Chapter 127 – Amateur Hour

  “No, I can’t make a magical potion that changes your body parts. It is something you will have to talk to a flesh shaper about or maybe get in with your doctor.” – Sam talking to Sif about her ears.

  Sam sighed and kicked a small chunk of broken concrete that was on the sidewalk. He watched in satisfaction as it bounced along in a mostly straight line before veering to the left and falling right into a sewer drain. The only thing better in his opinion would be if he had been close enough to hear the plop as it hit the water below. Still, it helped his mood a little as he walked back to his car.

  The reason he was in such a foul mood was that his favorite little shop he bought ingredients in had a sign posted about a ‘temporary closure’. He had just been there a week before and the owner hadn’t mentioned anything. At this point he was just hoping that everything was alright for the old hippy lady and nothing bad had happened.

  As he passed by an alley, Sam glanced down it, debating on taking the shortcut through it to get to the parking garage. He then stepped toward it, deciding to take it but stopped a moment after seeing a trio of people lurking in the shadowed alcove of a side entrance to one of the buildings.

  Without a second’s hesitation, Sam just kept walking along the sidewalk, deciding not to risk anything and take the long way. He was pretty confident that nothing would happen, and the people were just on break from the restaurant that shared the alley.

  “Probably the bus boys taking a smoke break.” He muttered under his breath.

  He passed by a few other pedestrians and several of the tourists that frequented that part of Seattle. Nobody seemed to really notice him, dressed as he was in ‘hipster’ clothes with a beanie, old jean jacket and a couple scarves. It was the perfect time of year to wear several layers and essentially have multiple outfits on hand at all times. He still thought it would be better if he had one of Kurt’s storage rings, but Piper was holding that one at the moment.

  Sam stopped at a crosswalk a moment later and took the time to look around as he waited for the light to change. Naturally there were a few other people stopped near him, also waiting on the light. Unnaturally, there was another trio of men stopped some twenty feet away, staring at him as they tried to blend in and lean against the building next to them.

  Letting his eyes keep roaming like he didn’t notice, Sam fought the urge to smirk at the group. If they wanted to blend in, then maybe they shouldn’t be wearing all black and sunglasses in the perpetually cloudy city. That little ‘uniform’ also helped him pick out the two others on the other side of the street who were also looking his way.

  Thinking quickly, Sam changed his plans. Normally he would cross the street then turn right to get to the parking garage on the next street over. That would be a bad plan since it would mean he was in a much less crowded area and completely exposed. So, he went with his next best option.

  When the crosswalk went from a red hand to a white person shape, Sam went with the crowd. He passed where he would normally turn and went three shops down to a small bookstore and coffee shop. He had been there before and while the book selection was dull, the teas they had were rather nice in his opinion. But what he really wanted was the bathrooms they had in the back hall.

  He quickly went to the counter and ordered a coffee while watching the five people stop outside. A moment later he excused himself from the counter and went to the hallway leading to the stairs and bathrooms. The sound of a bell rang and he saw a couple of the men enter in the reflection off a glass cabinet.

  Sam walked right past the men’s room and into the women’s. It just worked out that nobody was in there and he was able to step into an empty stall where he began to strip off layers while changing his body. This time Sam changed into an overly skinny woman with dark hair which she put up in a bun.

  The jacket was shucked off and hung up on the door exposing the hooded sweater underneath. The hat and scarf were shoved into the sleeves of the jacket which was then rolled once before being tied around her waist with the tan interior showing on the outside.

  There wasn’t anything Sam could do about her shoes, but she reverse cuffed her jeans, showing more ankle and making them look more like capris. When she was done with that, she unzipped her sweatshirt to show the yellow t-shirt under it.

  After roughly a minute, Sam had completely transformed from a well-muscled young man of middling height and bright blond hair to a middle aged whisp of a woman with a dark, messy bun. The rest of the disguise was all in the act. If she looked a certain way, then she was a certain way, and nobody would be the wiser for it.

  She opened the stall door and walked out, stopping at the sink to wash her hands because bathrooms were gross whether she used them or not. The water and damp hands would also help sell the bit.

  Sam opened the bathroom door and nearly ran right into someone. Someone wearing a black jacket and black jeans with sunglasses resting atop his head. “Oops, ‘scuse me. I didn’t see ya there.” Sam said in a mousey tone, her voice squeaking a little as she spoke.

  “Um, ah… Sorry.” The man stammered and backed up, bumping into a second goon right behind him.

  “Oh, having a party out here.” Sam chuckled while sliding past. “All in line for the boys room?”

  “Something like that.” The first man said and tried to peak in the open door of the women’s bathroom. “Did you see a young man in there? Taller, blond hair and wearing a blue coat?”

  Sam shook her head. “Sorry, just me.” Then she gave a rather offended look, scrunching her eyebrows and raising her voice a little. “Why exactly are you looking for a young blond boy?”

  “Ah! It’s not like that!” The second man stammered while the first turned bright red from the collar up.

  “I don’t judge but maybe you should find a more appropriate place for your… activities.” Sam scolded in a nasally tone.

  “Y-yes ma’am.” The first man stammered.

  Sam didn’t stick around, turning on her heel and walking out to the front of the store where she grabbed her drink off the counter before exiting the store. She walked along the sidewalk, stopping once to look in a window of the secondhand shop next to the bookstore. She saw one of the men standing outside the bookstore but he was focused on the alley next to him more than door.

  Not wanting to push her luck, Sam walked around the corner and made for her car. It was only a couple blocks to the parking ramp and she would be there in only a few minutes. Thankfully it was cool and damp enough that almost everyone was hustling to get from place to place. Still, she kept her eyes open, looking for more people following her or waiting to ambush her.

  As she walked, she kept one hand on her scalding hot coffee and the other wrapped around the grip of her J-frame 32 magnum in her pocket. If someone tried to grab her, it would be burn by coffee then burned by muzzle flash for the perp.

  Or that’s how she hoped it would play out, if at all. She never did follow up with Kurt on the additional handgun training. She was really regretted that now and vowed to text him immediately after getting home.

  When she reached the parking ramp, she nearly broke into a run when she saw her car. It was in the clear with only a couple other compacts in the nearby spaces. No big vans or SUVs near it. Nobody walking around or loitering. It was just her for the last fifty feet. Forty feet. Twenty-five. Ten more feet.

  One last look around and she dropped the coffee, letting it fall to the ground as she nearly threw herself inside after wrenching open the door. Barely pausing, Sam hit the start button and the engine turned over into its high idle for only a moment before she put it in gear and made for the exit. The entire way she started at every shadow, waiting for someone to pop out and grab for her or otherwise hold her up.

  When the grey half-light of day streamed through her window, she let out a breath in relief, all the tension rolling off her like she had shifted it away in a transformation. That’s why she nearly jerked the wheel into oncoming traffic, while totally not screaming or wetting herself a little, when she heard a voice.

  “That was a close one.”

  She looked into the rear view mirror while reaching for her revolver only to stop with her fingers just touching the grip. “JAY YOU MOTHER-FUCKER!” Sam screamed into the car. “I almost pissed myself you- you…”

  She saw an eyebrow arch in the mirror and lost all her steam as she let out another shuddering sigh and slouched in the drivers seat after coming to a stop at a light. “Why are you here? I slipped those goons no problem.”

  “You evaded the ones that followed from the crystal shop but not the ones in the suburban on level two. They were ready to ram into you as you passed then drag you into their car before making their own getaway.”

  That made Sam’s blood run cold. Well colder than normal given her half vampiric nature. “Wh-what h-happened to them?” she went back to driving as the light turned green and someone honked at her.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I happened. Don’t worry, these wannabe templars just took a one-way trip to have a chat with our friends at the Order before I send them to the real templars. I can assure you, they take trademark infringement very seriously.” Jay replied calmly while wiping a speck of dust from his jacket collar.

  “Templars? Like the Knights Templar? Holy warriors templars?” Sam was having a hard time deciding on where to look between the road and her boss’s face in the mirror. It was beginning to cause some issues with her driving.

  Jay sighed and leaned forward to point over her shoulder. “That parking lot, pull in and just find a place.” He indicated an empty city lot tucked between a couple high rises.

  Sam pulled in and found a space only for Jay to place his hand on the center consol and close his eyes. She could feel mana moving, collecting in a strange pattern that made her skin tingle before everything suddenly went dark. The grey overcast was replaced by a sea of swirling black and green before once more disappearing to reveal a familiar driveway, her driveway.

  “Perhaps we should go and have a chat. I do hope the others are home, they need to hear this too.” Jay commented through some deep breaths while scooting over to climb out of the back seat. “Also, why are you driving around in this rusted out Subaru?”

  “Umm, because it still works?” Sam replied while shifting back to her typical female appearance. “Also, we just moved so a new car wasn’t exactly high on my list of priorities when we were moving way out here.”

  Jay shrugged. “Fair enough. But I would suggest getting something a little more reliable. I know your whole schtick is to blend in, but this is a little too much.” He gestured at the dents and scrapes in the paint.

  “Yeah, well, that’s like you’re opinion, man.”

  “You are way too young to quote that movie.” Jay replied in a semi-surprised tone.

  Sam just stopped in her tracks and looked at him. “What movie?”

  The duo stood in the driveway just looking at each other for a few moments until Jay finally spoke. “I think it’s best if we just move on. Shall we see if the others are home?”

  “Their cars are here. So, the odds are good.” Sam said, noting that Piper’s boyfriend was also there judging by the presence of his jeep next to her car. “But it looks like we have an extra.”

  Jay also noticed the fourth car and frowned. “Who?”

  Trying to keep her tone neutral, Sam answered. “Piper’s boyfriend.”

  “And do we like this guy?”

  Sam considered for a moment. Blake was a perfectly nice guy. He was also perfectly human. Neither of those was exactly a deal breaker, but he also had no drive, no spark that made him special or unique. It was almost as if he had just downloaded the personality for ‘average twenty-eight-year-old North American man’ and was running it for a lifestyle operating system.

  “I will take that as a no.” Jay muttered after Sam took too long to respond. He waved his arm in the general direction of the door, trying to move them along.

  “No-no, he is a nice enough guy but there is something not quite right about him. Like he is too… bland.” Sam answered, waving her hands to clear the confusion.

  Jay cocked an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “This coming from the person who blends in using the ‘west-coast hipster’ starter equipment?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Ooookaaayy.” Jay drawled then once again gestured to the door. “Are we just going to stand here?”

  “Isn’t there a thing about inviting creatures into your home?” Sam asked while trying to hide a smirk.

  “That’s vampires and only in movies and literature.”

  Not bothering to keep annoying the guy who made sure she got paid, Sam opened the front door of the five-bedroom ranch that she had bought with Sif and Piper. It was a cozy little place outside of town, off a private drive that only had a few other houses on similar ten-acre lots. It wasn’t as much room as the other teams had but it was also as far away from amenities as they wanted to move.

  Stepping inside, Sam held the door for Jay and closed it behind him before hanging her coat on a hook near the door. “Girls, I’m home!” She called. “I brought a guest.”

  The sound of footsteps coming down the hall forewarned of Sif approaching. “Oh, did you finally bring home someone to have some personal ti- oh, shit.” She stopped halfway through her little barb as she caught sight of Jay. “Umm, sorry boss.”

  “It’s fine.” Jay waved off the apology. “But I was wondering if you three had a minute to…” He let his words trail off as voices and the sound of footsteps once more preceded someone approaching. This time it was two someone’s.

  Piper turned the corner of the hallway and her eyes landed on Jay. “Oh, hi! Come by to check out the new place?”

  Jay would have responded if not for his attention being almost completely absorbed by the young man directly behind his lead agent. He was of middling height and build with light brown hair and a modestly tan complexion. His outfit was nothing outstanding either, just jeans and flannel shirt. What was outstanding was the absolute hatred that his gaze held. Hatred that he then condensed into one word.

  “Demon.” The man rasped then lunged forward, reaching out with a hand bathed in glowing white light.

  Unfortunately for him, there were a couple things working against his little surprise attack. The first was the distance. He was easily twenty feet away, having just stepped out into the living room from the hall. The second was the obstacles. Those particular obstacles were Sif, Sam and an overachieving console table that really tied the room together.

  Sif lurched forward, stepping in front of the man and he dodged to get around her. That dodge carried him right into the table where he tripped over one of the legs and stumbled into the final obstacle. Sam’s hands came down on the back of his head and her knee came up into the front of his face with a crunch.

  “BLAKE!” Piper shouted after she realized what was going on and got over her complete shock. “WHAT THE FUCK!” She was shouting at an unconscious lump on the floor but then turned her eyes to Jay. “What did you do!”

  Jay, not having any part of this… well, not the young man’s decisions, held up his hands. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Bullshit.” Piper swore. “He hasn’t done anything to hurt anyone. That’s why I liked him, he’s stupidly boring and that’s just what I need when my life has devolved into a tangle of psychotic cults and deranged monsters in pocket dimensions.”

  “Be that as it may,” Began Sif as she rolled the man over with her foot. “Why did he attack Jay who looks like a regular human while somehow correctly identifying him as a demon.”

  “That would be daemon, with an ‘A’ but you are right.” Jay clarified, holding up his finger. “Another question about your seemingly boring and normal boyfriend is why does he know divine magic that is usually only seen in the upper heavens?”

  That got the borderline frantic mania building in the room to suddenly dissipate as all four of them turned to look at the heavily unconscious and lightly bleeding man on the floor. After a few moments, Sam snapped her fingers and turned to Jay.

  “Does this have anything to do with the people following me?” She asked her boss.

  Piper’s head snapped up and she locked her eyes with the vampire. “You were being followed?”

  “Yeah, I think they were trying to abduct me. They followed me from the gem shop which was closed for some reason.” Sam surmised her outing. “Jay did his normal creepy thing and suddenly appeared, having taken care of part of the problem.”

  “When she says ‘taken care of’…” Sif asked.

  “Shunted them through a pocket dimension that was stretched into a tunnel. One side is attached to me and the other to a special holding cell in the Order.” Jay explained.

  “And how did you know about them?” This time Piper crossed her arms over her chest while raising an eyebrow. “Seems awfully convenient to me.”

  “Ah, yes. It seems we have a templar problem. Well, modern wannabes, not the actual Knights Templar who are upstanding members of the financial industry.” Jay crouched down turning Blake’s head from side to side. He thought he had seen… there.

  Just behind Blake’s left ear, hidden under the hair, was a small disk of flesh colored ceramic measuring a couple millimeters in diameter. Jay recognized it immediately and summoned a little tiny void bubble on the end of his finger which had grown a claw. He then tapped the disk, allowing that bubble of nothingness to slowly eat away at the disk until it cracked with a soft ‘tink’ noise.

  “What was thaaaa… The fuck?” Piper began to ask what he had done but then stopped as Blake’s body rippled and suddenly morphed. It went from his normal appearance to something that looked like a mannequin covered in flesh color playdough before resolving into a very recognizable creature.

  A lesser angel lay on the ground before them, still bleeding from its nose and still very unconscious. Its nearly human appearance with its too narrow nose and too wide of a face emanated a faint glow. The clothes were still normal, showing that it wasn’t part of the illusion and it didn’t have wings, given it was a lesser angel and not one its higher ranked cousins.

  “Now what is an angel doing masquerading as a human and loitering around with one of my teams?” Jay asked the room in general, not expecting a response from anyone. He studied it a bit more before sending a message to Jeffery to let him know about the situation. He then looked up as he heard a strange noise.

  Sif was standing there hugging Piper as the taller woman buried her face in Sif’s shoulder. Jay then realized the noise was her sniffling in a very strange, almost musical tone. The normal ugly sound of someone crying was replaced with a tuneless song that tried to worm its way into his mind and lure him in.

  He looked over to Sam who was also standing near Piper, rubbing her back while staring down at the infiltrator, a look of disgust on her face. “I hate to bring this up, but why did he react to you and not Piper if she is half demon?”

  That simple question, spoken from a true lack of understanding, made a connection in Jays mind. Unlike popular themes, angelic races were not strictly speaking against demonic beings, as it was a sort of sliding scale of distrust and cultural differences. However, angels with a weak will did have outstanding issues with the natural daemons of Earth, those spirits who had been formed from the minds and emotions of man.

  Jay really couldn’t decide if he should be excited, annoyed or afraid. Afterall, it had been several centuries since the last holy wars. He just had to figure out if this was a small faction acting for some unknown reason or if he would have to break out his old regalia. He was just getting excited about the prospect of setting the proverbial feast for the ravens when Sif suddenly asked a repeatedly overlooked question.

  “So how did you know Sam was in trouble? Are you like stalking her or something?” The half-harpy asked, tilting her head and glaring at him with a hawkish intensity.

  In his distracted thoughts, Jay answered honestly. “Oh, I have her warded. It’s a spell to alert me of certain beings focusing on you.” He never saw the slap that connected with his cheek but rated it at a six out of ten on the Regina-when she-is-mad-at-Jay scale.

  “You have me bugged!” Sam shrieked while raising her hand for another slap.

  “No, no. It’s not like that.” Jay said, holding out one hand while rubbing his cheek with the other. Sam raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms while standing over him. “It’s not just you, it’s all my agents that I have bugged.” It was at that moment that Jay decided discretion was the better part of valor and showed himself out… through a portal… while dodging several thrown objects.

  The portal snapped shut a moment after he fell through, bisecting a wine bottle turned flower vase and spilling its contents over the polished floor of his office. The door opened a moment later and Kevin stepped in, surveying the scene and the various thrown items.

  “Pissed them off, sir?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no. If they were really mad then they would have shot me.” Jay said while sliding in behind his desk and pulling out a little black book from his ring. “I do have to call a man about some trademark infringement though.”

  “Very good. I will have janitorial over shortly to clean up the love and affection that the Tacoma team threw your way.” Kevin laughed and pulled out his cell phone, hitting a number on the speed dial and leaving the office.

  Jay chuckled at the joke and waved his aide off as he began to flip through his book, looking for the person who could most benefit from the information he was about to share. “Hmm. One of the lords? No, too far removed. How about… yeah, he should still be alive.”

  Dialing the phone on his desk, Jay waited a few rings before someone answered. A secretary answered, telling him that he had reached the Oslo branch of the Templar International Bank. “Yes, I was wondering if I could briefly speak to Abbot Alexander VanAndel for a moment. You can tell him Jahamet is calling to give him a little information.” He knew that the former archmage would be just tickled pink to hear from his old crusading pal.