Chapter 6
Payne let Jasper go in Brooklyn, knowing that Lioness, the artist with remote viewing skills, could track him from the mansion, hopefully right to his boss.
Lioness was already in her trance when Jasper’s beat-up Honda Civic creaked out of the alley behind an occult shop.
She sat cross-legged in the middle of the L.A.W.
living room, surrounded by candles and a haze of eucalyptus smoke.
Her charcoal pencil moved like it had somewhere to be, sketching furiously across a pad the size of a pizza box.
Joell hovered nearby, arms folded, watching the lines take shape with a mix of admiration and barely-concealed anxiety.
“Is she okay?” Brianna whispered. “She looks like she’s mid-possession.”
“She’s fine,” Joell said, though her tone suggested she’d feel better if someone was standing by with holy water and maybe a tranquilizer dart. “She always looks like that when she’s tracking someone. It’s her process.”
Rayna uncurled from a nearby loveseat and squinted at the sketch. “Is that a Denny’s?”
“No way,” Brianna said. “I think it’s a Waffle House.”
“Maybe he’s just hungry. We didn’t feed him.”
“Focus,” Joell snapped. Lioness’s hand dragged out the rough lines of a man. It was Jasper, hunched and glancing over his shoulder, skulking past a neon sign.
“Guess he didn’t take that whole ‘we’re letting you go because we’re benevolent witches’ speech seriously,” Rayna muttered.
“He took it seriously enough to haul ass straight to his boss,” Joell said, kneeling next to Lioness. “Come on, girl, show me where.”
Lioness obliged. Her fingers blurred, pulling a black SUV from the paper like it’d been hiding there all along. Big. Tactical. Government issue.
“Well, that’s subtle,” Brianna said. “I thought the goal of shadowy puppet masters was to not look like they’re in an FBI TV show.”
The SUV had tinted windows and a faint symbol on the passenger door, like a triangle stuffed inside a square, half-burned off. Lioness darkened the detail until it stood out like a bruise.
Rayna’s face went cold.
“Rayna,” Joell said carefully, “do you know that sigil?”
She nodded once. “Yeah. I’ve seen it before. Back when I was doing recon for the Para Accord. That’s a black-tier military glyph. Think NSA meets necromancers. It’s not just surveillance. They specialize in magical containment.”
“Containment?” Brianna said. “Like, cages and handcuffs?”
“More like null fields and soul-jars.”
Joell’s espresso paused halfway to her mouth. “Or ‘Echo blasters?’ Charming.”
The sketch now showed Jasper sliding into the SUV. Lioness, eyes still glazed, scribbled out the driver’s profile: square-jawed, gray-haired, wearing mirrored aviators like a man with something to prove, or hide.
Joell stood. “We’ve got a location and a target. If Jasper’s reporting to this guy, then we follow him. See where they go. See what they want.”
“And if they want us?”
“Then we give them a reason to regret that,” Joell said.
A few minutes later, the witches were crammed into Brianna’s Prius like a coven-shaped sardine can, with Lioness still sketching in the passenger seat and Rayna riding shotgun in the back because Brianna had to drive her own car.
“I swear to Hecate, if you brake one more time without warning, I’m glamoring this car into a pumpkin,” Rayna growled, gripping the headrest.
“Sorry,” Brianna muttered. “I don’t tail people. I walk them into my office and make them cry with past-life regressions.”
Lioness didn’t even blink. Her hand flew across the page, updating the landscape in real-time, showing an industrial strip lined with graffiti, a boarded-up liquor store, and a stray cat that might have been a raccoon.
“There,” Joell said from behind Brianna, pointing over the dashboard. “One block up, SUV just turned left.”
Lioness agreed faintly, her voice trance-thin. “Still moving. Still calm. He doesn’t know we’re here.”
“Good,” Joell muttered. “Let’s keep it that way.”
They rolled through the turn, trailing the SUV from a safe distance, while Lioness continued to draw. The sketch blurred into the shape of a parking lot. Cracked concrete. A rusted truck. And then…
“Oh no,” Lioness whispered.
“What?” Joell asked, eyes darting from the road to the sketch pad.
“It’s fuzzy,” Lioness said. “Like static. Something’s interfering.”
“Can you push through it?”
Lioness hesitated. “I can try.”
Joell didn’t like the sound of that. “Pull the Prius over behind that abandoned building and kill the engine.”
“Rayna, Brianna, boost her. Keep her grounded but open. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
The others nodded and placed their hands on Lioness’s shoulders. The pad stilled for a beat, then Lioness gasped and started sketching again.
This time, the SUV was parked. Next to it stood a couple of figures in tactical gear, blurry like heat mirages. One of them was holding something that pulsed on the page, like a lantern or a beacon.
Rayna frowned. “What is that?”
“It's a ward disruptor,” Joell said. “Old tech, but nasty. They’re fuzzing the field.”
“Wait,” Brianna said. “You said he didn’t know we were following him.”
“He didn’t,” Lioness said. “But someone else did.”
And just like that, the sketch went blank. Not smeared. Not faded… Gone.
Lioness blinked hard and dropped the pad. Her nose was bleeding. Her pupils were enormous.
“They cloaked,” she whispered. “Not just the car. The whole damn area.”
“Cloaked with what?” Rayna asked, already conjuring a defensive sigil in one palm.
“I don’t know,” Lioness said. “But it looked… lethal.”
Joell’s jaw tightened.
“Everybody out. We’re walking the rest of the way. Quiet, low-power protection grid, and absolutely no dumbass hero moves. Right, Rayna?”
The walls of Fort Hamilton were concrete, the lighting clinical, and the coffee, according to Michael, was an act of war.
Major Payne stood at the head of the long table, arms folded. His mirrored aviators sat on the table beside a sealed black case. Michael didn’t like the look of that case. Daniel liked it even less.
“This is a stupid idea,” Michael said, slouching. “And I say that as someone with a master’s degree in stupid ideas.”
Payne ignored him. His attention was locked on a screen mounted on the wall. A grainy aerial image flickered: the witches, standing beside a Prius, surrounded by a soft golden shimmer barely visible to untrained eyes.
Daniel leaned forward. “Is that a protection grid?”
“It’s weak,” Payne said. “But functional. Wait… They’re moving on foot.”
“Why not take them in now?” Michael asked. “You’ve got assets on the ground.”
“They’re not the target,” Payne said. He opened the black case. Inside sat an obsidian disk etched with glowing runes. “This is.”
Daniel stiffened. “That’s an extraterrestrial locator.”
“Good,” Payne said. “You remember your training.”
“Are you seriously considering that the witches might not be from Earth?” Daniel asked.
Payne shrugged. “It would explain how they have those superpowers.”
Michael’s eyebrows lifted. “That thing’s outlawed under the Accord.”
“So are other tools,” Payne said. “Didn’t stop your girlfriend from hiding a few.”
“She’s not my…” Michael stopped himself.
The major’s eyebrows rose. “Since I have you here, can you tell me the nature of your relationship with Rayna?”
“Maybe you should ask her,” Daniel said.
The major sighed. “I did. She was being as cagey as you two are now.” He glanced at one, then the other. “Let me be blunt. Are you romantically involved with her?”
They burst out laughing. When Daniel got himself under control, he said, “No. Michael and I are romantically involved with each other.”
“Oh! I had no idea.”
“Yeah, when we were under your command, there was that whole ‘Don’t ask; Don’t tell’ thing.”
“And you didn’t ask until now,” Michael said.
“Okay. Look, I really don’t care what the two of you do. I just want to know if she might be open to my asking her out on a date.”
Michael looked at Daniel. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
Daniel shrugged. “If it were someone else, I’d discourage it. But if anyone can handle her, it might be the major… and vice versa.”
“I agree.” He smiled at Payne. “Good luck, sir.”
“Thanks, I think. Now, let’s get back to the matter at hand.”
“Yeah, are you thinking someone else might be extraterrestrial? Is that why you have the disk?” Daniel asked.
“Maybe. Look, I wasn’t completely on board with this, but my superiors demanded answers, and I didn’t have time to assess much of anyone or anything.”
Daniel scratched his head. “Whatever. My point is, if this backfires—”
“It won’t,” Payne said. He tapped the disk, and it responded with a pulse of red light. “They took the bait. They’re inside the net. Now we see who else shows up.”
Daniel exchanged a look with Michael. “And if it’s not just the witches?”
Payne smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Then we make history.”
The abandoned lot smelled like rust, ozone, and something worse. Something metallic and wrong, like scorched magic. The witches crept along the edge of a broken chain-link fence, staying low, their protection grid shimmering faintly in the twilight.
Lioness had stuffed her sketchpad under one arm, her fingers twitching like they were still dying to draw. Rayna led the way, her palm glowing, smoothing the way just enough to keep them from tripping over debris.
“There,” Joell whispered, pointing.
The SUV was parked in the center of the lot, alone. No sign of Jasper. No sign of the figures Lioness had drawn. No movement. Just a faint red glow pulsing from something on the asphalt, about the size of a dinner plate.
“Oh, hell no,” Rayna said. “Is that a summoning circle? A glowing one? That's like a horror movie prologue waiting to happen.”
“It’s not just a circle,” Brianna said slowly. “It’s a trap.”
The moment she said it, the air around them shifted. It became warm. Too warm. Lioness stumbled and grabbed Rayna’s arm.
“They’re watching us,” Lioness said. “Through something that’s not here.”
Joell crouched beside the red-glowing object. “It’s not just a locator. It’s more than that. They’re trying to read our energy signature.”
“Then let’s fry their scanner and get out of here,” Rayna said, sparks already dancing across her knuckles.
“No,” Joell snapped. “We don’t tip our hand unless we have to.”
“Too late,” Brianna said, stepping back. Her boots scraped asphalt but made no sound. “The sound field’s been dampened. Maybe our powers have been too.”
The witches froze.
“Okay,” Rayna said, forcing her voice through the rising silence, “how bad is that?”
“No echoes, no ambient noise,” Joell said. “That’s not just stealth tech. That’s nullification. They’re prepping to lock us down.”
Lioness pressed a shaking hand to her temple. “They’re already trying to separate us psychically. I can feel it.” Her shout sounded like a whisper.
Joell stood and turned, scanning the shadows. “Then we don’t give them time to finish. We pull back, regroup, and—”
A low hum filled the air. Not loud, but something they felt in their bones, in their teeth, in the back of their eyes.
The red glow flared, and the SUV blinked out of sight.
“Shit,” Joell hissed. “They’re cloaking again.”
From behind the SUV’s former location, a figure stepped into view. No gear. No weapons. No shadow. And no face. Just a smooth void, like something wearing human skin as a suggestion.
Lioness made a sound halfway between a softened scream and a choke.
Joell raised both hands. “Fall back. Now. Don’t run. Don’t cast. Don’t look it in the eye, if it has one.” Then her voice disappeared.