I opened the driver's side door to my car and started the vehicle up, the car's four electric motors humming to life. Misaki and Amber piled in, with Amber in the back seat, the length of the Shattered Sword nearly stretching from one side to the other.
I hit the accelerator and backed the car out of the garage at high speed. I wrenched the wheel around, then shoved the brakes on. Now facing the proper direction, I pressed the pedal down to the floor. Tires squealed in protest, but the EV's high-performance motors were more than up to the task of rapid acceleration.
The car shot across the tarmac and onto the narrow service road that snaked for several kilometers through the forest. I glanced in my rear-view mirror and was completely unsurprised to see the exterior of the Luna base erupt in flames as the AEGIS gunships closed to weapons range and unleashed hell.
“We're clear,” Amber said. I could hear the intense relief in her voice. “You should slow down; the service road doesn't stay very straight for very long.”
Easing off the accelerator a bit, I took the first set of turns without issue. By the time I'd accustomed myself to driving down a narrow road this winding, I could no longer see the signs of battle behind us.
“The gunships came in, dumped their rockets, then probably established a defensive perimeter,” Amber surmised. “They'll do what we did, drop on the roof of the guardhouse to gain the high ground.”
“They're not going to win this battle. There has to be close to two hundred demons in the forest.” I tightened my grip on the wheel with my left hand and leaned over to open the glove compartment with my right. Without taking my eyes off the road, I drew out a fresh pack of cigarettes and held it between my knees to remove the wrapping.
Misaki gave me a dirty look. “I could have done that for you, love.” She grabbed the pack out from between my knees, drew one of the smokes out, and lit it with a tiny spell-flame before handing it to me.
“Thanks.”
“You really should keep your attention on the road,” she admonished me. She peeked around the edge of the seat at Amber. “Where do you want us to drop you off? It'd take almost a half a day of driving to go around the mountains to the evacuation site.”
“If you can just get me to the nearest town, I can arrange for transport to the site no problem.”
Misaki frowned at me. “What about Meilin? She went with the evacuees on the tram, too.”
“What about her?” Amber scoffed. “Meilin's a big girl. She can take care of herself—and I daresay take care of all the people she helped evacuate. Besides, I think she might be interested in sticking around a bit longer. Won't have to show up at the office tomorrow, that's for damn sure.”
I stiffened as I realized the awful implications of Amber's comment.
“Oh, that's right.” I sighed a deep, despairing sigh. “We're all fired now.”
parting ways
Two hours of driving later, we arrived at the nearest town, though calling it such was really stretching a point. It
did
have cell towers, and I suppose that's all Amber really needed to make arrangements for herself. The three of us sat around a table at an all-night diner attached to the town's generic traveler's motel.
After we arrived, Misaki hid all the weapons, including the Shattered Sword, in the trunk of my car. The last thing we needed at this point was for the police to get involved. Misaki sat to my right, her ears and tail cloaked again through her magic.
For once, I wasn't upset that she hid them. Having gone for a week on barely enough mana to sustain her life, she seemed to derive an unusual amount of pleasure from casting spells for any reason.
The waiter came by the table and we all ordered generic breakfast plates that seemed just as ordinary as the diner, the motel and the town they were all inside. Amber stuffed her phone in a pocket and leaned back in the squeaky faux-leather booth.
“I've got people coming to pick me up.” She took a drink from the small glass of complimentary ice water and let out an exhausted sigh. “I wish I could just crash at the motel with the two of you, but I have to get to the rally point as soon as I can.”
I was reasonably alert, but I could see both Misaki and Amber looked about ready to pass out right there at the table. No surprise there; I'd been stuck in a magically-induced suspended animation for a week and still felt more rested than I had in years.
“Oh, and since you did mention being fired and all,” Amber continued, a sly look in her eyes, “I might be able to help you two out. We're always looking for good people to bring into the organization.”
“I don't know.” I contemplated my glass of water and took a sip—it was good, as was to be expected from the snowmelt reservoirs in the extreme northern part of California. “I'm not entirely sure that our goals coincide.”
“I can convince Elias to bring you in,” Amber pressed. “We can pay you a little—not much, we're not like the agency with more money than we know what to do with—and just be there to help us out when we need it.”
I was not surprised she wanted to bring us over to Luna's side, especially considering how badly their resources were depleted by the demon attacks. I didn't know much about Amber's organization, though it was still more than I'd known about AEGIS when I agreed to sign on with them.
“What do you think, love?”
Misaki's ears flicked slightly. “I like Amber and her group. They're good people who helped me save you. And Meilin will probably take a more integrated position with them after all this.”
“Yeah, that's already happened. Elias, damn his hide, offered her a permanent position as a control officer.” The swordswoman's voice was at odds with her words, though; it sounded to me like she was rather pleased with Meilin's new arrangement.
“How much?” I asked bluntly.
Amber named a figure. I gave her a look that told her in no uncertain terms what I thought of that figure.
“I told you it's not much, but it's really the best we can do,” the Swordlady hedged. “We aren't operating with the same kind of massive corporate fronts that the other houses use.”
Suppressing a grimace was difficult. This was just great. I'd be making even worse money than I made at the Records & Licensing Agency. As if the demons appearing and trying to eat me weren't bad enough.
“Guess you spend all the big bucks on acquiring those musty old tomes,” I quipped, trying to sound casual and nonchalant. I don't think it worked. “Just how deep
are
Luna's pockets, anyway?”
Amber shrugged, deflecting my attempt to negotiate higher pay before I could even begin. “That's not my department, so I'm not entirely sure. I can assure you, though, that we don't use certain types of coercion that the other houses are infamous for. Set your mind at ease on that one.”
“I was more wondering about all the fantastic toys you had to play with during the shitstorm we just left behind,” I grumbled. A slender elbow jabbed me in the side and I let out a yelp in protest. “Hey!”
Misaki glared at me. “You still haven't even thanked her!”
“No need,” Amber said with a slight smile. “The information we were able to get from that base was more than worth the losses. In time, Luna should be able to develop our own version of AEGIS's Spell Engine technology.”
I blinked. “But you lost your entire headquarters.”
“We knew we'd be abandoning that place soon enough. The demons just wouldn't leave us alone.” Amber sipped at her glass of water and we all fell silent as the waiter returned bearing a tray with our late-night meals. I stared at my plate of country-fried steak and eggs with an eager gleam in my eyes.
After the waiter departed, I swallowed a bite of breaded and deep-fried beef coated in runny egg yolk and took a drink from my glass of orange juice. I was pretty pleased that my first meal since waking up would be something so delicious—it surprised me a bit that this seemingly-ordinary little motel diner had such a skilled cook on the overnight shift.
“What happened to the library?” Misaki inquired.
“We loaded it out on the tram, too. It was actually lucky that the disaster happened when it did—many of our people were off-site at the time, so the trams had plenty of room for the archives.”
“You got
all
of that out? That quickly?”
The Luna swordswoman shook her head. “No, Elias ordered the archive broken down and prepped for transport the day before. He can, well… he has some knowledge in how to determine what might happen beforehand.”
I frowned at that. Misaki once told me that even with magic, literally seeing the future was impossible. Predictions
could
be made with reasonable accuracy by using statistics, probability and invocations that vastly increased the diviner's mental acuity and computational ability, but that wasn't clairvoyance by any means.
Probably in the past diviners would shroud the whole thing in mysticism and make it seem like they were communing with higher beings to see the future. It definitely sounded more impressive than temporarily upgrading your brain into a mana-powered supercomputer.
“Any opinions about what Blondie and the creepy lady said?” I asked the two of them, trying to figure out what our next move would be.
“The approaching dawn and darkness stuff?” Amber's expression became pensive. “I really don't know—again, that sort of thing isn't my job. I usually just break the things that try to break our things.”
“Elias said that more and more specters are rebuffing their bindings,” Misaki murmured, keeping her voice low. There wasn't much chance of us being overheard in here, though. At this hour we were practically the only people in the diner and I'd picked a booth as far away from the counter and kitchen as possible.
“The mage… Eirene… made it seem like the demons are actually specters who forcibly bound the bodies of living creatures to them.”
“Only animals, though.” Misaki popped a bite of sausage in her mouth and chewed before continuing. “That makes sense if you think about it—notice it was all predatory animals, nothing considered all that close to sapience.”
“It's not like they're being possessed,” I agreed. “There's no sentient mind to get in the way, so they just… hop on in and hijack the body? Since none of them had a distinct miasmic core, I think it's reasonable to assume the merging is permanent.”
Neither Amber nor Misaki had anything to add to that. I sat there for a moment in silence, focusing on my food and my stomach still demanding further sustenance. I cleaned the last bit of pepper gravy and egg yolk with a piece of toast and set back in the booth, feeling delightfully full and happy.
“We'll end up seeing enough of them to verify that soon enough.” Amber sighed, but I wasn't fooled. Misaki and I were worried, but she looked as if she were eagerly anticipating the coming whatever. Regardless of whatever vague shit Eirene or Nergal may have said, we all knew we'd be seeing lots more demons.
“Yeah, and now we don't even know what their goal is. At least with summoners, the specters were just tools of human masters—with ordinary and predictable human desires for wealth, power, control, vengeance… the usual.”
I felt a coldness start to blossom within my gut, but I focused on the Relic shard embedded in my chest. The warmth that radiated outward from the mana-infused metal seemed to envelop my spirit in a soothing embrace.
Amber's phone chirped. She glanced at the screen and smiled. “Looks like my ride's here. It's been fun, but now it's back to work for me. Take care of yourselves—relax, get laid, get some sleep. Tomorrow's a new day.”
Misaki blushed faintly, eliciting a chuckle from me and Amber both. I took out my phone and tapped out the passcode to unlock the trunk of my car.
“Take all the stuff out of the trunk when you go. It belongs to your group, anyway.”
“Of course. Think about what I said. You can get in touch with us through Meilin. The day-to-day probably won't be that much different for the three of you—except you'll be working with me.”
“Sounds like a great team in the making,” I commented. “You've got the brawn, Misaki's got the utility, Meilin's got the brains. I'm just not too sure what I'm going to bring to the table.”
“The sexiness, of course,” Misaki put in, giggling.
“Come on, I'm being serious here. I never learned how to use the Relic properly before it blew up. I'm going to make a major effort to learn how to use my new abilities as soon as possible, preferably
before
we really need them again.”
“Then consider that your first assignment with our organization,” Amber said. Misaki nodded in agreement, her invisible tail swatting against my leg.
“I haven't actually
agreed
to join you yet,” I corrected, scowling.
“Misaki wants to join.” The Swordlady crossed her arms over her chest. “That's enough to tell me that you're going to join, no matter what indignant noises of protest you might make.”
I sighed and collapsed to the table. “Yeah. It's not like we have much choice, really. Got to pay the bills and all.”
“You
could
just get a normal job.”
“After all this? No thanks. I'd be bored out of my mind.”
Amber grinned as she slid out from the booth. “See you two down the line. Check your trunk before you two head off to bed or go screw or whatever.”
Misaki and I watched the Swordlady stop by the counter to settle our check before she walked out the diner door and headed for the waiting car that would take her back to her people.
“Do you think we're going to have a problem with…?”
I turned to Misaki and shook my head. “I think Blondie was telling the truth. I don't think he's going to fuck with us for now. Whatever his plan is now, we probably benefit it simply by killing those demon things.”
“I don't like being used,” Misaki growled. “The agency sure did a lot of using us without our knowledge.”
“No kidding. I hope Amber's people are better about that.” I stretched my arms high above my head and yawned. “In a situation like this, how are we supposed to tell who is on what side? Blondie thinks something really bad is coming and that the agency is the only thing that can stop it. The creepy lady thinks something really great is about to happen and wants to make sure nobody gets in the way.”
“Elias mentioned something significant is changing in the world, too.”
“Three important people all referencing a major shift in the world—and if Eirene is to be believed, it's my fault.” I closed my eyes and sighed. “I mean, I absolutely don't regret killing Isao Tsukimura, but… it's just one of those things. Butterfly effect or whatever.”
Misaki shook her head. “There was no possible way you could have known. Whatever happens, this isn't your fault.”
“Yeah, I guess you're right,” I conceded. “Blondie mentioned 'darkness.' Eirene mentioned 'dawn.' Both seem to be projecting their own beliefs about the future, but Elias was neutral.”
Misaki's ears twitched. “The Archivist did strike me as the cautious type.”
“A major change generally benefits some and hurts others,” I surmised. “It's possible that Eirene and Blondie are both wrong and both right.”
“I guess.” Misaki yawned and gave me a very specific sort of look. “Ready to head up to our room yet?”
“Amber said we should check the trunk first. I'm hoping it's a change of clothes.”
“I'll go find our room.”
I stood up and walked toward the door. My left leg wasn't hurting nearly as bad as I would have expected after the bullshit I just went through. The car was parked near the motel's dumpster corral, hidden away from casual observance. Probably was a wise decision since Amber had to move all the weapons out of the trunk, which was closed, but still unlocked.
I popped the latch—Amber took the Shattered Sword and all the other weapons, but in their place was a large black duffel. I unzipped the bag and checked inside.
“The universe grants my wishes; two full changes of clothes for each of us, underwear, shoes and jackets included. Looks like something else, too…” I shifted the clothing aside and was somewhat more surprised and impressed to find a pistol nearly identical to the one I'd lost to AEGIS after our encounter with Eirene.