Fade to Black

9

The lock wasn't complicated. Raccoon's magic fingers reached inside with ease and found the critical element, a simple spring-loaded bolt. One flick and the bolt was open, the door unlocked. But there was more, an alarm, and something… a sort of trap. Magic pervaded the frame around the door, not the door itself. Clever. It might have worked, too, if Raccoon weren't just as clever. Disabling the alarm took only moments. Neutralizing the clever spell that would… what? Cause sleep. Cause anyone opening the door to fall asleep. Neutralizing that took a few minutes. A very clever spell, indeed. Yes, a spell worthy of Raccoon.

When finally the door swung open, Bandit paused, watching, listening, breathing deeply of the incense-laden air that came drifting into the alley. Nothing seemed amiss. It looked as though he'd defeated this clever combination of security. Very pleasing, very rewarding… But, if his information was correct, the greater reward awaited him inside.

He stepped through the doorway, nearly silent on plastifoam-soled shoes, and into a room that looked much like any other room. The light-intensifying lenses of his mask showed him a small, crowded space divided into three aisles by tall shelf units, a large workbench, some cabinets, hundreds of various small containers, cartons, and boxes. A storeroom. To his astral perceptions, the place was dark, all but emotionless, dead. It was made of things that were lifeless: plastic, metal, and concrete. Substances torn from the earth and so deprived of life. If not for the radiant life energy flowing weakly through the doorway and the faint glimmer from a potted plant on the workbench, the place would have been pitch-black.

The light-gathering lenses of his mask let him scan the labels on the containers. He saw names like U.C.A.S. Fetish, New Magic, Arcane Instruments, Genuine Focii. Bandit recognized the names and knew that the corporations they named produced nothing of any value. He moved to the door on the other side of the room, slipping through it to enter the talismonger's storefront.

Here was life, glowing, radiating, from various points around the shop. Many of the display cases and shelves were filled with tourist trinkets from the boxes in the back room: drums and rattles, knives, wands, crystals, phony bones, plaster shells. Pretty ornaments to amuse the ignorant Baubles and toys for children or relatives somewhere in Duluth. Some of the talismans and potions and painted charms were very real, imbued with true power, shining with magical life, but none were of a quality or power that would interest one who followed Raccoon.

Bandit turned to the stairs, the old wooden stairs leading up from the side of the shop to the room on the second floor.

Here was the true hoard: old wooden tables and shelves and antique, glass-fronted cabinets all shining brightly with power. What they said-the derelicts and street urchins and burnt-out magicians he had overheard on street corners-all of it was true. Raccoon could spend many hours here examining the many glowing items, but that would be unwise. Bandit knew what he wanted, and it lay in plain sight, right on the table hi front of him.

The Mask of Sassacus, said to confer great powers of influence and persuasion, perhaps bound up with special spells. Bandit hesitated even to touch it, but instinct and desire and the danger of discovery wouldn't let him hesitate for long. Cautiously, he lifted the mask in his fingertips, then held it up to his face to see what change that might make in his vision. He learned nothing for his trouble, but assensed great power. He could almost taste the power. He would carry this mask away and learn its secrets. That would tell him its value.

With great care, he slipped the ornate mask into a pouch slung from his belt. In its place, the spot left empty on the table, he put a small crystal dragon with glinting red eyes. Inside this decorative container was the powdered essence of the reproductive organs of a wyrd mantis, a giant Awakened insect of Europe.

The powder glowed with power, but it had no value to Bandit. His magic would be tainted by anything with the least connection to insects or insect totems. That did not mean that the powder had no value to anyone else. Some might find it a very valuable commodity indeed. Maybe not as valuable as the blood of a dragon, the feather of a phoenix, or the horn of a unicorn, but far more valuable than anything else in this shop. That made it a fair exchange, more than fair, for Raccoon had no need to leave anything. Thievery, as some called it, was part of Raccoon's nature.

The room suddenly filled with — light, brilliant light, as from a spotlight. This came from the semi-transparent tubes crossing the ceiling. Bandit felt the light like fire. In one fluid movement, he crouched low to the floor and ducked under the nearest table.

Raccoon guided him well tonight.

Better to hide than to fight.

An old man entered the room. Bandit guessed it was an old man by the pair of spindly legs he espied through the legs of tables between him and the back of the room. He also saw a gun, an old-style revolver, gripped low in a gnarled hand.

"Who's there?" a weak voice rattled. "I know you're here… Got past my ward… Sneaky bastard…"

Bandit pointed a finger and breathed a single word. From the direction in which he pointed came a muted bang and crash, followed by the quick-razor snarl of an alley cat.

"What's this?" the old man murmured. "That old trick. I ain't falling for it."

Bandit grinned. The old man must be a magician, and clever. Clever enough to have set the trap on the alley door. Indeed, as he had said, the cat in the alley illusion was an old, old trick. Raccoon used it often. Most people fell for it.

"Somebody's monkeying around," the old man growled.

Nodding, smiling broadly, Bandit reached into his coat pockets, drew out his hands, then softly blew a long, deep breath at the old man, simultaneously extending and opening his hands.

"Huh?" the old man said, "Now what… another…" He stood unmoving for several moments, then yawned loudly. The spindly legs stumbled backward a few steps, slowly settled onto their knees. Finally, the old man came fully into view as he bent to the floor, lay down, and fell asleep.

In a few moments, he was snoring softly and steadily, his own kind of spell used against him.

Bandit returned to the narrow alley behind the shop. The night was dark and quiet, marked only by the voices of the night: the distant rumble of the subway, the passing of cars on nearby streets, the occasional calls of street vendors and the talk of passersby. Nothing seemed out of place.

A brief walk took him across High Street, through Nishuane Park, jammed with the stalls and booths of talismongers and occultists, to Harrison Avenue. He felt like getting some food.

In front of Seven Hexes Pizza, he noticed a gray and black van. He walked right past it and around the corner into the deep shadows cast by the tall ferrocrete tenements lining Sutherland. The van followed. As Bandit stepped into the dark recess of a tenement doorway, the van glided to a stop at the curb in front of him. The passenger door of the van swung open. A big ork in an armored black vest and black fatigue pants stepped onto the sidewalk and joined Bandit in the shadowed doorway. People called this ork Shank. A dwarf called Thorvin followed along.

"Hoi, Bandit," Shank said.

Thorvin grunted.

Bandit watched these two closely. Their presence here roused his curiosity. They rarely came looking for him except when a special opportunity arose. A glance at their auras revealed only that they seemed calm, untroubled, in harmony with the plex.

"We got a job," Shank said. "Rico wants you in the game."

Interesting. Bandit knew this Rico, too. Rico was clever, in some ways as clever as Raccoon. He had a woman, an Asian woman, who was perhaps more than she appeared. Not entirely human, perhaps something other than human. She was clever, too. "The decker," Bandit said quietly. "Is she in?"

Shank frowned, then said, "You mean Piper?"

"Yes." That was the name.

"Sure she's in. She and Rico're planning the run right now. You want in?"

"Likely," Bandit said. "Good money?"

Shank told him about the money. It was good. Bandit didn't really care. Money was useful for buying food and renting hiding places, but that was all. He only asked about money because it was expected. People who didn't want money were not trusted. "The run will take us where? Someplace interesting?"

Shank nodded, slowly. Seeming puzzled. "Yeah. Sure. I bet it'll be real interesting. Heavy security. Some corp facility."

"High-security facility?"

"Ain't that what I just said?"

Shank meant yes. This was very good, indeed. High-security facilities had high security in order to guard valuable things. Things that might be taken, things that might be hoarded. Or sold. Or traded. Or examined for what they might mean. It was difficult to know what might or might not have value with just a first look, so many things had to be taken to a safe place where they might be hidden and examined carefully. Often with magic. Long magic. What the uninitiated called "ritual magic," as if such magic could be done by rote, without thought or inspiration.

"You interested?" Shank asked.

Bandit nodded, just once. "When do we start?"

The night streamed with energy, throbbing, alive. Maurice slowly ascended, then descended, his astral form rising as high as the walls of the surrounding buildings, men settling down to several meters beneath the black concrete of the alley. All appeared in order. The energies of the astral plane flowed smoothly and harmoniously. No malign species of phantom or magically active being seemed to be in the vicinity.

There was of, course, one minor fluctuation, one small disturbance in the flux of astral space, originating from within the warehouse to his right, but this he had expected.

He had come prepared.

He returned to his physical body, his mundane form. This brought him a sense of dissatisfaction, no less than the necessity of leaving his studies tonight in order to "practice" his Art in the sordid world of the mundane. As he regained his sense-awareness of the physical plane, he sat once again in the rear of his Mercedes limousine. The limousine waited, lights out, in an alley off some street in Sector 2, near the airport, the ocean terminals and piers. "Biffs remain in the car," he said. The five women sharing the rear of the limo with him grumbled briefly in discord. Much as he might have expected. They were his wives. They attended to the innumerable inconsequential details of daily living, thereby freeing him to pursue his arcane inquiries. They had also produced a number of children, who, in time, would also serve him. They expected to accompany him everywhere, imagining that their service to him earned them various inalienable rights.

On a night like this, when certain undeniable facts of existence invaded the hallowed domain of his research, he would grant no latitude, tolerate no dissension. The biffs would do as he said or else face the consequences. Fortunately for all of them, Daniella, his first wife, had the capacity of understanding to order them all into silence.

Daniella would keep them in line.

With one meticulously manicured finger, Maurice pointed. The door to his right clicked and swung open. The faint shimmering in the air by the limo's ceiling drifted out through the open door. Maurice followed it outside.

The night was cool, the air rank with offensive odors. The ground vibrated faintly as with the distant rumble of machinery or passing subway trains. Maurice tucked his ivory-handled walking stick under his arm and tied the sash of his dark, caped coat A trivial exertion of will returned him to his astral perceptions. He found his ally, radiant with etheric energy, facing him from just an arm's length away.

The ally, recently summoned, was proving to possess a peculiar blend of naivete" and eccentricities. Though bound to Maurice's will, his service, the spirit showed signs of developing a uniquely willful personality. It preferred to be addressed as a female. With Maurice's permission, it had assumed an astral form like that of a curvaceous young white woman with long, gold-brown hair, and wearing a flowing halter-top dress that fell to mid-calf. It wished to be called "Vera Causa." Maurice found this troubling.

The spirit spoke to him mind-to-mind, asking, Your desire, master?

Guard, Maurice thought.

Yes, master, the spirit replied. I guard you always. Master is kind and spirits are grateful.

Indeed.

Returned to his mundane physical perceptions, Maurice extended his walking stick and moved up the alley. To his right the big black metal door of a warehouse stood partly open. He paused to examine both door and doorway, which appeared to be unguarded, astrally and otherwise. Master, be cautious, his ally warned. Danger here. Much violence.

That was certainly true.

The open doorway led directly to a landing at the top of a flight of stairs. A faint luminescence from the radiance of the surrounding city carried in through the doorway to dimly illuminate the landing. The stairs, however, descended into pitch blackness. Maurice called forth his magelight with a flick of one finger. The light swelled radiant and full, growing from a mere pinpoint to the size of a globe mounted atop the head of Maurice's stick.

Lifting the stick out before him, Maurice descended the stairs. Again, his ally warned of danger, of the violence that lingered here. Maurice knew the source of this violence. It was the man he had come to see.

The stairs led into a corridor unlit but by Maurice's magelight. Some distance ahead another door waited partly open. Maurice paused to examine it, then stepped through.

That put him in the main chamber, a room two or three times the size of the average simsense theater. At the distant end burned a single candle. Just beyond the candle's small flame stood a man stripped to the waist. He had a mass of wavy blonde hair and a well-muscled, athletically proportioned body. He stood with his feet together, arms at his sides, face turned toward the black of the ceiling hanging closely overhead.

Behind the man, Maurice perceived the huddled form of a woman, nude. Quite dead. "You come again."

The voice carried quietly throughout the space. It was that of the man. He went by many names, but, as Maurice knew, bis real name was Claude Jaeger. His aura was a seething torrent of dark-hued energies. Maurice had encountered homicidal maniacs with clearer auras, but Jaeger was far more dangerous than any lunatic killer. Death clung to him, not hie a leech, but as the source of bis power.

With a shout, Jaeger suddenly turned and lashed out, perhaps with a kick. The movement was so swift, Maurice could not be certain. A dark shape to Jaeger's right, about the sire and shape of a fire door, rang like a bell. Sonics slapped the walls of the surrounding chamber and reverberated. The door, or whatever it was, fell to the floor, clanging loudly, separating into two pieces.

"Does this form of exercise please you?"

Jaeger turned toward Maurice with a face as cold as the concrete underfoot. "It is not exercise," he said. "And, yes, it pleases me greatly." He paused for a moment, men said, "Would you care to try? I have another door."

Maurice considered briefly, then dismissed the thought Jaeger followed the path of a child, that of a physical adept His art, as he called it, was devoted to improving his physical power. His exercises included breaking inanimate objects and living bodies such as human beings. The practice of the art eluded explanation for the simple reason that the art itself was absurd. It was eminently practical, no doubt but had no value beyond the purely mundane. Jaeger himself was like a weapon, effective, but essentially devoid of the desire for truth or for anything more than mere physical stimulation.

"We have work," Maurice said.

"What work?" Jaeger snapped harshly.

Maurice ignored the intemperate tone. He had difficulty enough trying to decide how he might best elaborate, what words would achieve the desired effect. As a general rule, the spoken word displeased him. Speech could be unbearably precarious, intolerably inexact. He much preferred the mathematical precision of the arcane arts, the One True Art. It alone could be trusted.

Quietly, and precisely, he said, "Our client is staging a sensitive operation. We are to back up the back-up, you might say. In case something should go wrong."

Softly, resonantly, Jaeger chuckled. "I would say it in terms very different from those, mage."

Maurice supposed that was so.