but I’m not sure a tribunal is the best thing in this case.”

A tribunal only had two possible outcomes, execution and Council work compound.

Sam let out an exasperated sigh and leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “Okay, what is it this time?”

“They are kids, Sam. And don’t sit there and look at me like I’m some sort of bleeding heart. You know every time I’ve ever had a gut feeling about something like this, I’ve been right.”

Sam sat up straight.

“I don’t think the feeling comes from your gut, but you usually are right. Tell me about these kids.”

Sam was one of the very few people that knew about my ability to read energy, but they rarely spoke about it out loud. One never knew when a paranorm with super hearing would be lurking nearby.

“Three boys, half brothers, all under 19. The two eldest are Shifters, the youngest is a mage. Sam, this kid has offensive energy magic, and he almost kicked my ass with it. ”

Sam pushed books and papers to the side to clear his desk a little and jotted notes down on the blotter.

“A lot of power, even a rare power, isn’t a reason to give mercy. Actually, it could be an argument for the opposite.”

I sighed.

“I know, I know. But I think that would be a mistake. This kid has mega potential. He forms and throws balls of energy for fuck’s sake! I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t get that much energy together without a wand to focus through and Cramer, that mage from Atlanta could only form weak lightning bolts. This kid has power and a modicum of control over it. With training he could be one hell of a Blade.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “But why do you think he would work for us? He’s been robbing merchants for months. You think he’s going to give up his gang? They rarely do.”

I detailed the reactions I got from each of the boys during interrogation and my ideas about what they may be hiding.

Sam stopped making notes.

“So, you think they are protecting younger siblings?”

“Yeah, that or younger or weaker orphans. Families don’t always share blood.”

Realization slowly spread across Sam’s handsome features.

“I suppose you would know that better than anyone.” He paused as if trying to decide whether or not to give in right away or make me work for it a little. “Okay, what do you propose I do?”

I smiled, knowing I had gotten my way.

“I don’t know exactly. I can tell you this, that mage needs to be at the Academy. He has amazing gifts that need to be developed and tamed.” I thought a moment. “I can also tell you he won’t do anything without his brothers. And not one of them will accept the Academy, even if the only other option is death, unless they are sure whoever it is they are protecting will be well taken care of.”

Sam let out a long suffering sigh.

“What kind of talent did the Shifters show?”

“Not terribly bright,” I laughed at the memory, “But pretty nimble. I caught them off guard with my defenseless female act, but I have a feeling if given half the chance they’d be fierce fighters.”

“You do realize there is a problem. Councilor Nesbit has been shrieking for the heads of the highwaymen that attacked his cousin. There is no way he would agree to leniency.”

I smiled sweetly.

“Of course he has. And he has every right to ask for the maximum punishment when or if those highwaymen are caught. However, I have to evidence these three, very young boys, could be those highwaymen. No loot has been confiscated and nothing was stolen from my person so as the arresting agent the only charges I can file against them are for attempted theft, resisting arrest and assault on a Blade As the Blade in question I am open to more productive forms of rehabilitation for these three misguided youngsters.”

I think everyone on the floor could hear the thud of Sam’s forehead hitting his palms. He sat there like that for a minute, his elbows on the desk, his face hidden in his hands. When he looked up his face was resigned.

“I suppose that is the testimony you will give before the tribunal if one is convened?”

I nodded solemnly.

“Absolutely.”

He let out a loud sigh and leaned back in his chair.

“Okay. I’ll take care of it. I’ll go down myself and talk to them. It shouldn’t be too hard to get dispensation to use entry into the Academy as an alternative to a tribunal and punishment. If this mage is as powerful as you say then it won’t be hard to show that he would be an asset. And we can always use even moderately powered Shifters.”

I grinned.

“Thanks Sam!”

“Don’t thank me yet. They have to actually agree to it. I just pray their “gang” isn’t a whole town full of thugs!”

I laughed at his exaggerated grimace.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not. And I have faith you can make them see the wisdom of making the right choice.” I got up and headed for the door. “Now, I’m off for a hot bath and bed.”

“Not so fast. I didn’t call you in for your report. I have an assignment for you.”

“Now?” I groaned and sagged against the door frame.

“Yes, now. Right now as a matter of a fact. I had been planning to scry you when I smelled you come onto the floor. I got a scry this morning from Sonny down at the city crematorium. It seems there is something wrong with a body that was brought in last night. He needs a necromancer down there. So, I need you to go as escort for the necromancer and officially witness whatever the problem is.”