Magi Saga 1: Epic Calling (31 page)

Angel

20,000 feet up.

June

Angel sat on the plush leather chair and saved the last file she’d just been working on to her laptops hard drive and sat back. She stretched her arms above her and let out a yawn, she felt a little tired from the manic rush this morning to finish her work before she boarded the plane to Europe, and that wouldn’t do, she needed to have her wits about her, so she closed her eyes and used her Magic to revitalise her energy and make her feel like she had just woken up after a good eight hours sleep.

Blinking her eyes open she felt refreshed and ready for the trials that lay ahead. She could feel her ears popping as the private jet began its descent. The plane belonged to a wealthy business tycoon, one that Angel happened to be in the middle of exploiting for her own ends.

Angel felt very comfortable in big business, she had been running the Nephalim Corporation for a long time now with her five Magi apprentices, and she loved every moment of it. A beauty industry behemoth, Nephalim did everything from Modelling and Makeup, to fashion and retail, it had become a true industry leader.

For the past few months Angel had been indulging in some industrial espionage and had infiltrated a powerful and rich international business group that she had then discovered to be merely the pawn of a hidden organisation called The Syndicate. This Syndicate had its base on a small uncharted Island and employed both Initiated humans, Scion’s and Magi. One man controlled the group, he want by the name of Mr Black and she’d never met him. He resided on a heavily modified 747 Jet that served as his hone and rarely if ever landed, preferring instead to refuel in mid-air, or so the stories went. The group had interests in Supernatural affairs and artefacts, so Angel had taken it upon herself to investigate them, soon finding herself on their staff on the Island as a Junior Magi member. She had no idea of the groups goals, she wasn’t trusted yet and they allowed her plenty of time off, which suited Angel just fine.

In addition to her business interests, Angel had a hobby of sorts; she had a fascination with ancient Magical artefacts, and her current visit to London, ostensibly a business trip for the Syndicate she’d been exploiting, would actually be more of a research trip, to follow up on some interesting leads about an artefact she had first come across in Egypt.

It had been a while since she had last had time away from this current endeavour, over a year in fact. She’d discovered the Egyptian dig after a tip off from a sympathetic informant from within Yasmin’s vast and sprawling Coven before she had visited the site and found the slaughtered remains of the archaeologists and the photo of the sand stone slab. The Artefact looked to be of magical significance, but the trail had gone dead for months after that, her Coven had failed to pick up anything related to the dig anywhere else in Nomad or Arcadian circles. It became clear they had been missing something. The plane juddered as it passed through a patch of turbulence. It started dropping fast now, and land became visible out the window.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a Powder puff clam case and flipped the top open, revealing the mirror inside which she checked herself in, running her fingers through her hair to make she everything looked just right.

Her feather light blonde hair framed her face with its perfect bone structure, those dark eyes and moist ruby lips. Her skin looked flawless, wholesome and healthy, it positively glowed. Angel had extensively modified and enhanced her whole body to what most would consider to be the height of beauty. She straightened her tight white blouse with its then fabric and its neck line open low enough to show off the cleft and swell of her cleavage. It in turn tucked into her dark business pencil skirt with its slit up one side that occasionally gave a glimpse of her stocking clad legs. Her heels finished off a look that sat squarely on the line between male fantasy and business woman, a look that had worked well for her for years, and had given her an advantage in this male dominated world.

Angel considered herself a seductress par excellence, there wasn’t a Mundane man or woman alive who she couldn’t bend to her will with a bare minimum of Magic, in the end, they all succumbed to her charms. Her prim and proper business outfit had been chosen carefully, designed to only further enhance her allure.

After another ten minutes, the jet made its final approach to Tempelhof International Airport in Berlin where the Learjet that would ferry her to London sat waiting.

After a smooth landing the plane taxied its way over to the waiting Learjet. Angel rose from her seat and readied herself to leave. Eventually the door opened and Angel stepped out from the cabin and out onto the stairs that led off the plane, the metal ringing out as she placed each heel on the next step down.

The air felt pleasant and the weather mild, fluffy white clouds dotted the sky in a sea of blue. All around her the sounds of a busy airport could be heard, jet engines whined and roared alternately as they landed, took off and moved about.

Several hundred meters away the sleek lines of the white Learjet 60 stood waiting for her to board. Angel extended the handle on her bag and set off across the tarmac, she then pulled out her Phone from her pocket, and placed a call.

It went though, answered on the second ring.

‘Angel. Thank you for calling.’ Angel recognised Michael’s voice, one of her apprentices.

‘I don’t have long, what is this latest development you mentioned in your message?’

‘Its regarding Vito, he has moved from Egypt.’

‘And where is Vito now?’

‘London.’

‘Really! And he’s still following up the same line of enquiry?’

‘That is correct.’

‘’Who’s watching him?’

‘Uziel and Cherub.’

‘Good, keep me informed, I will be in London for a few months, I have my own enquiries to make.’

‘Very good.’

Angel hung up and put the phone back in her pocket, she had just reached the stairs that led up into the Learjets cabin. She boarded the plane, picked out a seat and settled herself into it.

Placing her brief case on the table before her she opened it up, and after rifling through some pages she pulled out a worn looking photo from one of the cases pockets. On it was the image of a large slab of sandstone, thick and heavy looking and carved with intricate designs, she had pulled the photo from the tent at the dig site she had herself visited in Egypt about a year ago and had long since thought the trail had gone dead. That was until Michael had come to her with a message that a Vatican Magus called Vito had visited the site. Nephalim had been paying some locals to keep a watch on the site and report back on anything that happened. Nephalim paid handsomely those who did their job properly, and it was clearly working as this Vito was the first person to visit the site since it had been investigated by officials from Cairo.

Michael had since kept an eye on Vito and it seemed he was now heading to London after he had spent a couple of months in Cairo itself talking to the locals. Angel didn’t know exactly what he was looking for but she guessed it might have something to do with the Sand Stone slab that was in this photo, which was something Angel was keen to have a look at. The stories of what had been buried with Horlack were not well known, but Angel had heard of a few different versions of what the Artefact did. Some said it resurrected the dead, others said it summoned an Archon, but the most popular story said that the Artefact could turn any human into a Magi. Gift them with Magical understanding and ability.

If that were true, A Nomad like herself, or Yasmin who she knew had funded the dig on the site in Egypt, would be able to raise an army of Magi quickly and easily, giving the Nomads a huge boost to the ranks and allow them to fight the Arcadians more effectively. It could change the war dramatically.

As the Learjet took to the skies, she thought ahead to her plans while in London. She had a few things she wanted to do, including visiting her informant who had first told her about the dig in Egypt. She’d also been planning a trip to a little known shop in London that she had found a number of years ago. It was an occult book and Magic shop, but it was one of the rare ones.

Most Occult or Witchcraft stores held nothing of any real magical power, they were filled with things that were covered in Pentagrams and other pseudo magical symbols, trinkets that held no mysteries to the Magi of the world.

This one however, although it was still filled with a lot of rubbish; it did actually seem to have a knack for finding the odd thing of value. Often these places were either run by Magi or frequented by a Magi patron who liked the shop and so sold things to them of actual magical value. This in turn rubbed off on the owners who grew to know what to look for and so their stock of real Magical books and artefacts grew. She didn’t know if this one in London was run by a Magi or not, but it was always worth a visit. She hoped that she might find out some more information on the Artefact.

She looked back at the Picture she still had in her hand, and it reminded her of an odd feeling she had been getting recently. It only seemed to surface occasionally, and despite all her Magical scrying, she could find no mystical source for it.

It basically came down to a feeling of being watched. There seemed to be no pattern to it at all, just a feeling, an indefinable feeling in the back of her mind, that someone was keeping tabs on her.

Angel had been a Magi for a long time now and she knew enough not to brush off these feelings as coincidences or tricks of the mind. If she felt like she was being watched, she most likely was being watched, and if she couldn’t detect it Magically, either a skilled mortal without Magic had been following her, or a Magi more powerful than herself had been stirred up.

It had started after she had visited the tomb in Egypt, and had followed her about ever since, coming and going in no set pattern. Very few people knew, or could know about her visit to the dig site, and even less had a vested interest in it.

Over the past year that this had been taking place, she had come to just one conclusion about who might be looking in on her, it was a conclusion she really didn’t like, but it was a fairly easy one to reach. She just hoped she was wrong.

Angel moved her body rhythmically over the body of Xander, the young Magi who lay beneath her enjoying her attentions. They were in a luxury penthouse suit in an upmarket hotel in central London, the suit being one of only two on this floor. The place seemed huge for a hotel room, being more of an apartment consisting of several rooms including an expansive kitchen, dining room and huge living space. The evening sun on this early July evening filtered its way through the half open curtains, the room remained fairly well-lit but had started to drop into a golden twilight that bathed the room in its glow. The air conditioner kept the room at a cool temperature, but the sexual gymnastics of Angel and her partner had covered the pair in a thin layer of sweat as their bodies gave off heat from their passionate intercourse.

Angel had been paying visits to Xander for a number of months now since she had first seduced him in a bar in Soho. Xander, like Angel, was a Magus, but a much younger one of a much weaker rank then she. But he didn’t know that, he didn’t know much about her at all in fact, and the little he did know had been lies she had told him. About the only thing he did know about her of any veracity was her first name. But she’d come to learn quite a lot about him, in fact, she’d known plenty about him before they’d even met.

Xander had been a Magus for just a few years, he had been inducted into the ranks of the Nomads by his mentor Arron Quick, who counted himself as a member of the Dark Knights, Yasmin’s Nomad Coven.

Xander had come to Angel’s attention as he started to branch out and make his own plans and schemes away from him mentor. He’d become greedy, he wanted more, and so Angel had seen an opportunity.

It had been disturbingly easy to seduce him, just the promise of some kinky sex had been enough to get the ball rolling. After a few visits and a few nights of passionate love making of the kind he’d never experienced before, he’d been putty in her hands.

Of course, Angel had been interested in one thing and one thing only, information about Yasmin and her operation. What she was doing, what her plans were, and he’d come through in fine form. She’d had to join him on a few of his own minor money making or influence gathering schemes, all of them quite petty things by her own standards. Getting a big shot drug dealer to owe Xander his loyalty and such, nothing earth shattering. But it had all been about building that trust, and in time, Xander had spoken about his plans to break away from Yasmin’s Coven, to be a big fish on his own with Angel at his side.

When Xander had given her the information about the dig in Egypt that he’d had to organise, she felt both grateful and also slightly suspicious. Something about it didn’t feel right, that such a young apprentice would be given a task like that. Of course, it had come down from Xanders own mentor, and it wasn’t unheard of for mentors to give their apprentices the more boring tasks to do. But she just couldn’t shake the idea that something wasn’t right. It felt like a honey trap. But, she needed to know more about the dig, she needed to know what Yasmin had been up too. The information had been too juicy to pass up.

Since then, with the feeling that she might be being watched, she felt that maybe Xander had been compromised. Maybe Yasmin knew that he had been feeding someone information.