Chapter 15 – Grab that Pussy!
Liz walked along the quickly darkening streets of Sentinel City, the street lights already on in many places due to the long shadows cast by the skyscrapers reaching toward the heavens above. Somewhere in the far distance above she could hear the roar of a jet engine, then the sound of sirens somewhere else, off to the south. The bell at her neck jingled as she hurried across the street and cut down another avenue.
She’d only been out of the Sanctum about an hour now, figuring it a good idea to learn the layout of the city as much as possible, so she’d headed uptown tonight. Traffic flowed steadily, and the streets were still heavily populated, the scent of auto exhaust and the mysterious meat sold by the various street vendors she passed. They claimed they were hotdogs, but even as a kid, Liz had been hesitant to try them.
Moving onto another crowded street, Liz followed the flow of the crowd, noticing the shop lights along either side of the wider thoroughfare. Though tightly packed, the crowd gave her plenty of space, seeming to flow around her as water would around a rock in a stream. Sassy’s training had given her a few new tools in her arcane repertoire, including a simple spell that would allow her to go pretty much unnoticed amongst people who weren’t mystically inclined. It seemed to work as described, with only a couple of people even noticing her, and those with the strange familiar-like bonds, a woman who seemed to have bonded with a sheep spirit, and a man with wolf-like features, even if it was a passing glance and a nod of acknowledgement as they passed.
As she reached another intersection, waiting for the crosswalk lights to change, Liz looked around, and her gaze froze as it fell upon a particular building. Ears twitching, she blinked and turned on her arcane sight. Sure enough, there was a strong aura of magic atop the four-story building, and a trail leading across the alleyway and up the side of the much taller building next to it. As she focused on the auras, they became clearer, and seemed very familiar.
“The same as the jewelry store…” she said to herself, immediately deciding to alter her course toward them. Taking her hands out of her pockets, she quickly worked her fingers in a particular pattern and uttered the arcane words she needed. Midstep, Liz launched into the air, a gust of wind suddenly flaring up as she flew skyward, blasting at the clothes of those who had been standing around her. None of them seemed to pay any mind to the sudden breeze, and it was just as quickly forgotten by them.
She landed upon the smaller building and dispelled her flight, peering at the lingering auras near the streetside corner of the structure. These were fresh, less than an hour old, and not just the illusion and transmutation auras she had witnessed before, conjuration was involved this time. Looking over the subtle way the auras lingered above and upon the ground, Liz crouched and traced along the surface of the roof. It was teleportation of some type, she decided after a few moments of consideration. Not the kind she had used when she had traveled from the Sanctum along the leyline, but localized, much shorter range, without a dimensional traversal component.
Following the trail that hung in the air, Liz saw that it had moved across the open space of the alleyway below. As she stepped to the edge, a car drove down the alley, turning into the parking garage below the building a couple seconds later. The trail hit the side of the building and went straight up, to the top floor in fact, about twelve floors higher. Sniffing the air again, she caught a peculiar scent. Though dispersed much more than the magical auras, she thought it might have been feline.
She cast her flight spell again and launched skyward, following the trail up the side of the building. She traversed the distance in a couple seconds, slowing and coming to a stop on the open-air side of the balcony railing. A wide glass door stood closed on the other end of the balcony, the blinds closed to hide the room on the inside. It looked like a large apartment from the way the windows were arranged, a penthouse.
Though the air was colder, and a steady breeze blew around her, Liz ignored it as she settled on the balcony and walked toward the door. The aura went straight to the glass doors, and through them. It was still fresh enough that she could see the way the auras clashed with the glass itself, spreading over its surface like someone had dashed neon paint over the smooth surface. Looking down, she noted that there was another teleportation aura just a step beyond the door, fading much faster than the lingering magical residues on the glass. Glass and crystal had a way of holding magical energies much better than most materials, hence why they were used so often in constructing arcane devices.
Unable to get a good view of the room beyond the door, Liz paused and considered her options. She could go astral and step in for a look, but that’d take longer, and she wouldn’t be able to affect anything in the material world if there was someone lingering inside, and her body would be helpless in the material world. Definitely the safer choice since she was fairly sure it was another arcanist she was tracking now, but someone from outside the Sanctum. Biting at her lower lip, she fingered the bell at her neck, wondering if she should check in with Sassy.
After a moment’s consideration, she decided that her mentor would probably just wonder why she didn’t have any more details before calling home, so she decided she would need a look inside before she did anything else. Glancing at the door handles, Liz considered her choices, and quickly performed another spell, targeting the door locks. With a few quick motions of her index finger, the locks clicked open. She reached for the handles and pulled one of them aside.
The scent of some kind of cleaning solution with a piney odor assailed Liz’s nostrils as she eased the curtains aside. The room beyond was dimly lit by several small lights around its periphery, and richly appointed with leather sofas and easy chairs and wooden furniture with glass tops. She saw lights flashing inside a shelf on one wall, and one of those flat TVs she’d been seeing since her return to the world adorned the upper part of the same wall, though the size of it put her in the mind of a movie theatre screen and not a TV. How big a screen did someone need, anyway?
Stepping lightly into the room, Liz followed the magical trail straight through it, then down a hallway, passing by a kitchen that seemed just as fancy as the living room, with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. Her ears strained to hear if anyone was still lingering about, but she heard nothing but the beat of her own heart and faint breathing.
As she neared a wide, open doorway at the end of the hall, her skin suddenly tingled, and the fur on her ears and tail stood on end. Her breath caught in her throat a second later, and she came to a dead stop, feeling sweat suddenly appearing on her brow. “What the hell is that?” she muttered, squeezing her hands into fists to stop them from shaking.
There was a powerful aura lingering in the darkened room beyond, something that overpowered the trail she had been following. Her head swirled suddenly, a wave of dizziness overtaking her and forcing Liz to put her forearm against the wall to steady herself. Whatever it was, it felt…wrong.
Gritting her teeth, Liz shook her head, though it did little to help the strange sensations overwhelming her. She pushed off the wall and struggled forward, eyes narrowed at the chamber beyond. It too was dimly lit, like the rest of the apartment, but as she came to a rest against the frame that arched around the opening, through blurry vision she could see several display cases aligned around the room. The chamber itself was bigger than the living room, one wall lined with old books, but it was the dozen or so displays that she focused on. The central display had a full suit of medieval plate armor, complete with a massive sword and shield propped against it, but the other displays contained smaller relics. She noted that one of the items was a particularly ancient, massive book with Latin text, and another contained a glistening emerald stone set in a silver ring with gold inlays sitting upon a puffy velvet pillow, and another held a set of small figures carved from what she guessed was quartz, arranged atop a well-aged chess board.
Ignoring the other items, Liz focused on where the trail led her, straight to a lingering magical shadow that surrounded the display case furthest from the door. It was like an inky miasma that hovered around the display, distorting the magical residue that covered the front of the glass plate, twisting it around like oil spilling into water. Her breathing was unsteady now as she forced herself to keep breathing while she stubbornly put one foot in front of the other.
She scanned the miasma around the display, then looked inside, and saw a pair of black, velvet-covered stumps that she couldn’t immediately place. Swaying unsteadily on her feet, it finally clicked in her mind that the stumps were like store displays, the kind that held jewelry in the really fancy stores. She stopped a couple feet from the display, breathing in quick gasps, noting that her sweat had turned cold. She saw the outline of a pair of bracelets on the stumps, each a few inches wide.
The dark shadow that hovered around the case swirled and spiraled about. Liz’s head swirled with it, and she swayed on her feet, stumbling forward with a pained cry. Something assaulted her mind, and visions flashed through her brain, images of battlefields, burning bodies, demonic figures tearing through people, destructive spells toppling buildings. All of it whirled in a vortex around a singular figure hovering above it all, their dark cloak billowing in the wind as they flung another ray of black energy at something below them. Liz saw pale, white flesh upon the figure’s arms as they stretched outward, dark energy pulsing around its fists, its wrists adorned with a pair of silver bracelets inset with rubies that flared with hellish energy.
The cloaked figure turned, its face hidden within the dark recess of the hood, but its eyes glowed with a crackling, sickening green energy. Those eyes locked upon Liz’s own, and Liz heard herself screaming as the figure pointed at her. “You!” it snarled, its voice booming like a sharp thunder crack in the stormy skies.
Liz staggered as the visions suddenly ended, her head feeling as if something had stabbed into the deepest part of her brain. She fell forward, catching herself against the display case. One hand grasped the sturdy wooden base, the other the corner of the glass display. As her hand touched the edge of the still-lingering aura upon the glass, the magical residue shifted and distorted, causing the glass itself to spiderweb, then shatter, raining small shards of glass all around her.
“Holy shit!” Liz gasped, holding to the display case for dear life as the room spun around her, using every bit of effort she could muster to keep her stomach from turning inside out and upchucking her dinner.
What had been in the case? Those bracelets she’d seen in the vision? Who was that? A powerful arcanist, but who? What was with all the demons? Had that figure really seen her, or was it just a memory from someone else?
Through the pounding of her heart and the rush of blood through her ears, Liz hadn’t heard what was happening behind her until a pair of heavy feet stomped to the doorway, and a pair of stern sounding voices yelled ‘Freeze!”
Liz’s head jerked around, and she saw a pair of uniformed police officers, their guns pointed right at her. Her vision changed as she finally managed to turn off her magical sight, the room darker, but she suddenly didn’t feel quite as terrible as a few moments before. “Wait…it’s…not what you think…” she croaked as she slowly raised her hands. “Just…chill out…”
Fingers moving in ways that the officers didn’t understand, Liz felt another spike of pain envelop her brain as she tried to cast a spell. She winced and staggered as if she were going to fall. Her magical shielding and flight spells fizzled in her brain, too much for her to manage. Gritting her teeth, Liz continued her finger movements as the cops spread out to either side, approaching her cautiously. Liz muttered another, much simpler incantation, and didn’t feel the same stab of pain in her brain this time.
With the cops only a handful of steps away from her, Liz closed her eyes and released her spell, and the dimly lit room suddenly flared with blinding light. She heard the officers scream, heard one gun hit the floor.
Liz was already moving, opening her eyes a half second later as the burst of light faded. She staggered forward toward the doorway, her balance still off, her brain still in agony. Panting, Liz pushed ahead, somewhere between a stagger and a lurch, bumped off the walls to either side of the hall. She passed the kitchen, groaning as she called to mind the incantation for flight, eyes turning to the still-open doorway she’d entered from. Hopefully she could manage to cast the spell once she was out of the apartment, or at least manage it enough to slow her fall until she was on the street.
A door slammed open to her left, bright light spilling in from the room beyond. Liz caught sight of a tall, slender figure with platinum blonde hair coming through, gun raised. “Freeze right there! SCPD!” the woman screamed at Liz.
Knowing plenty of ways she could handle the order to ‘freeze’ if her magical faculties weren’t all screwed up, Liz never once considered the method the cop wanted. Instead, Liz fell forward, landing on hands and knees behind the leather sofa and scurried toward the open door to the outside. She heard pounding feet coming through the door, more than just the woman who had burst through.
Groaning as she again tried to perform the flight spell, Liz had just started the incantation as she tried to get to her feet beyond the easy chair closest to the door when the breath was knocked out of her. Something landed on her back and pushed her to the floor, and she cried out in surprise and gasped for air as she was pushed to the floor. Whatever it was lingered on her back, and then she felt a knee pressing into her shoulder blades.
“I said ‘freeze’!” shouted the woman in Liz’s ear. “You’re under arrest!”
Liz could only groan in reply, her head still spinning as her arms were jerked behind her and a pair of handcuffs were locked around her wrists. Where had the woman come from? Had she jumped over the sofa? Suddenly feeling a wave of nausea welling up in her, Liz slumped against the hardwood floor with another groan, letting the darkness of unconsciousness take her.
Sassy wasn’t going to be happy when she heard about this…
The plot thickens, and Liz is under arrest! Uh oh!
Bit late this week since I’m on vacation, which is quickly coming to an end on Monday, and I am NOT looking forward to it. Feel like I’ve barely relaxed at all this week due to constant messages and questions from the office.
Anyway, hope you’re enjoying how things are progressing! We’re moving into the home stretch!
See you next week!
