Smoke and shadows

By the time the Amber Alert came, I was already kitted out and ready to go. It wasn't a surprise, after all. I mean, four missing persons reports in a two week period would make anyone suspicious, but I knew there were a few more than that. Word on the street had been that homeless people were going missing. That was nothing unusual, per se, but there'd been a sharp uptick in the numbers lately. But, with winter setting in and things as fucked up as they'd been over the last year, nobody was surprised. If that bunch of oddballs living down Highway 287 hadn't tipped me off, I probably would have missed the significance.

I had been keeping the issue in the back of my mind, but it was just one of many until Alice called me late one night. Seems she'd been out running down by the river at oh-dark-thirty, and had seen a man wandering unsteadily out toward Rotary Park. She recognized him as one of the guys that had been camping out in storefronts downtown. Something about his gait rang alarm bells for her, but she couldn't place why. Neither could I, at first. It actually took me much longer than I would have liked to put two and two together. After a couple of stoners found ashes inside a hollow tree down that way, the pieces came together, though.

I went to the Guardians about it. Officially, this kind of thing was in their bailiwick, so I figured it was best not to step on too many toes. As far as they were concerned, though, it was still Somebody Else's Problem. Usually that's how they respond to mostly-nondestructive entities in the area, live and let live. Less friction that way, and less chance that the authorities will notice something funny going on right under their noses. Trouble was, this one wasn't content to stay nondestructive. I figured it might get more brazen.

Not a week later, it did. First one to go missing was Marty Wilson, a retired, recovered alcoholic with no family in the area. He'd been on his way back from a late shift at Wal-Mart when he lost control of his car and careened into a tree. The next two nights, two more people vanished. Both single, young adults with no nearby family, which fit the pattern, but as college students, someone was bound to notice that they were missing, and quickly. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something I was missing. When I saw Mark's tweet about a little boy walking with a nondescript man over near Rotary Park, it clicked. I raced home and started to kit out, and the news issued an Amber Alert a few minutes later.

If this was what I was pretty sure it was, I'd have to move fast. Trouble was, if my suspicions were right, there would be lookouts. A car would be too obvious to them - and to the cops. The cops would be looking for the kid, too, but I doubted they could easily handle what they would find. There'd be a big gunfight, a bunch of officers hurt or killed and a hell of a lot of things to explain. Nobody wanted that, least of all me.

Pausing only long enough to ensure my gun was securely holstered, I slid out the door, got in the car and drove off into the young night, moving quickly and directly through the streets. The sparse crowds moved warily, edgy and paranoid, as if afraid. Whatever was going on was permeating the city, even affecting the mundane folk, whether they knew it or not. When I parked near the park, I shrouded myself in a weak cloak, just enough to make me indistinct, just another face in the crowd even though I was ambling rather more rapidly than a typical pedestrian would. I was hardly invisible, but even an astute observer would be hard-pressed to take note, or even to remember having seen me.

The steps leading up to the rock formation were darker than they should have been. A second glance revealed the presence of a ward, albeit a weak one, probably intended to dissuade snooping. Well, the Hells with that, I thought. On the off chance it was an alarm ward, I brought up a stronger shroud, then pushed through the misty barrier, ignoring the tug of foreboding at the back of my mind. I didn't see any guards or lookouts on the bridge or the steps beyond, so I paused for a moment and scanned the area. No telltale glows gave away the presence of fire, and I didn't see anyone around. Of course, they might just have been hiding in the woods. I didn't have NVGs with me - they would have been too hard to explain to the police, if they found me here - but I did have my second sight.

Pulling a pair of opera glasses from my coat pocket, I peered out across the treeline. I saw nothing. So focused was I on looking for traces of human activity that I nearly missed the significance of that. Rotary Park was home to no small population of birds, squirrels, rabbits, foxes and feral cats, but I saw none of that. "Are they gone, or just masked somehow?" I wondered, nearly aloud. Something about this didn't add up. I had expected the disappearances were the work of humans, probably a cult of Lamashtu, Typhon or Tezcatlipoca, maybe Moloch, one of those sinister, misanthropic gods. But if a cult was behind this, where were they? There were still a lot of possibilities, ranging from portals to demons to simple bunkers, though, so I forged onward.

As I traversed the path up into the rocks, I felt a strange sense of trepidation, as if I was in danger just approaching the path. Something about that struck a familiar note, but I couldn't quite place it. The path wound ahead, up into the maze of rocks. I realized as I entered that I couldn't make out the stars above, so I slipped on my glasses and willed the vision charm into effect. Strangely, the scene around me remained fuzzy and indistinct. Shifting shadows flitted and danced about, not slowing long enough for me to tell what, if anything, I was actually seeing, and I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

Mumbling the Sanskrit word for "shadows", I cast a quick shadeweaving spell, drawing the darkness around me to reinforce my shroud. I began to hear noises up ahead, unclear and muddy at first, but as I drew nearer, the sound began to resolve into that of a little boy crying. I imagined myself in his position, alone in the dark and awaiting a dire but uncertain fate, and fury filled me. Deeper into the dark I strode, faster now, when suddenly something not-quite-solid struck me from the side.

My senses alerted me a split second before it struck, but it was fast. It was already upon me, pushing me sideways, its hot, smoky, partly ethereal form clinging to me like a spider's web. I tried to dodge but the tenacious thing kept its grip. I could feel its claws trying to dig in, as much ethereal as material, scrabbling about, trying to worm their way into my skin. Not my skin, I realized in a flash of panic. My aura! I turned my thoughts inward, finding the light of my soul where none shall intrude. In a bright flash I pushed the AT Field outward, sparks and shimmering heat-haze flashing into view between myself and the creature. The thing gave an unearthly hissing snarl and recoiled. I could barely make it out against the backdrop of the shadows, a weak glow in a vaguely humanoid shape, hanging there in the air in front of me. The glow was coming from within the body of the thing, masked by its black, smoke-like skin, which had been thinned by the impact with my shield. It wouldn't last long, and if the thing had time to fully reform, I knew I'd lose it against the surrounding blackness. With that little boy still around here somewhere, I couldn't afford that - and I didn't really want to find out what it could do to me if it caught me unshielded.

I touched my hand to my chest where I had a small ampule of aluminum powder on a pendant and stretched the other hand out, a flurry of shining silver flakes streaming forth. The flakes flared up, becoming motes of foxfire that converged on the creature, limning it in flickering indigo flame. It shrieked and shrunk back into the shade of the rocks, but I followed quickly after. The foxfire illuminated a small clearing, in the middle of which sat the boy, huddled with his knees to his chin, tears staining his cheeks. Briefly forgetting the creature, I ran to the boy.

Behind me, there was a muffled pop, like a flashbulb discharging, and the indigo glow vanished. In the instant it took my senses to adjust, tendrils of tenebrous, wispy smoke had wrapped themselves around the boy. I followed them, my gaze coming up to see the faint, but brightening, orange glow of the thing's inner heat, about ten feet away. I touched the ampule and called forth magic again, calling out "fuoco!" This time instead of hazy, cool foxfire, the flakes exploded into a gout of lambent flame that washed over the thing, the brilliant glow illuminating its form and blowing its smoky outer layer away. The creature keened, an unearthly ululation that sent shivers down my spine. Its glowing, ember-like core was visible now, a light in the night. I visualized chains of light reaching up from the earth as I called out the words to a binding spell. The thing thrashed around, fighting against the magic bonds I had just placed it in, then calmed, the smoke reforming around it.

Two slanted, diamond-shaped holes appeared in the smoke, the thing's inner fire visible through them.

"Leave us, Daughter of Eve," the thing said in a metallic, warbling voice that had several dissonant layers to it, as if it were slightly out of phase with itself. "This boy is none of your concern."

"You prey on children in my city, it's my problem," I shot back. "I could overlook it when it was just rapists and meth-heads disappearing, but no, you had to take it further, didn't you?"

"Fie, human! The master has his motives, do not question them if you want to live," the thing replied.

"I don't think so," I said. "You set the boy free, and any of the others that still live, and I might not scatter your corpus to the four winds."

The creature didn't respond. Its "eyes" flared brightly and it fought against the magic bonds, visible chains of light flaring around it. This thing wanted to fight. No matter - so did I. You don't prey on the innocent. That's just wrong, plain and simple. And it goes against the established rules. Even creatures with nothing resembling human morality played by the rules - it's how things from such widely varying worlds as there were managed to interact at all. And now this thing was laughing in the face of all that and preying on children, in the heart of my city. Not on my watch. I began to chant.

"Niflheim's heart, tundra's breath, ice-born spirits of deepest winter," I intoned, taking a shard of onyx from a pocket as I drew my pistol with the other hand. The onyx began to vibrate and cold steam poured off it as I brought my left hand up, around the pistol's grip, and faced the creature. Still focusing on the cryocast, I aligned the night-sights on the creature and squeezed the trigger. The heavy pistol barked and recoiled, but there was no blast of flame, just a trail of frost crystals as the enchanted bullet condensed and froze water from the air behind it. There was a flash as the cryocast fought against the monster's fiery heart. It staggered backward and sagged, steamy smoke pouring from its "eyes".

"Go back whence you came, dark one," I ordered it.

"I cannot, my master forbids it," it answered haltingly, its voice shaking and distorting, taking on many more slightly misaligned layers. "I must have the boy's heart."

"Then die," I said. This was over. I had tried to be as reasonable as I could with a creature like this. It wasn't having any. To the Hells with it, then.

I siphoned the last of the chill magic from the onyx and fired three more times. The first two bullets dropped to the ground - a neat little trick I learned from a big-city hedge wizard - as I poured their kinetic energy into both the ice magic and the force of the last bullet. The magic, arriving an instant before the bullet itself, snuffed out the last of the creature's flame and the silver jacketed hollow point slammed into the black ember of its heart, shattering it. The obsidian shards that had been the monster's heart fell to the ground and the smoke dissipated almost instantly. The unnatural darkness shrouding the rocks lifted with it, the stars almost instantly becoming visible above.

Freed from the clinging shadows, the boy stood and walked shakily toward me. I holstered the pistol so as not to scare him and bent down, when I heard a voice from behind.

"Ay, Kate, I might have known I'd find you here," said the voice. I turned to see a tall man in a police uniform, a man I recognized as Esteban José Fernández. He was an investigator for the Guardians, and worked as a cop for cover purposes - and Sean and I had known him for years. "Surely you know that missing children are police business."

"And rabisu are Guardian business, unless I miss my guess," I countered. "I'd say that's why you're here, except that it isn't. No te parece, Esteban?"

"Hey, I'm a cop!" he shot back, pointing at his badge. "See the badge?"

"Pah, that's baloney and we both know it," I shot back. "You're here on your own, for your own reasons."

He made a choked noise of defiance and withdrew in mock-offense.

"Cops wouldn't go in alone," I said. "And not Guardians either."

"Alright, you got me," he said, suddenly disarmed. "I had a hunch about what was going on here, decided to come check it out. I didn't expect to find a rabisu here, that was a nasty surprise. I figured this was the work of a Typhon cult. Or maybe Lamashtu or Koshchei."

"I don't know," I said, dubiously. "They'd be the usual suspects, yeah, but this is pretty weird. Remember that incident last Halloween? Who leaves a book with summoning rites for infernals laying around where high school freshmen can find them? And how the hell does a creature from the deep Shadow get on the 1830 from Union Station, let alone more than once?"

Esteban tapped his temple. "That's some astute thinking, Kate. I missed some of that," he admitted. "There's something going on here, or I'll eat my damn dress cover. What in hell were the Kindred keeping a lid on anyway?"

"I'm not sure, not at all sure," I responded. "My contacts don't seem to know either, but it's causing chaos up the entire I-25 corridor, from Cheyenne all the way down to Santa Fe or further. Remember that kid that vanished in Longmont turned up down in Las Cruces? Marquez and his lot didn't have that much clout, did they?"

"Oh, that," he said dismissively. "Garden-variety parental kidnapping."

"You know it wasn't - kid's still in the psych ward and they never found his father."

He cast his gaze down, thoughtfully. "Yeah, OK. Look, Kate, you're onto something here. Just watch yourself. Rabisu are demons, not infernals and that thing you took out on the train wasn't either one. If these are connected, then whatever's at work here is pretty damned eldritch. Or at least has a lot of owed favors all over the Nevernever.

"Nevernever, indeed. Gods but that's a silly term," I said jocularly. "But seriously, I'll be watching my six pretty hard after this. You keep me in the loop if you can - you know as well as I do the Guardians up here play it close to the chest even if I'm technically on their payroll."

Esteban tipped his hat to me. "You know I will, even if it can only be handing cryptic notes to Sean at the Broncos game."

"Take care," I said by way of send-off, and turned back to the scared boy. I picked him up, and we made our way back out to my car. I'd take him back to the police station. I knew a few folks who'd get him back to his mother safe and sound, and not ask too many questions that mundanes didn't want to hear the answers to. And after that, I'd go back home. Sean and I could put our heads together on this one and see what was going on, maybe.