I turned to my wife-to-be. “What do you think, love?”
“If Yoshiko wants to do it, I think she should. It's very important that family be involved in these sorts of things.”
“Okay, Mama, you win. We'll all work on this together, okay?” My gaze softened as I looked at my mother, my sister and my sister-in-law one after the other. I felt nothing but love and acceptance from all around me. My family always had its issues, some of them big enough that I recall honestly worrying if we'd even stay together, but finally we'd reached a point where those just didn't matter any longer.
“I think it would be wonderful to have the wedding here, big sis.” My sister placed her hand on Nicole's and squeezed it lightly. “We could have the ceremony here, with just the five of us.”
“Five and a half,” Nicole put in, patting her very round midsection. “Unless you two plan to get hitched next month, we'll have a little extra to account for.”
“N-no, I think it'll be in January.” I blushed as I felt Misaki stir against me, her ears laying flat and forward as she knew very well what I was about to say. “It'd be nice to have it on the first year anniversary of the day we met.”
“The day you saved my life,” Misaki corrected, “and gave me more than I'd ever dreamed possible. There simply isn't a way to properly express just how much I love you, Karin.”
“Oh, I can give you a few suggestions…” I trailed off, whispering in her nearest ear so that no one else in the room could hear. Misaki blushed fiercely and her ears stood straight up, her tail curling tightly against her back.
So-yi laughed. “Oh, my. Get a room, you two!”
“I'll handle that,” Mama offered. “I don't want the two of you driving back to Seattle after all that alcohol. You're staying the night and that's final.”
“But we have to be at the site at 1100—”
“I don't care. You are
not
driving tonight, Karin dear. I'll wake the both of you up early; I usually get up around six these days. You can take a bath tonight and get up when I do. We'll have coffee together and you'll be on your way.”
It was no use arguing with her when she was like this. “Okay, Mama.”
“That's a good girl. Misaki, do you mind helping me with prepping the guest room? My two daughters from hell can probably manage preparing dinner.”
Nicole stood up. “Oh, I can help also—”
“Oh, no you don't, young lady.” My mother stopped Nicole in her tracks. “You shouldn't be doing anything strenuous with that baby due in six weeks. Go sit down in the living room and one of those useless girls will make you some hot ginger tea.”
Mama grabbed Misaki by the hand and dragged her away, my unfortunate fiancee's tail curling down and tucking between her legs. Nicole couldn't keep a smile off her face as she eased herself into the living room area and slowly sank into the couch in front of the TV.
I glanced at So-yi and shrugged. “Guess we're on dinner duty.”
“Looks that way,” my sister agreed. “How the hell does she always manage to make me feel like I'm a kid again?”
I shivered. “Magic. Scary, evil Mama magic.”
the storm
I wasn't surprised when it started to rain again. The torrential downpour pummeled the tarps sheltering So-yi's perfectly-maintained vegetable garden, the wind whipping underneath and jerking the plastic sheets hard against their moorings.
Alone on the back porch, I lit a cigarette and stared out into the rain. It was coming down so hard and in such large droplets that even the strongest gusts of wind couldn't change the angle. I blew out a plume of smoke and silently watched the falling rain. I suppose it was something of a blessing that no physical evidence had been left at the scenes of the murders with a wash-out like this.
“Karin?”
I didn't bother turning; actually, I felt her presence before she even spoke. The mana bond that sustained Misaki and fed back into my body to keep my injuries on the mend had other effects. Whenever Misaki was near, I could feel her as if she were a part of me.
Which was true, after all.
“I'm going to come in as soon as I'm done with this.” I leaned back against the bench built into the porch, the throbbing pain in my left leg and lower back starting to intensify. The change in pressure caused by the storm sure wasn't doing me any favors.
Misaki walked across the wooden slats and sat down next to me on the bench. Her hair was very slightly damp and she'd braided it tightly, a precaution against her impressively dense mane tangling in her sleep. The brown yukata she wore was identical to the ones we'd worn at the Takeda family home.
“You need to get to sleep if you want to be fresh and ready for work.”
“I know.”
“That means you should stop staring out into the rain and come to bed, love,” Misaki explained in a helpful tone. Ordinarily I would have given her a mock-indignant glare and engaged in some playful teasing, but something stopped me.
“I know,” I repeated, my voice sounding odd in my own ears. I closed my eyes and felt her take my hand in hers. Gentle warmth seemed to flow from Misaki's hands into my own, but I still felt cold. An involuntary shiver ran through me.
“You're afraid to go to sleep.”
I opened my eyes and turned to see Misaki's own eyes wide and worried, her ears drooping just slightly to either side of her head. The regular swish of her tail slowed and stopped.
“Anxious,” I corrected. “I just… I get the feeling that weird mage isn't done with me. I don't know how I know, I just
know
. It's… not pleasant.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way they looked at me—I mean, I couldn't see their eyes or face or expression or anything like that, but I just got the feeling that I was being… fixated on. Like they were staring at me with an endless, infinite hunger in their eyes.”
“That's… uncomfortable,” Misaki murmured.
“To put it lightly.” I nodded and snuggled up closer to her, leaning my head on her shoulder. She and I were very close in height, so either one of us could easily lean on the other.
“Yeah.”
Misaki put her arm around my shoulder and drew me closer. “We'll trust your instincts on this. If the dark mage contacts you again, I can use that to our advantage.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“I can enact a continuous invocation before you go to sleep. If you experience another sending, the invocation will allow me to track them. We'll know where the spell originated, and with that, be able to find the spell's caster.”
I puffed on my smoke and let out a long, slow breath. Predictably, the anxiety was starting to recede. I was the sort of person who always felt most anxious when she didn't know what to do; having a game plan helped my state of mind immeasurably.
“You think it's related to the case?”
Misaki nodded down at me. “I do. The timing is too convenient, as you already pointed out to Star.”
I sat up, pulling out from under Misaki's embrace as I took a few final puffs off my dwindling cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray.
“If you're right—and you usually are—then this could give us our first major lead on the case. Come on, I'll go get ready for bed and you can do whatever weird magicky stuff you need to do.”
Misaki giggled and gave me a dirty look. “Weird magicky stuff, huh? I'll have you know, love, that my 'weird magicky stuff' was the only thing that kept you from being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life. You really should be more thankful, you know.”
“I'm not likely to forget any time soon.” My thoughtful expression softened as I gazed on my soon-to-be wife. “I love you, Misaki, and I am
very
thankful for everything you do and everything you are.”
“Y-you say the sweetest things,” she managed, her cheeks stained a bright crimson.
“I try my best.”
I walked back through the open sliding glass door and headed for the guest bathroom. Unlike the Takeda house, my sister's home was Western-designed through and through and thus unfortunately did not have a real bath. I would be unfortunately faced with the supremely unsatisfying choice between a bath so shallow it barely reached the tops of my thighs or a shower.
Considering how late it was, I decided on the shower. I stripped down quickly and stepped into the stall. So-yi's house had obviously been built at least thirty years ago, because all the bathroom fixtures were manual. It took me a few seconds to realize that there was no control panel with temperature and pressure selectors.
I stood out of the way of the cascade of water from the shower head, waiting until it warmed up—another thing I wasn't used to doing, but something I remembered from when we were kids. Once the water wasn't so cold I'd turn into an ice cube, I stepped under the flow and washed up quickly. Lingering in the shower wasn't a luxury I could afford.
When I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, rubbing my hair with a towel, Misaki had already begun preparations. She sat silently in the center of the guest room, her legs crossed in the lotus position, her eyes closed. The focus necessary to perform such an invocation was not insignificant; I knew she was meditating to draw herself inward, sharpen her mind to a razor's edge.
Making sure to be as quiet as possible, I climbed into bed, tossing the towel aside. The guest room in So-yi's house was spacious but largely empty except for a dresser, a coat rack and a queen-size bed that was roughly similar to the one Misaki and I shared at home. The mattress was a bit too soft, but it was only for one night.
I didn't anticipate getting much sleep, anyway. If the visions came again, the unknown mage's casting would wake me. I drew the covers up over me, feeling more than a little disappointed that I'd be sleeping alone tonight. Misaki had no choice but to remain awake and in a meditative state for the entire night in order to flush out our quarry.
My eyes started to flutter and sleep came quickly and easily to me. The dark and unconscious oblivion stole over my mind as I drifted off. My last waking perception was of Misaki's scent, a faintly sweet smell of flowers.
The deep, dark blackness of sleep was interrupted by a sharp tingling sensation that seemed to emanate from within me, but not from my physical body. My eyes flew open and I turned my head, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. It was 4AM; I'd managed to get almost four hours of sleep before something happened.
Misaki was still sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, but her eyes opened and she let out a slow, deep breath. I sat up in bed and met my fiancee's eyes.
“There was only an instant of contact before it was aborted,” I said, anxiety coloring my tone. “I think it's safe to say they knew we were monitoring them. Did you—?”
“Yes. I found her. It doesn't matter how brief the psychic link was.”
“Her?” I echoed.
“I was able to touch her mind and read her sense. I could feel her identity—as a human woman. We're not dealing with a specter or a spirit or even a fused abomination like that of Lord Isao, but a human mage.”
Misaki stood up and stretched, her tail curling up toward her back as she worked the stiffness out of her muscles. After having sat perfectly still without any movement for several hours, I didn't doubt that she felt a little sore.
“Where is she?”
“In our city,” Misaki answered. Her expression was pensive rather than angry. “I can track her through the loose mana with an invocation of finding, but I don't think it will be necessary. Her soul burns with such power that
not
noticing it would be more difficult.”
“Do you have any other information?”
Misaki nodded and sat on the edge of the bed next to me. “Yes. She is very powerful, but her magecraft feels strange. She exhibits no specific hallmarks associated with known arcane houses, past or present. She's young—at least physically, though I get the feeling her soul is much older than her body. I can't discern any other identifying traits, but I
can
get a fix on her.”
“So what do we do now?” I wondered.
“We find her and get answers.”
shadows
Misaki sat in the passenger seat of my car, her thumbs tapping lightly against the screen of her phone. I gave her a questioning look as I settled in behind the wheel and re-adjusted the seat for my leg length.
“I'm notifying Star of our intentions,” she explained.
“Good thinking. We're almost to the scene.” I turned the key and felt the faint vibrations as the electric motor whirred to life. It still felt strange for the car to make so little noise while under power. I suppose I'd gotten used to the noisy burner hybrid I used to drive, with its worn-out batteries and penchant for choosing to fire up the internal combustion engine at the slightest provocation.
I pulled out of the refueling station's parking lot and into traffic, merging smoothly with the other vehicles heading for the city. We'd crossed over into Washington not long ago and stopped to top off the car's hydrogen reserves. One of the great things about a fuel cell car was just how infrequently that had to be done; the last time I filled it up was well over a month ago. It definitely helped that cracked H
2
fuel was dirt-cheap compared to farmed ethanol or, even worse, diesel fuel reprocessed from organic waste.
Even with traffic to contend with, it didn't take us long to get to where we had to go. Misaki's eyes were glued to her phone, examining the maps that Star gave us during the briefing. We were closing in on one of the crime scenes.
“We're getting closer,” Misaki noted, her ears flicking to and fro as she concentrated her mystic senses on the area around us. Her expression became thoughtful.
“What is it?”
“I can feel the mage, but her signature is… indistinct. Almost as if she's flickering in and out of the material world.”
I popped the lid on my own milk coffee and took a long gulp off the icy cold beverage, keeping my eyes on the road. The auto-drive option would have added another ten thousand to the car's price tag. I felt that was a little bit steep just so I could be lazy behind the wheel.
Misaki closed her eyes and her fingertips began to inscribe glowing runes into the air before her, casting a more powerful probe—an invocation of finding. It would give her a much more precise location but with the chance of potentially warning the target that they were being tracked.
I felt the strange pressure of magic being worked as she pushed her awareness out and into the world, seeking the mysterious mage's unique astral signature rather than trying to discern her passage through the distortions in ambient loose mana.
A long, quiet moment passed before Misaki's eyes flew open, alarm written all over her face. She turned to me, her eyes wide. “Our quarry is at the crime scene. She isn't moving or casting spells.”
“So she
is
waiting for us,” I muttered as I turned the wheel and rounded a corner, heading down the empty street. We were in the middle of a warehouse district, a rather decrepit and nearly abandoned section of town. Other than the fact that one of the AEGIS operatives had been murdered here, it was unremarkable.
“Karin, you're not planning to fight her, are you?”
I shook my head. “Not if I can avoid it, no.”
“But you're going to go confront her anyway?”
“Yes.”
Misaki let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I can't convince you to let Star's people handle this one?”
“It wouldn't do any good and you know it. If we don't show, she'll probably just fade back into the shadows. You're the only one who can track her, so we're the only ones who can deal with this.”
“I thought you'd say that.” My fiancee's tone was considerably less hostile than I'd expected. “I'm going to send an emergency coded message to Star requesting backup at the crime scene. If fighting starts, we shouldn't be fighting alone for very long.”
I didn't respond to that as I pulled the car into a wide-open lot. It looked like it had once been a loading and unloading zone for one of the warehouses, but the warehouse in question had been demolished years ago. A fenced-off area of dirt and piles of broken concrete shot through with twisted lengths of rebar dominated the lot's widest side. The asphalt was cracked and broken and riddled with potholes.
I stopped the car, not bothering to find an actual parking spot. Misaki unbuckled her seat belt and reached beneath the passenger seat, drawing out a black bundle that contained my automatic pistol.
“Thanks.” I ejected the magazine, checked the chamber, made sure the safeties were all engaged. I shoved the mag back into the weapon and pulled the slide back, cycling the action and chambering a round. I had twelve MQ rounds in the weapon and two more fully-loaded mags ready to go.
I stepped out of the car, my weapon held at the ready. My left leg felt wobbly, but I'd spent an hour before we left working it through several stretches and exercises, hoping the extra care would reduce my reliance on the cane. So far it seemed to be working, but I definitely didn't want to get into any kind of direct physical confrontation.
Misaki stood beside me on the right, her ears perked up and swiveling around to try and catch even the faintest sound. I didn't bother with the Relic at this point—against non-specter enemies, the sword was far more of a hindrance than a help considering my mediocre skill. Against a magic-user it would be of little use as the opponent would do their best to keep us both at range. The MQ rounds in my pistol would be a very different story.
The empty lot was eerily quiet. I was sure our quarry was fucking with us at this point; Misaki's eyes were narrowed and I knew without asking that she could feel the mage's presence here as clearly as if she were standing right in front of us.
“There's no reason to keep hiding,” I called out. “We know you're here.”
My vision became fuzzy as a spot about twenty meters away began to waver and distort. I recognized the invisibility charm that Misaki often used to hide her primal features and wasn't at all surprised to see the warped space reform itself into a dark figure—the same shadow-cloaked figure I saw in the dream.
I kept my gun hand limber and ready to snap up and fire at a moment's notice. I didn't want to point the thing at our mysterious mage just yet—not until I was certain this would inevitably end in violence.
The figure became more visible as the cloak of shadows faded away and I was finally able to get a good look at her true form.
She was tall and slender, towering over me by a good ten centimeters, and wore a stylish and well-tailored black suit over a neat and tidy black blouse. The whole ensemble was rather masculine in design, but I wasn't about to say it didn't look fantastic on her. Such a study in black was only marred by a brilliant red necktie that stood out starkly, almost jarringly so.
The mage began to walk toward us, her feet clad in hard-soled leather boots. I could see her face, now: expressionless and fair, with clear, colorless irises and short-cropped black curly hair. Her facial structure possessed youthful feminine beauty, but her clothing, hairstyle and lack of any makeup lent a great deal of androgyny to her natural maiden's features.
She would have been considered stunningly attractive by the standards of either gender or none. I wasn't one to let a pretty face distract me, though. My gun came up and I kept the weapon pointed directly at the mage's head.
“No further,” I barked, unwilling to play peacefully any longer. “Who the fuck are you and why do you keep messing with my dreams?”
The mage stopped in her tracks. I glanced at Misaki and was unsurprised to see the same uneasiness written all over her face and in the position of her ears. We both knew that things were about to get really bad.
“You will become
more
, Karin Ashley.” The dark woman's gray eyes seemed to flicker and burn with an incomprehensible power. “Do not fight it. Do not fear it.
Welcome
it. Your transcendence will begin.”
Misaki gave me a warning look. “Karin, something isn't right.”
“Tell me something I don't know,” I muttered. My eyes narrowed at the mysterious mage as I placed my finger on the trigger. “If you don't want to get filled full of lead, you better start talking—and make it fast.”
The mage stood there, her face as serene and empty as it had always been, but she stared at me with such longing that I was momentarily thrown off-balance. Calmly she extended her left hand and snapped her fingers. Black runes appeared in midair as if they'd been summoned into being by the mage's will alone.
Misaki's shocked expression mirrored my own as black, crawling shadows emerged from fissures that formed in reality. She reacted as quickly as only a spirit could, tracing out the runes to a potent defensive spell.
The familiar golden shield materialized only a split-second before the storm of deadly magic slammed into it. Misaki's signature defensive barrier could deflect dozens of bolts of miasma and far more in terms of mundane damage, but the mysterious mage's spell tore through the shield as if it were made of tissue paper.
Misaki ducked and managed to avoid most of the blasts, but two struck her and sent her careening across the parking lot. She got up immediately, though, and I knew she wasn't truly hurt. I took advantage of the mage's momentary focus on Misaki and fired a rapid three-shot burst. At a distance of less than ten meters, there was little chance I'd miss.
The mage's flat eyes narrowed as she regarded me. Her form wavered and blinked out of existence, reappearing
behind
me. I tried to dodge the attack I knew was coming, but my leg just didn't want to work with me. Rather than leap away, I ended up stumbling instead. It wasn't enough, wasn't nearly fucking enough.
Crackling black doom coalesced around the mage's left hand as she clenched it into a fist. Under ordinary circumstances I'd be able to turn my stumble to my advantage and sweep my opponent's feet out from under her, but the pain that seared the nerves in my leg made that kind of counterattack impossible.
The black-shrouded fist slammed into my back and detonated. Agony beyond any I'd felt in months exploded in the small of my back and I felt my body lift up and fly through the air. My body crashed into the asphalt and tumbled, acquiring several more scrapes and bruises before I came to a stop.
“Karin!”
I was still conscious somehow. I struggled to get to my feet, but my bad leg just wouldn't listen to me. My gun arm came up and I fired again and again, not really aiming very carefully, just laying down suppression fire to keep the mage away.
Then Misaki was beside me. Her ears flattened back against her head and rage kindled within her, so fiercely that I could feel it burning even above the pain that wracked my battered body.
A searingly-hot wall of blue-white flame sprang into existence between us and the shadowy mage. I'd never seen Misaki's spell-flame glow with blue heat; she must have poured incredible amounts of mana into it. The heat was so intense that the asphalt beneath and around the wall of fire turned molten, beginning to run and glow orange with its own borrowed heat.
The wall of flames seemed to give the mysterious mage pause. She took a step back; through the barrier of fire I could see a hint of emotion cross her face. Annoyance flickered in the mage's eyes as a series of dispelling glyphs appeared. Huge holes opened up in Misaki's fire wall, but the pavement below was still molten yellow-orange and radiating deadly amounts of heat.
I took advantage of our opponent's momentary hesitation and fired several more shots, the slide locking open on an empty magazine. Without thinking, I discarded the empty mag and slammed a fresh one into place. The slide came down, chambering a new round, and I started firing again.
The mage seemed to flicker repeatedly as her body phased in and out of the material world, avoiding each and every shot with contemptuous ease. Misaki redoubled her efforts as well, sending mote after mote of magical fire, attempting to time her shots between my own and catch our target between phase shifts.
The mage lifted her hands and the barest hint of a smile crossed her face as Misaki's spell-flame warped and distorted. My eyes widened in shock as the flames gathered and concentrated into a bright-burning point of energy held between the mage's palms.
“This is going to be
really
bad!”
Misaki's train of thought paralleled mine; she extinguished her spell-flame and instead began tracing the runes that would bring up a powerful forward defensive shield. The golden shimmering barrier sprang into being a fraction of a second too late. I curled my body tightly, hoping to avoid the worst of the inevitable explosion.
The abandoned parking lot was converted into a miniature hell on Earth as the mysterious mage sent Misaki's captured fire right back at us. The fiercely-glowing sphere of flame doubled and redoubled in size before it detonated. Shock waves blasted me harder against the cracked asphalt. On the ground I'd avoided the worst of it as the heat from the blast rose upward, but Misaki was a different story.
I felt my blood freeze in my veins. Misaki's clothing had been shredded, her body riddled with patches of partially charred flesh and melted fabric. Half of the hair on her head and the fur on her tail was scorched and fell away as she moved, but her eyes were still hard as gemstone. Simply viewing the horrible injuries my fiancee suffered tore at my heart. I sternly reminded myself that she was not human, that she could shrug off considerably more punishment without lasting harm, in a desperate attempt to keep my resolve from draining away.