phobopage defense

Murphy and I walked around the hotel, and as we did I popped open a fresh can of blue Play-Doh. At the corners of major intersections and at the exterior exits, I pinched off bits and plunked them down on top of the molding over doorways, inside flowerpots, inside fire extinguisher cabinets, and anywhere else where they wouldn't be easily or immediately noticed. I made sure to leave plenty of them in unnoticed little spots along the hallways chiefly in use for the convention, especially Dutside the rooms that the schedule designated as showing films as evening approached.
"What are we doing again?" Murphy asked.
"Setting up a spell," I said.
"With Play-Doh."
"Yes."
She gave me a level look.
I shook out the can that still had most of the original material in it, and showed it to her. "The little pieces I've been leaving around are part of this piece. See?"
"Not yet," she said.
"They used to be one piece. Even when they're separated, they still have a thaumaturgical connection to the original," I told her. "It means that I'll be able to use the big piece to reach out and connect to the little pieces."
"That's what you meant by a web?"
"Yes. I'll be able to..." I twisted up my face, searching for the words to explain. "I can extend energy out to all the smaller pieces. I'll set it up so that if one of the little pieces picks up on a disturbance of the energies, I'll be able to feel it through the larger piece."
"Like... seismographs, sort of," Murphy said.
"Yeah," I said. "And we use blue Play-Doh. Blue for defense."
She arched a brow at me. "Does the color really matter?"
"Yes," I said, then thought about it for a second. "Well, probably no. But yes, for me."
"Huh?"
"A lot of the use of magic is all tied up with your emotions. With what you believe is real. When I was younger, I learned a lot of stuff, like the role of colors in the casting of spells. Green for fertility and prosperity, red for passion and energy, white for purity, black for vengeance, and so on. It could be that the color doesn't matter at all-but if I expect the spell to work because of the color used, then that color is important. If I don't believe in it, the spell won't ever get off the ground."
"Like Dumbo's magic feather?" Murphy asked. "It was his confidence that was really important?"
"Yes," I said. "The feather was just a symbol-but it was an important symbol."
I gestured with the can. "So I use blue, because I don't have to do too much introspection, and I don't introduce new doubts in a crisis situation. And because it was cheap at Wal-Mart."
Murphy laughed. "Wal-Mart, huh?"
"Wizarding doesn't pay much," I said. "You'd be surprised how much stuff I get from Wal-Mart." I checked a clock on the wall. "We've got about two hours before the first movie starts showing."
She nodded. "What do you need?"
"A quiet space to work in," I told her. "At least six or seven feet across. The more private and secure, the better. I've got to assume that the bad guy knows I'm around here somewhere. I don't want to get a machete in the back when I'm busy running the spell."
"How long do you need to set it up?"
I shrugged. "Twenty minutes, give or take. What I'm really concerned about is-"

Proven Guilty Chapter 22, Page 154-155


I scowled. "Dammit. Then it's the web or nothing. At least if I use that, I might be able to identify the summoner." At the low, low cost of the phages mauling or killing someone else. Unless...
"Bob," I said, frowning over the idea. "What if I didn't try to hide the hotel or keep these things away. What if I, uh... just put a little topspin on the phages on the way in?"
Bob's eyelights brightened even more. "Ooooooo, classic White Council doctrine. When the phages come through, you point them straight at the guy who summoned them. Give him a dose of his own medicine."
"Right up the ass," I confirmed.
"There's an image," Bob said. "A summoning suppository."
"It's doable, isn't it?"
"Sure," Bob said. "I mean, you have everything you need for that. You know the phages are after fear, and that they're probably using his power as a beacon. Your web tells you something is stirring. You conjure up a big ball of fear, target the same beacon the phages are using, and let it fly."
"It'll be like hanging a steak around his neck and throwing him to the lions," I said, grinning.
"Hail Caesar," Bob confirmed. "The phages will go right after him."
"And once he's out of the game, I veil the hotel from the phages. No more convention attendees get hurt. Bad guy gets a lethal dose of dramatic irony."
"The good guys win!" Bob cheered. "Or at least you do. You're still a good guy, right? You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me."
"I'm thinking about changing it to 'them' and 'us,' for simplicity's sake," I said. "I like this plan. So there's got to be a catch to it somewhere."
"True," Bob admitted. "It's gonna be a little tricky when it comes to the timing. You won't be able to sense the beacon until the phages actually step through from the Nevernever and take material form. If you haven't redirected them by then, it'll be too late."
I nodded, frowning. "That gives me what? Maybe twenty seconds?"
"Only if they're really lame," Bob said. "Probably ten seconds. Maybe even less."
I frowned. "Dammit, that's a small window." I thought of another problem. "Not only that, but I'll be shooting blind. There won't be any way to tell who I'm setting the phages after. What if he's standing in a crowd?"
"He's going to be summoning fiends from the netherworld to wreak horror and death on the populace," Bob pointed out in a patient voice. "That won't lend itself to blending into a crowd."
"Good point. He'll probably be somewhere private, quiet." I shook my head. "Even so, I'd be a lot happier if this was a little less dicey. But I don't see any other way to stop these things from hurting anyone else."
"Until we have more information, I don't see what else you could do, boss."
I grunted. "I'd better get this web up and running, then."

Proven Guilty Chapter 23, Page 171-172


I shook my head and got back to the detection web.
As spells went, this one was pretty big, but it wasn't complicated. I'd created a long-term version of the same basic working in the neighborhood around my apartment, in order to detect approaching mystical entities. The one I wanted for the hotel was the same thing, but I didn't have to bother with setting it up as a long-term construct. A sunrise, or two at most, would erode the spell, but with any luck I wouldn't need it for any longer.
I took the Play-Doh in hand, grabbed three candles in their own wooden holders, poured the sand in a circle around me, and began gathering in my power, painstakingly creating mental images of the web of energy I needed to weave between the points of the hotel I'd marked out with Play-Doh. It didn't take me a terribly long time to set it up. Anyone with some basic skills and desire enough could have done something like this- or at least, they could have done it on a smaller scale. Weaving a web throughout the whole building took a lot of heavy lifting, magically speaking, but it wasn't complicated, and fifteen minutes later I solidified the image of the energy patterns in my mind, and whispered, "Magius, orbius, spiritus oculus."
I poured my will and my magic out with the words as I spoke them, and my body briefly lit up with a flood of tingling energy that raced along all of my limbs, down into the lump of Play-Doh, and swirled in tight spirals around the three candles that would serve as my ward-flames. The spell's energy flashed, appearing as a tiny stream of faint flickers, like bursts of static electricity, and the candles each flickered to life, steady little flames born of the spell. I broke the circle of sand as I spoke, and the power blossomed out through the hotel, into the shape I'd imagined, invisible strands flickering into instant shape, like ice crystals forming in the space of a heartbeat, spreading unseen strands throughout the hotel.
My balance wobbled a bit as I finished the spell and the energy left me, submerging me in a temporary flood of fatigue. I sat there with my head down, breathing hard for a minute.
"Wow," Murphy said, her tone less than impressed. I looked up to see her shutting the room's door behind her. "What did you do?"
I waved around to indicate the hotel and panted, "If bad mojo shows up in the hotel, the spell will sense it." I gestured at the three candles. "Take one with you. If you see it flare up, it means we've got incoming."
Murphy frowned but nodded. "How much warning will they give us?"
"Not much," I said. "A couple minutes, maybe less. Maybe a lot less."
"Three candles," she said. "One for you, one for me, and..."
"I thought we'd see if Rawlins wanted one."

Proven Guilty Chapter 23, Page 176


I settled down on my knees again, carefully, closed the circle, and began to pick up the pieces of the redirection spell once more.
The single wardflame candle on the room's dresser suddenly exploded into lurid red light. Simultaneously, I felt a heavy thrumming in the air, where the strands of my web spell had suddenly encountered powerful magic in motion, drawing my thoughts and attention to a back hallway in the hotel, not far from the kitchens, up to the hall outside the hotel's exercise room, and a swift double-thrum from another of the hotel's bathrooms.
Four attackers, this time. Four of them at least.
I had ten seconds to get the spell off.
Nine.
Maybe less.
Eight.
I threw myself into the spell.
Seven.
It had to be fast.
Six.
It had to be perfect on the first attempt.
Five.
If I screwed this one up, someone else would pay for it.
Four.
They'd pay for it in blood.
Three.
Two.
One…

Proven Guilty Chapter 24, Page 187


I readied my spell, terrified that I was already too late, terrified that I had made a critical mistake, terrified that more innocents were about to face hideous agony and death.
That was how it had to be. If I wanted to lure the phages from their rampage by directing them after a richer source of fear, it had to come from somewhere-specifically, it had to come from me. If I'd tried to use falsified emotion, it would no more have worked on them than an attempt to make a gorilla interested in a plastic banana. The fear had to be genuine.
Of course, I hadn't really planned on being quite this afraid. Being taken off my guard and handed a time limit had added an edge of panicked hysteria to the ample anxiety I already had.
The spell coalesced, and time came to an abrupt stop.
In that illusory stasis, my senses were on fire. The presence of the dangerous entities now entering the material world rippled through my detection web; a jittery, fluttering sensation. The energy of the spell burned like an invisible star before my outstretched hands, and my terror rushed into it and fused with the spell. Streamers from the lure whipped out along the lines of power that constituted my detection web, brushing lightly at the entities, attracting their attention, giving them a whiff of rich sustenance.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I felt a single, quiet, quivering pulse-a living presence that could only be the phages' summoner and beacon.
"Gotcha," I hissed, and with an effort of will broke the circle and sent the spell winging toward him.
Time resumed its course. The energy that powered the spell fled out of me in another rush, and left me lying on my side, struggling to draw in enough breath. I could feel the spell sizzling down the lines of power for the summoner, and a heartbeat later there was a sense of impact as the spell went home. As it happened, the entities my web touched went abruptly still, the web ceasing its trembling-and then they all surged forward into sudden motion, vanishing from the web, and presumably streaking after the lure.
All but one.
A breath or two after the entities had departed, my web trembled again, now growing more agitated, its motion a kind of subliminal pressure against my thoughts.
I had missed one. My spell had gotten out in time to draw away the others, but either my web had failed me at some point or the remaining phage had been quicker on the draw than his buddies from the Never-never. I could feel it moving from the hotel's kitchens toward the convention halls.

Proven Guilty Chapter 25, Page 189


"Then I pick up the trail of those phages, and see if I can find out who summoned them." I told him briefly about the events of the afternoon and evening. "If we're lucky, all we'll find is some maniac's corpse with a surprised look on his face."
"What if we aren't lucky?" he asked.
"Then it means the summoner is a hell of a lot better than I am, to fight off three of those things." I rubbed at one eye. "And we'll have to take him down before he hurts anyone else."
"The fun never ends," Thomas said. "Right. Hospital."
"Then circle the block around the hotel. The spell I diverted the phages with had the tracking element worked into it. Sunrise will unravel it, and we don't know how long it will take to follow the trail."
I directed Thomas to the nearest hospital, and he carried the unconscious Rawlins through the emergency room doors. He came back a minute later and told me, "They're on the job."
"Let's go, then. Otherwise someone will want to ask us questions about gunshot wounds."
Thomas was way ahead of me, and the van headed back to the hotel.
I got the spell ready. It wasn't a difficult working, under normal circumstances, but I felt as wrung out as a dirty dishrag. It took me three tries to get the spell up and running, but I managed it. Then I climbed into the passenger seat, where I could see evidence of the phages' passing as a trail of curling, pale green vapor in the air. I gave Thomas directions. We followed the trail, and it led us toward Wrigley.
Not a whole hell of a lot of industry was going on in my aching skull, but after a few minutes something began to gnaw at me. I looked blearily around, and found that the neighborhood looked familiar. We kept on the trail. The neighborhood got more familiar. The vapor grew brighter as we closed in.
We turned a last street corner.
My stomach twisted in a spasm of horrified nausea.
The green vapor trail led to a two-story white house. A charming place, somehow carrying off the look of suburbia despite being inside the third largest city in America. Green lawn, despite the heat. White picket fence. Children's toys in evidence.
The vapor led up to the picket fence, first. There were three separate large holes in the fence, where some enormous force had burst the fence to splinters. Heavy footprints gouged the lawn. An imitation old-style, wrought-iron gaslight had been bent to parallel with the ground about four feet up. The door had been torn from its hinges and flung into the yard. A minivan parked in the driveway had been crushed, as if by a dropped wrecking ball.
I couldn't be sure, but I thought I saw blood on the doorway.
The decorative mailbox three feet from me read, in cheerfully painted letters: THE CARPENTERS.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
I'd sent the phages after Molly.

Proven Guilty Chapter 29, Page 234-236