Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
EZRA
Ezra stalled in the center of the camp, wondering how he was going to find Simmons’s tent, when he saw the sexy MERS officer jogging by—the big dude from the shower tent.
Ezra bolted out in front of him, almost falling on his ass, but the big guy reacted quickly and caught him by the arms, picking him up and then making sure to set him gently on his feet.
“Hey! Hi! Shit, sorry,” Ezra rambled. The big guy lifted a single brow and waited. “Hello again. Can you show me where Dr. Simmons’ tent is please?”
“He’s not there, we checked already,” the big guy replied. The name tag on his chest said Brown.
“Oh, I bet he’s already lost in the forest waiting to be rescued or running as far from here as he can get. I still need to see inside his tent, please. Can you show me the way?” Ezra tried his best smile, and Brown rolled his eyes at him but gestured for Ezra to follow.
“Sure, this way. Don’t get in the way; Major Grendel has us tearing it apart looking for clues.”
“I won’t, I just need to see the contents really quick, promise.”
Brown led him quickly through the camp until they reached a row of tents on the far side of the complex from the forest. Major Grendel stood outside the tent as several MERS members hurried in and out, tossing the contents of the tent on the ground and searching through it all.
Ezra looked from the periphery but didn’t see a blue tarp tote bag.
“Redmayne, you need something?” Grendel asked, sounding as angry as she looked. He didn’t take it personally—he would be pissed too if the person he risked life and limb to save turned out to be the bad guy.
“Yeah, is there a blue bag in there made of tarp? Insulated or padded, may be full of tools Simmons would use at the dig site?”
“You hear that in there?” A few shouted affirmatives came from inside the tent. “Find that bag!”
Grendel kicked at the ground at her feet, and Ezra noticed a pile of small bags, magical odds and ends, and various spell components—he switched on his inner vision, and low and behold, he saw the making and remains of charms. Spent charms. He peered closer and saw that the few he recognized were for protection against magic, commonly known as nullifiers.
They nullified any magic in the immediate vicinity of the wearer, and were used by mundanes and practitioners alike.
They were also expensive to make, and cost a serious amount of money to buy.
Simmons must have depleted a small retirement fund to afford all of those charms.
“That explains how Simmons survived the skull,” Ezra said, letting go of his inner vision and pointing to the pile at Grendel’s feet. “He was probably wearing a fortune in nullifiers. The skull ate the charms’ magic instead of eating Simmons’ aura.”
“Is that what they are?” Grendel grunted. “He was expecting danger of a magical sort then. Too bad he didn’t share with his entire crew.”
“If Simmons and Monica were standing close together when she opened the chest, that might explain how she survived opening it. If she was within a null charm’s radius of effect, even a little bit, then it would have protected her from the initial blast from the skull. Others weren’t so lucky.”
A moment later the cute sergeant who was with Brown that morning in the shower tent came out, shaking his head. “Sir, not in there. No blue bag of any size or kind. Tore the whole tent apart.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Redmayne, what’s with this bag nonsense?”
“Monica said it was his favorite bag; might make sense for him to stash the skull in it.”
“Shit, I remember him carrying that blasted bag when we rescued him and the others. I never thought about it again though—I was too worried about getting out of the storm intact.”
“He probably ditched the bag with the skull when it ate through the last of his charms.”
“Too bad it didn’t eat him.”
“Feel like going on a hike?” Ezra said with a wry smile.
Grendel arched a brow at him and looked toward the forest and the storm circling overhead. At this distance the thunder wasn’t so loud, but it was a near-constant background noise, like the rumble of trucks on a highway.
“Sergeants Brown and Owens, get a susvee fueled and loaded. We move out in ten.”
“Sir!” Brown saluted and tore off into camp, and the cute guy who had to be Owens followed him.
“I don’t think the skull is more than a couple miles into the forest; we can probably walk it?” Ezra said.
Grendel shook her head vehemently. “The second we get under the edge of that storm, it’s impassable on foot. We’re as likely to get lost and die from exposure as Simmons is in there. As it is, we’ll probably run over his frozen corpse trying to find the artifact.”
Ezra looked over the top of the tents toward the storm. A flash of blue lightning arced across the sky. “Huh.” He shrugged. “I’ll get ready. Ten minutes?”
“I’ll send Sergeant Brown to pull you outta your tent in five.”
“He’d like that, I bet,” Ezra replied innocently. He left for his tent before Grendel’s glare could incinerate him on the spot.
Ezra
Snow lashed at the windshield of the Small Unit Support Vehicle, the susvee’s wide tracks keeping it atop the snow as they went deeper into the forest. The local flora leaned toward dense pine and evergreens, interspersed with thick birch tree groves and wide swathes of bog and hidden marshes beneath tall grasses that would trap the unwary and unprepared.
The logging road was so old as to be considered a deer trail at some points, the susvee snapping saplings and forcing its way through the narrower junctions.
The storm was so powerful that any sign of the rescue team’s passage only a few days before was impossible to see.
Brown drove, Ezra in the back with Sergeant Chase Owens, Grendel in the front passenger seat, and all three of them looked out the windows hoping for some sign of Simmons.
The windows were continually fogging up and Ezra wiped at the glass, trying to see past the condensation but not having much luck—the conditions outside were atrocious and visibility was down to three feet, tops.
He would see trees only as they brushed by them, then the scenery would swallow them back up into a wall of white.
They were using the onboard sonar and infrared, along with satellite mapping and the strongest GPS devices MERS had at hand, all of it bolstered with spells and charms embedded in the hull of the susvee.
Ezra was very glad to have experience with sorting through complicated spell work or his inner vision would be blinded by the spells in the vehicle.
“What kind of snowmobile did he steal?” Ezra had to raise his voice a bit to be heard over the howling of the wind and the occasional crash of thunder.
“A single seater. The gas tank isn’t big enough to get him anywhere if he tries finding the skull. Not to mention I don’t think he has much chance out here without navigation.” It was Brown who answered, all but shouting over his shoulder through the din of the storm.
Ezra had nothing to say, just went back to looking out the window, which was a lesson in frustration. He wasn’t going to see anything with his physical eyes.
Ezra shut his eyes, pushing out distractions like the wind and the sound of the vehicle crunching over the snowy landscape. He opened his other sight, his inner vision, and the world opened around him.
Blue.
Everything was blue. Icy cobalt and deep cerulean, the colors of living energies and magics muted beneath the artifact’s influence over the weather and the entire region’s ambient magic fields.
It was nearly blinding, and a twinge of pain began behind his eyes.
He fought through it, and slowly turned his head, looking as best as he could around them.
The trees held the faintest glimmers of light in their cores, still alive, the species hardy enough to handle the extreme off-season snowpocalypse, but most of the tender summer growth was dead.
He could see none of the tiny flares of light that usually meant animal life—everything was mere shadows, like rocks and decaying matter, and death magics gathered in deep pools of purple, like the richest of Burgundy wines, the death magics released by dying animal and plant life mixing with the overcast blue from the artifact and storm.
From what he could tell, the smaller animals weren’t lucky enough to escape the storm’s radius, and perished quickly.
The larger animals were likely fairing far better, able to escape or endure the unnatural storm.
“Stop!” Ezra called out, grabbing the seat in front of him. He was certain he saw something a few yards out in the trees.
“This is near the spot I lost my officer,” Grendel said, voice distant as Ezra focused his attention out into the woods.
He kept his eyes shut, not wanting visual input to cloud his inner vision, and scrambled to release the harness holding him in the seat.
Hands helped, brushing his aside, and no one asked what he was doing, all three MERS officers having experience with practitioners.
He was freed, and he tugged the hood up on his jacket and pulled down the snow goggles before he struggled with the door.
“Redmayne, wait!” Grendel shouted, the rest of her words lost to the roar of the storm as he got the door open. Snow fell into the susvee, and he gritted his teeth as he shoved a booted foot out into the snowdrift.
He opened his eyes once, just to make sure he wasn’t going to impale himself on a tree, and leapt into the snow.
It came up to his shoulders, and he snorted out a laugh as snow got in his mouth and a bit fell down the collar of the jacket, cold on his skin.
“What’s the plan?” Sergeant Owens called down to him, leaning out of the still open door. He sounded both concerned and amused.
“Watch your head!” Ezra shouted back, and once Sergeant Owens ducked back inside, he called to the fire that sang in his blood. It always came without issue, the fire. It was pretty much the same for all fire mages across the ranks—it was harder to hold it back than to summon it forth.
Control was second nature after fifteen years of training, and he coiled the fire around him like a ribbon dancer, starting at his feet and swirling up his body, consuming the snow.
His affinity kept him from getting scalded, but the earth at his feet wasn’t so lucky, water boiling around his waterproof boots before it turned to steam.
Steam rose, blinding him, and he shut his eyes again, looking for the source of the intense death magics he saw out in the trees. It hadn’t moved and appeared to be stationary.
Opening his eyes, he kept a small connection to his inner sight open and focused on the immediate area.
He lifted his arms, just enough to push out at the snow that threatened to topple into the cleared area he was making, and he turned, widening the range of the fire ribbons as they cut through the snowbank.
Water ran down in sheets as snow melted, and he spun the fire faster, evaporating the melted snow quicker than it could collect in puddles at his feet.
Eventually the snow receded enough that he could pause his efforts, and the doors to the susvee behind him opened carefully.
The susvee was still atop the snow at head height, and Ezra made sure not to melt the snow holding the susvee up, not wanting to cause it to fall.
He made a slope to the susvee at a gradual angle, so they could climb back inside once they were done.
The storm still raged overhead, but he summoned a shield that flashed to life ten feet overhead and fell around him in a half-sphere of translucent energy, rivers of fiery oranges and blood red twisting over the surface.
He adapted it around the side of the vehicle, and his three companions climbed down the sloped snow to the cleared earth beside him.
“Impressive, Redmayne,” Grendel said begrudgingly, eyeing the storm raging above them with distrust. “Is the shield going to aggravate things?”
“Storm’s being fueled by some odd combination of elemental and death magic—my shields aren’t even going to make a ruffle in the chaos around us,” Ezra stated as Brown and Owens reached into the susvee and both pulled out weapons.
Brown carried a rifle almost as tall as Ezra and slung it over his shoulder with a thick black strap and Owens came out with a smaller but no less lethal assault rifle.
Grendel wore her sidearm on her hip. Even bundled up in heavy winter gear they were an impressive and intimidating sight.
Ezra was unarmed, but not really—he could do far more damage than any gun, and a lot quicker too.
He wasn’t a combat mage, but he could handle defending himself and others from an aggressive human. He hoped, at least.
“Simmons is a mundane?” Ezra asked, making sure, confused by the weapons. He could have misremembered or not noticed to begin with—all of them were armed for one human, an academic no less, which left him a bit flustered.
“The weather might be frightful, but bears won’t give a fuck about some snow,” Brown said, loudly enough to be heard over the wind screaming above their heads.
Ezra squinted at Brown, brain stalling out for a second.
“Oh. Bears. Like actual bears, not the leather kind in bars back home,” Ezra said when it finally clicked that the sergeant was worried about a real, actual animal big enough to eat them and that didn’t have magic behind it. Just fangs and claws.
Ezra wished his mouth had a filter when Grendel glared at him hot enough to melt some snow of her own. Owens nodded and held his rifle like he was just waiting for a wild animal to leap out of the woods and chomp on his leg. Thankfully, the icy temps held back Ezra’s flush of embarrassment.
Brown laughed and gestured for Ezra to get moving.
Ezra reminded himself he was a professional and did scary things all the time, even went alone into caves and tombs and condemned buildings full of nasty creatures and dead things, and that literal, giant man-eating bears were really the least of their current worries.
He focused on using his shield as a make-shift blow torch, cutting a path through the tall drifts toward the mysterious whirlpool of death magics calling to him through the trees.