Chapter 3 #2
Lilith came prancing in and leapt onto the cot, sniffing her vest, tail flicking.
She batted at it a few times before sitting on the cot and slow-blinking at him.
“I don’t know what the plan is for the day, but I want to get to the dig site if I can.
The weather is going to be atrocious, so you’ll be staying here, okay? I’m just checking the gear.”
Even though he checked it before they left home—his anxiety wouldn’t let him do otherwise—he doubted himself, and worried about messing up.
It was anxiety, merely one of the numerous things his brain had going on.
He rarely gave a damn about other peoples’ opinions of him because he had trouble remembering that other people were even involved in what he was doing.
Out of sight, out of mind. Object impermanence was a pain in the ass, but helpful when it came to keeping outside opinions out of his head.
Lilith batted one dainty paw at his hand, claws in, snapping him out of his mental funk.
She was good at that, sensing when he needed to get out of his head.
He got a lot of flak from other practitioners when they saw his choice of familiar—usually a sorcerer didn’t need one, or they had a far more exotic animal than a designer cat that looked like a werewolf.
He’d seen parrots and eagles, owls, and even a few reptiles.
One lucky bastard in Boston had the only dragon in the world as his familiar.
Figured he was a necromancer, too. They tended to be dramatic.
Lilith was who he needed, though, and she needed him.
No one else would spoil her as well or take her on adventures.
She ate better than he did, and he was proud of that.
There was once a time he doubted he would be able to take care of himself, much less another living creature.
Yet he’d come a long way in the last several years since he left behind his childhood home and his former life.
The life he had now was beyond even his wildest dreams. Even if it was hard, stressful, and downright dangerous at times, he was living life on his terms.
Ezra sat on the cot beside Lilith and leaned down, yanking out his armored corset from the duffle.
It was a pretty thing; beauty was a quality he enjoyed.
He often went on assignments wearing it, especially if an artifact was active.
He made it himself, using a custom handmade corset with full torso coverage and lined with silk.
The red was his favorite color, a rich, deep crimson, with a design of elegant, fanned lines embroidered on the outside reminding him of peacock tails.
His arms were left bare, giving him a wider range of motion, and it clipped to his pants with a special leather belt.
It kept him as safe as possible when using a shield wasn’t the best option.
Sometimes cursed objects would react negatively to the addition of magical energy nearby on such a scale—a shield usually expended a great deal of energy and affected the ambient magic fields to varying degrees, and could set off booby-traps or cause a reaction in a cursed object.
“Redmayne, you awake?” Grendel called from outside the tent. Ezra jolted and set aside the corset before standing.
“Yeah, I’m up, come on in,” he replied.
Grendel ducked under the flap and entered the tent, her sharp eyes quickly assessing what little he’d done in the short time since arriving. She smiled a bit at the space he dedicated to Lilith and her comfort but said nothing. She was probably used to practitioners and their familiars.
“What’s up? Still early, I think?” Ezra squinted at the light coming in the flap of the tent, wishing he recalled where he’d put his phone.
He rarely used it on assignments and kept it in his bags.
There was only one person who would call to check on him and she wouldn’t bother with that unless this contract went longer than a few days.
“Everyone is getting some food in their bellies; come eat. We’ve got a briefing after breakfast.” She gestured over her shoulder. “Get some food before shit hits the fan.”
“Sure,” Ezra answered, and pet Lilith a few times. His familiar curled up on his pillow, and Ezra smiled at the cute sight before following Grendel out of the tent.
Ezra
Breakfast wasn’t much but he ate enough to keep himself going if he made it to the dig site. That was the plan, and Drs. Simmons and Myers were staring at him like he’d lost his mind. He was used to that from the people he met over the course of his career.
“You want to go to the dig site? Why in the world? It’s at the center of that unnatural storm!” Simmons burst out, aghast.
“I’m not asking you to come with me,” Ezra replied easily. “You can stay here if that’s what’s got you worried.”
“It’s incredibly dangerous,” Grendel said, drawing his attention.
“Getting to the site to rescue the three survivors took us an entire day going in, and getting them out was even worse. We got back on the third day. The storm increased in power and fury, and our staff practitioners had no idea what was happening, other than that it was clearly a hexed or cursed object.”
“It got worse as you were leaving?” Ezra said, frowning. “Typically, an event peaks right after a cursed object is activated. What happened during the rescue, like exactly?”
“Extraction team went in with eight of us,” Grendel said, leaning back on the table that was still a mess of maps, satellite images, and weather readouts.
She was tense, arms crossed defensively over her chest. “I lost a man coming out. We stopped for a bathroom break among the trees and a hailstorm hit. Hail the size of a softball came out of nowhere and broke his helmet and skull. He was dead before we even had a chance to throw up shields.”
“Why did you decide to call me in? I’m not complaining, mind, just wondering what the final catalyst was. Losing a man?”
“For me it would have been, but it wasn’t for my superiors, not until this happened.” Grendel twisted and grabbed a remote from the mess on the table, and she pressed a few buttons until the largest screen in the command tent flipped images.
It was the storm, an eagle’s-eye view from a passing military satellite.
The date beneath the image was the day of the event—the storm was maybe five miles across, the eye of which hovered almost directly on top of the dig site.
The eye was small—not like a hurricane out to sea where the center of the storm could be a hundred miles wide and calm—this was maybe a mile across and wisps of cloud spun out from the eye and into the larger storm body.
“Huh,” Ezra moved closer to the screen, taking the remote as he passed Grendel. She sighed, loudly, but said nothing about it. He winced, forgetting he was supposed to ask first. He thought it in his head but forgot to actually ask out loud. “Sorry.”
She waved him off, pointing at the screen. “Keep flipping through, stop when you get to two days ago.”
Realizing he had no idea how to work the remote, Ezra stared at it for a brief moment before he started stabbing buttons, and thankfully luck was with him as he didn’t end up breaking anything.
Once he figured out the remote, he did as asked and stopped at the right date.
The image was similar to the first, but the storm was migrating.
The eye had shifted several miles, and not with the jet stream.
It was moving against the natural weather systems in the area, and the eye was sending out more tendrils.
Lightning activity had increased, and pockets of hurricane-force winds and heavy snowfall, up to three feet in some places, littered the area.
The dig site was covered in at least twelve feet of snow, and that was days ago—it was more than likely over twenty feet of snow by now, if not more. He would need to rethink his plans to head out there to find the artifact.
“Inhuman skull etched in blue flame,” Ezra murmured. “Lots of Elder fae species were considered gods by ancient humans, and their remains were prized as sources of power in proscribed magics. I wonder…”
He leaned forward, squinting at the map as the satellite footage continued to cycle. “Where are we on this map?”
Grendel came up beside him and pointed to the southeast of the dig site. “Here. Fifteen miles from the dig site. The storm shifted over ten miles during the rescue, and when we came out of the storm, I was informed it was moving. I made the call to my superiors, and they contacted you.”
“No one’s gone in there since you came out with the survivors?”
Grendel shook her head. “No one. Too dangerous. Lightning and hail activity increased exponentially, and I wasn’t going to risk anyone else until we got a better handle on things.
The camp is right on the outside edge, and unless it moves closer, the camp is where everyone is staying until we figure this out. ”
“Good call,” Ezra said distractedly, tracing the route from the dig site to the MERS camp. “Is this the route you took?”
“Near enough,” Grendel took back the remote and hit a few buttons, and then a line appeared on the screen.
“There’s an old logging road that goes most of the way, so we were able to go in with snowmobiles and two susvees—small unit support vehicles—one equipped as an ambulance.
Air support wasn’t an option due to the storm.
It took us twelve hours to traverse fifteen miles, and nearly thirty hours to make the same trek out. ”
“Go back two images?” Ezra asked, and Grendel obliged. The eye of the storm tracked roughly with the route the rescue team took on the way out, stopping a few miles shy of the edge of the forest.
The storm was magical in nature. The prevalent hypothesis was that the artifact they found in the chest was the cause. The storm migrated as the survivors left the dig site.