invisible assassination

HARRY WAS A big believer in kicking in the teeth of whoever you planned to fight. Granted, those kinds of tactics played to his strengths, and it wasn’t always smart or possible—but it was always a way to seize the initiative and control the opening seconds of a conflict.
Granted, Harry would have used fire. And I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have pulled out a wand and prepared the One-Woman Rave spell I’d developed. And I’m absolutely certain that he wouldn’t have taken a moment to start up DJ Molly C’s Boom Box spell, which would play C& C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” loud enough to be heard in Anchorage.
But I did. I wanted loud noise that was totally out of place and as weird as possible to whatever supernatural critters were riding around inside the fishermen—and the creatures of the supernatural world aren’t exactly popculture mavens. Plus, it was dance music from the ’90s. Nobody thinks that stuff is normal.
Heavy bass and lead power chords started thumping against the windows. I turned loose the One-Woman Rave, and the air around me filled with a lightand-pyrotechnics show that would make Burning Man look like Mister Rogers’Neighborhood. My heart started pounding in fear and excitement and something disturbingly like lust as I crossed the last few feet to the cathedral’s entrance.
And then, just as the song screamed, “Everybody dance now!” I leaned back, drew the power of Winter into my body, and kicked the big double doors off their hinges as if they’d been made of balsa and Scotch tape.
At which point I learned the real reason Harry keeps doing that.
It. Is. Awesome.
“Give me the music!” I screamed with the song, and walked straight in. I might have had some hip and shoulder action going in time with the beat.
Look, I hadn’t been out dancing in a while, okay?
I crossed the little vestibule in a couple of steps and passed into the sanctuary in a thundercloud of rave lights and showers of multicolored sparks, music shaking the air. I got a good look at the fishermen as I came in.
All twenty of them were there, scattered around the sanctuary, though three, including the captain, were up on the altar, along with half a dozen Miksani children, aged about four through ten. Their wrists were bound together with one long length of rope, which cut cruelly into their wrists.
Everyone in the cathedral lifted a hand to shield their eyes as I came in. The cultists’ mouths gaped open and tendrils emerged to begin thrashing the air.
I felt the surge of power coming, an ugly, greasy pressure in the air, and as it gathered, physical darkness swirled and surged around the fishermen. And then, like a stream of fouled water, it surged from each of the cultists to the captain, where his tentacles gathered it, whipping and writhing, and sent the enormous collective surge of negative energy flying directly at me.
It came fast, too fast to dodge, too intense to be stopped by any magic I could manage, and struck my solar plexus like an enormous, deadly spear.
Or, at least, that’s what it looked like to them. I was actually about ten feet to the left, hidden behind my best veil while maintaining a glamour of my image. The bolt struck my little illusion, and the conflict of energies, combined with the difficulty of running the Rave and the Boom Box, made it too much to hold together. The image popped like a soap bubble, and the dark bolt tore through the flooring and foundation in the vestibule like a backhoe.
The captain froze for a second, unsure of what had just happened. I had no such moment of hesitation. I was already rushing down the leftmost aisle behind my veil, plastic-handled knife in hand. I reached the first of the tentacle-mouthed fishermen and, with a single flick, cut his throat.
I could barely hear the creature’s sudden, high-pitched scream of pain over the thunder of the Boom Box, and I’d known it was coming. It didn’t register on the other fishermen in the chaos, and I didn’t slow down.
I killed three of them with my knife before one of the cultists saw what was happening and screamed, pointing.
Number four went down when he turned his head to look, but he writhed as he went down and I was splashed with blood.
Magically speaking, blood is significant in all kinds of ways. It carries a charge of magical energy inside it, for example, and can be used to direct a spell at a specific person from hundreds or thousands of miles away. This blood was stronger than mortal stuff and carried a heavier charge. The power in it flared into sparks as the blood hit my veil, and then it ripped a huge hole in it, and I was suddenly visible to the entire cult.


Brief Cases, Cold Case, Page 310-312