Chapter 13: Execution

Chapter 13: Execution

Callum knew that however the attacks turned out, he would have to be very mobile afterward, and preferably not even in the same state. His gravitykinesis helped with that, especially since hed made himself a really stupid looking flying chair to use instead of his motorcycle. Hed taken an ordinary office chair and bolted on a vertical metal frame to make a sort of shelf above his head. The shelf just had some bags of concrete for mass, so when he used it for lift the chair would just hang straight down.

He used it to ferry components out to each area ahead of time, caching the small things inside utility spaces and the big things he just put caution tape on. Nobody really questioned why a big piece of wooden piling was lying around if it had caution tape on it. Besides, putting them next to telephone poles made them look semi-official.

Callum was pretty sure he could have tried glamouring them but he was risking enough by using teleportation to move them into position near the targets. A thousand yards or so away, sure, but that might well be dangerously close if he wanted to remain unobserved. He had basically one data point for how far a real mage could sense, and he didnt thing Gayle was a good example, so the best he could do was err on the side of caution and hope. Just that much sucked up another of his days, and he had to crash early from simple exhaustion.

Part of the reason he was working himself so hard was to avoid thinking too much about what he was doing. Taking out vampires who had murdered people and who had kidnapped a kid in a fit of passion was one thing, but a cold assassination was something else. Not something that he would have considered in his old life.

He was lying in bed worrying it over in his mind when he suddenly sat upright and fumbled for his laptop. All that planning and he hadnt bothered to check whether all the vampires had actually been doing anything untoward. After seeing one, Callum had just taken it for granted that all the vampires Chester had steered him to were murderers, rather than a political annoyance.

It was a thought that had come far, far too late, but after a few minutes of sleuthing he found that he hadnt made a horrible mistake. The other towns also had recent murders or missing persons, and given the population in each that was exceedingly unlikely. Especially since in all the cases there were no details or suspects, just a rote article from a disinterested reporter.

That relieved his mind enough that he could finally sleep.

In the morning he drove to his staging area, a camp site off in the middle of nowhere, screened by trees. Hopefully it wouldnt matter where he started from, but just in case he had the remainder of his gold and cash and guns bundled up and cached at the bottom of a nearby lake, wrapped in plastic and duct tape.

He teleported his stupid transportation chair outside of the motorhome, swearing to himself that hed come up with something less awful-looking or at least learn to properly smooth out the gravity, and settled in with a map and a GPS-enabled burner phone. He was going to be traveling very fast and the GPS would reflect that, and he didnt want anything of his associated with the locations, but he still hated to have to spend the money. Especially since it was separate from the one he was using to communicate with Chester; hed have to throw away two phones at the end of it, which meant hed be out of magical phones for a while.

Even though hed be using the glamour focus, he took the time to dress himself differently, apply some fake tattoos, and don a hairpiece in order to look different. Callum found it amusing how much time he was spending on makeup as a middle-aged man, solely so he looked different than he did. Then he was off, moving in thirty-second jaunts in the direction of the first town.

He picked the one without a mage because that was the safest for ensuring his plan really did work as intended. He decided to bring along a shotgun with a bunch of mordite ammunition just in case, since it was always good to have extra options when things went badly, but he hoped it wouldnt be necessary. Callum still didnt know how active vampires could be during the day, since all the lore about them was mostly invented, and he didnt want to tangle with one even if it was sleepy.

The cache of materials was still in the duct hed put it in before, and a quick teleport moved it all into the garage he was using as a staging point. The occupant was gone for work, or so Callum assumed, and he didnt want to set things up in the open. Even if there wasnt much to set up, it would look pretty weird to any passers-by. The preparations consisted of eight steel plates, which he put on top of wire holders to raise them off the ground.

Steel plates with cakes of densely-packed thermite on top of each.

His way of thinking was that if a point-blank shotgun round worked on a supernatural, so would that. Especially since he could deliver it directly to them. It also solved his problem of needing to jump portals around and rely on his gun not to jam. Igniting thermite was a little tricky but the internet was full of wonders and had multiple designs using wires and electricity so he could do it all simultaneously.

The stuff had not even been that hard to make, especially since he could just rent some equipment for the day to help with the metal powder. It probably wasnt as good as real commercial stuff, but he didnt want to buy that. He didnt know if he could buy that, and he wasnt interested in stealing anything. Robbing the vamps was one thing, but hurting ordinary folks by taking their stuff was not in his nature.

Callum reached out to find all his targets, shaping a teleport field around each of the plates and their payloads and threading a vis strand through the static ward so he had a connection. It was quite a strain, holding eight inputs and eight outputs, but after all the practice hed put himself through it wasnt unreasonable.

He touched the ignition wire to the terminals of the car battery that hed brought with him, and the thermite popped and began to fizz with sparks as burning magnesium started the process. That was his cue to teleport them directly atop the sleeping vampires faces, thermite-cake-side down.

The steel plate was mostly just there in case he was too slow with the teleport but also because he wanted something to help contain all the heat and sparks and redirect them to where theyd do the most good. Which was to say, directly into the vampires faces. Burning thermite acted quickly, so Callum wasnt actually sure if the vamps had time to scream or make any real sign before it did its work.

Fire alarms started going off, the sprinkler system kicked in, and people started running around, but it was far too late for that. A pile of thermite to the face was as effective as Callum could have ever hoped, but he was glad he didnt have to see it with his actual eyes. Or smell it.

Like the first time, there were some bags of cash and containers of gold, and he grabbed those. He didnt bother with the electronics or the guns, though he wouldnt have said no to more special ammunition, but a few thousand dollars and a few kilograms of gold didnt really take up that much space. He did consider stealing the ward, too, but he didnt have any confidence in being able to shut it down, so he left it be. After one last quick pass to make sure he hadnt missed something incredibly important, he distributed a bunch of his ball bearings to purge the indications of his teleports and started to tidy up.

Callum teleported the wire racks into some restaurants dumpster and added a cleanup bead, then picked up the car battery with one hand and his loot with the other. He wasnt sure that the thralls would be able to find his trail without supernatural aid, but they were probably calling in that aid already so he didnt want to stick around, and simply teleported himself back to his conveyance.

The glamour residue would indicate a mage had been there, but that was probably okay because literally all of them used glamours. It wasnt even his own vis, it was mana, so there was nothing identifying on it. He still would have preferred to clean it up, but his vortex enchantments only worked on his own vis so he just let it be. A few seconds later, he was miles away, and he took the opportunity to turn on his phone and text the number Chester had given him. Just three words, letting him know that the nest was destroyed, then he turned it off again.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

That one had been easy. The other three would be more difficult, because there were mages involved. Mages with shields up, and he had no idea how robust those shields were. That was, frankly, where the whole thing could fall apart. A mage might well be able to track him, though he doubted any of them could move as fast as he could with his weird spatial dragging technique.

There were also more targets in general. More vampires, who had to be killed after the mage, and that meant they might have time to realize what was going on. The thermite-to-the-face technique wouldnt work all that well if they were up and moving about, especially if they were moving supernaturally fast. Callums own reflexes were not good enough to keep up with that kind of speed.

That was really what he was counting on when it came to the other mages. They were still human, still squishy, and still slow, relatively speaking. He was pretty sure they were counting on their wards to warn them of what was going on, and the ones hed seen so far he could bypass. While he was far more uncomfortable with killing humans as opposed to vampires, they were actively helping the vampires murder people. The GAR-sanctioned mages were presumably mercenaries or otherwise willing, but the thralls might be just protection detail and under some kind of coercion, so at least in this case he could probably ignore them.

Although Callum could make do without a vantage point as such, height made his plan easier, so hed perched himself on top of a water tower near the theatre. The big cylinder had a flat top that shielded him from casual observation, and there was enough room there to set out his plates of thermite.

Hed practiced, and holding twelve entry and exit points was too much, so he was going to have to work in sets of six. It shouldnt make a difference, because really, he had gotten quite fast at teleporting, but every second counted. The big wooden piling rested just beyond the thermite plates, and in theory he could try and get that going at the same time, but in practice he could only strain his multitasking so far.

It took Callum a few minutes to make completely sure hed found all his targets. Aside from the mage, of course, who was in an inner room, apparently unfazed by the body count of his employers because he was just sitting there watching television. Being thus distracted didnt seem to impact his ability to keep up the wards, but on closer inspection Callum was pretty sure he was just using a focus for it.

It made sense. Callum couldnt imagine keeping up a complicated spell like that for hours or days on end, and it probably was constructed properly so it took less effort than one of Callums spells. In fact, it probably could run off of some kind of storage like that bracelet from GAR or the unmanned ward, so the mage didnt have to supply it the whole time.

The wards and shield only covered the ground, though, so it was actually easier for Callum to just run a thread of vis over in preparation for teleporting the thermite. He kept a close metaphorical eye on the mage, but didnt get so much as a twitch as the vis thread entered the theater. Callum took a few breaths, knowing the next thirty seconds or so were going to be utterly manic, and touched the ignition wires to the car battery.

Thermite sparked and he teleported the six into place, then grabbed the second set and lit them up, fumbling for a moment with the gloves he was using to insulate himself from the wire. Then he delivered the other six and he busied himself with the piling. After seeing how well it had performed at the first stop, Callum trusted that the stuff would do its job, he just had to take care of the mage.

Hed fastened some two-by-fours in a cross pattern at one end to encourage the thing to not tilt as it fell, though his understanding of lift dynamics was admittedly hazy. Callum wasnt sure how much it weighed, but he was damn glad he could lift it with gravitykinesis instead of his muscles, because it was heavy. He teleported it to the top of his range and angled it so it was facing directly down, then let it drop. That much wood going that quickly picked up a hell of a lot of force.

In the few seconds of freefall, the earth mage had maybe started to stir. His head had turned, at least, and possibly the shield had intensified, but Callum couldnt be certain about that. But he certainly wasnt on guard and alert enough to react properly when a foot-wide diameter portal snapped into existence in the ceiling of the room and a huge chunk of wood came smashing down from three stories up.

Needless to say, the results were messy.

A stone shield did snap into place, reacting either to the mages panic or the actual physical threat, but it wasnt enough to defend against several hundred pounds traveling at something like seventy miles an hour. Actually, Callum wasnt sure that the mage was dead, but the ward collapsed which was good enough for him. He repeated the process of grabbing the valuables and teleported out the wooden piling while he was at it.

Theres no lock or alarm in the world that cant be bypassed, Chester told him. You know that as well as I do.

Yeah Jasper sighed. But the only ward-picking foci I heard of was up in Archmage level stuff that GAR had control over. But this guys got no magic?

Well hes obviously a supernatural, but I guess the details dont matter at this point. Chester waved it aside. Point is, I wasnt expecting anything like this, so Im going to owe him more than a few lessons from Jasper on my behalf. He glanced around at his audience. Id rather not owe him favors for long, I suspect that they could become ruinous if he waited until he really needed them.

You know, hes careful about burner phones and stuff, but I checked on his identities and hes got nobody working for him on the information angle, Lucy said. Nobodys sanitizing or purging any of the data that does accumulate on him. Which isnt much, but still.

Are you volunteering then, Lucy? Chester raised his eyebrows at her. What you do for me is already skirting the edges of what you can get away with while working for GAR. Helping him would be completely compromising yourself.

Eh, I didnt turn out a mage so none of them are going to give me the time of day anyway. Lucy shrugged, but it was a bit of a sore point with her. Not every child of a mage bloodline actually turned out to be a mage. Some were merely magic sensitive, like Lucy, and while they were inside the supernatural world they were barely more than mundanes.

Chester sympathized with them, and that was one reason he employed Lucy and Jasper, but while they both appreciated the work and safety, they were somewhat isolated. Neither of them were shifters or pack, after all, and sympathy went only so far. They just werent equipped for the relationships shifters had with each other.

Im not your dad, Chester said with a shrug. Ill introduce you, but youll have to convince him on your own merits.

Not a problem, boss-man. She gave him a thumbs-up and he rolled his eyes, answering his phone. It was his Alpha from Lewisburg, the second place on Mister Browns hitlist.

Chester here, he answered.

One of the thralls called GAR, so were going to have an agent in our fur soon enough, Alpha Greene told him. Also, weird thing something smashed that mage good. The smell was lumber, pine, aged near some place with sawdust, probably a lumberyard. Id say just a chunk of wood he bought somewhere, yet oddly I couldnt scent where it went or smell a blood trail out.

Thats quite mysterious, Chester said blandly. It was good to know there were some limits to the mans ability to pass without trace, but theyd already guessed he had some ability to suppress scent. Just secure things. Make sure you can account for and verify everyones whereabouts.

Yes, Alpha. Green hung up, and Chester looked around at everyone.

That was faster than we expected, one of the Wolfpack noted.

He left the thralls alive, Chester said. Im not actually sure why, but it does make things more ridiculous. And slightly annoying. Chester shrugged. At least calling GAR means that we can let the mages bear the expense of shipping the thralls back.

The phone on the table buzzed. The text message flashed up on the screen on the far side of the room, a setup that existed mostly because Lucy couldnt keep her hands to herself.

Coren nest done. Two captives transferred to Atkins Automotive employee bathroom.

Oh, hell. Chester stared at the message. The issue wasnt that the third target had been taken care of, it was that there were mundanes involved. Now we need to call GAR. Lisa?

On it, she said, while he rang up his Alpha in Corensville.

Pierre? Send four to Atkins Automotive, theres some mundane witnesses in the employee bathroom. Have everyone else move on the nest. Call them out, and then go in.

Yes, Alpha, Pierre said. He didnt sound enthusiastic, but he didnt know that the vampires were dead. Chester had hinted there were some core pack assets in the vicinity, even if he wasnt supposed to interfere with a regional dispute, just to ensure it didnt sound like he was ordering some suicide charge.

Hed probably call back soon enough, wanting answers Chester couldnt give him. They all had. Mister Browns work was really doing a lot for his mystique, which was fantastic, though really secondary to why hed actually asked for hits on those vampires. He needed to keep his people safe.

Yes, from vampires, Lisa was saying. Your contact is Alexander Pierre. Phone number Chester listened to her rattle off the information to GAR and watched his phone. It was a strangely relaxing war council. When he couldnt do things himself, he found himself climbing the walls from impatience. Normally.

With what Mister Brown was capable of, all he needed to do was wait and tell his people to secure empty buildings. The only worry was if the vampires did manage to catch him, and Chester rather doubted that was going to happen. There were still some strange oddities about the way the man acted, but nobody sane would go up against vampires unless they could outfight one.

His personal phone rang again, and he lifted his eyebrows at the name that appeared for the caller. Certainly, he had been intending for this little operation to get attention, but he hadnt actually anticipated Mister Brown doing all four on the same day. Apparently Chester wasnt the only one who had been impressed.

Chester here, he answered.

Call them off, a voice growled over the receiver.

Well hello to you, too, Vlad, Chester said brightly. The name of the Master of the Minneapolis nest wasnt actually Vlad, it was Antoine Lavigne, but Chester enjoyed needling him.

Call them off, Antoine repeated, with no change in tone.

I dont have any idea what youre talking about, Chester said, infusing his voice with great cheer. Attacking your nests without an official challenge in place would be a violation of the accords. In the same way that establishing the nests in shifter territories was, but Chester wasnt good friends with the local GAR adjudicator the way Antoine was.

Im withdrawing from Carrington, Antoine said, obviously between his teeth. So call them off.

Honestly, its like you dont trust me at all, Chester replied. Though thank you for telling me youre withdrawing from Carrington. I know Alpha Beys will be glad he can relax. While he talked, he reached for the other phone and texted a reply to Mister Brown.

Vamps withdrawing. Cancel fourth.

Dont think Im beat, Chester, Antoine warned. I dont know who it is you got to do this, but when I find them, theyre going to wish GAR had got to them first.

Like I said, Vlad, it would be a violation of the accords if I had someone working for me! As you know, my pack very strictly follows the rules.

Antoine hung up. Chester grinned.