G.H.O.S.T. Teams: Book 1 - Magic (9 page)

Looking over the situation I was able to confirm what I could see from my earlier position on the ground. Blacksuit was dead, my blade sticking just right of center in his chest. Heavystripe’s neck was twisted at an odd angle, his open eyes glazed over in death. Tallstripe however was not yet dead. He was hacking blood and I didn’t think that he would last long. The shuriken that struck him in the neck had gone deep into his artery. He was bleeding out fast.

He was lying flat on his back, two members of my team standing over him while the other two stooped down next to him. Kara was holding a bandage against his neck, a futile effort to stop the bleeding. Timothy held a gun to Tallstripe’s head, looking him over for the slightest hint of a spell starting to form. Freddy was standing over him asking questions, Danny at his side. Tallstripe however, was too busy coughing and hacking up blood to answer. It was a disgusting sound and I was impressed that my team was able to stand around and listen to it. I was about to point out that I didn’t think he could talk, let alone answer questions, when I noticed Danny focusing intently on the man’s face. Interrogation takes on a whole new meaning when you have a telepath on your team.

“Where is Mr. Lazarus?” Freddy asked again.

Danny focused harder, perspiration forming on his forehead.

“They don’t know. They staked the bar out hoping he would return,” Danny answered.

Freddy never looked back at Danny. Instead he kept his gaze focused on the sorcerer.

“What is the purpose of…,” Freddy trailed off as the man started to convulse.

The sorcerer’s body began to spasm violently and the gurgling became louder. His head slumped over and his eyes rolled back into his head. His body went still and it was over, he was dead. Freddy looked desperately at Danny.

“Were you able to get anything before we lost him?” Freddy asked.

“Sorry, everything was so jumbled at the end, I wasn’t able to make anything else out,” Danny replied.

Freddy sighed heavily, looking at the three dead bodies and then over at me. He tried to keep the frustration off of his face, but I could see it. He glanced at my shoulder, frustration turning to concern as he spoke to me.

“That doesn’t look good. Are you all right?” Freddy asked.

“I’ll live,” I smiled.

He nodded and turned towards Timothy, “Bring the van around back.”

Timothy ran around front as Kara walked over to tend to my wound. Erika, satisfied that Kara was now looking out for me, wandered off to check the perimeter. I assumed she was looking for any prying eyes or other threats. Freddy whispered something to Danny before our team telepath walked back into the bar. I assumed he was making sure that there weren’t any more bad guys about.

Kara was slowly helping me out of my jacket, having to cut it away around my left shoulder. My collared shirt and undershirt, parts of which were melted to my skin, also had to be removed. By the time she had my upper body exposed Timothy had brought the van around back. Kara ushered me over to the back, sitting me down on the bumper so that she could more easily work on my shoulder. There was pain every time she touched the wound, but nothing like what I had experience from the actual blast. She winced each time that she had to remove a piece of charred cloth.

“Sorry,” she said with a caring smile.

“Me too. This is not how I pictured you taking my shirt off,” I smirked.

She gave a small smile but I didn’t manage to get a laugh out of her. I knew that she was still in shock. She had just witnessed me killing three people. My shoulder was nasty and her hand had been on a man’s neck when he died. That was enough to shake almost anyone up. I made jokes because that was how I dealt with uncomfortable situations. Apparently humor is not everyone’s outlet.
 

She mumbled a few more apologies as she worked, but didn’t say much else to me. Once the bandages were done, she closed her eyes, mumbled a few mystic words, and a soft blue glow radiated about my shoulder. There was a burning, tingling sensation, but when it subsided, the pain had greatly dissipated. She met my eyes and smiled.

“That should speed things along, but you should probably still visit a hospital,” She said, heavy concern in her voice.

“Don’t worry, I heal pretty fast,” I winked.

The look on her face made it clear that she wasn’t as confident as me, but she reluctantly nodded. I had to give her credit for holding it together; my shoulder really did look horrible. If I was lucky the majority of the damage was superficial and not to the underlying muscle. Otherwise it would take much longer to heal.

I stood up and lightly touched my shoulder. It was tender, but not so bad that I thought walking around would hurt. Clearly Kara’s magic included some kind of painkiller. The rest of my muscles seemed to be responding normally. Apparently the shock to my system was temporary. The backdoor to the bar opened and everyone spun in that direction reaching for a weapon. It turned out to be Danny returning. There was a nice shared laugh as we all felt foolish and looked at each other. I guess near death experiences make the team jumpy. I was kind of proud that they all reacted ready for trouble. Danny then shook his head at Freddy, as if answering some unspoken question. Freddy nodded in understanding before looking over at me. Kara wandered off as Freddy came over.

“I’m sure that it wasn’t easy to take those lives,” Freddy said.

“Never is,” I replied.

“But you did what had to be done, to save the team,” Freddy smiled.

“The team that wouldn’t have been in danger if you had let me go alone,” I replied curtly.

“I’m sorry,” Freddy tried, “I had not anticipated…”

“Of course you didn’t,” I said, cutting him off.

I waved Freddy off as I stepped away. I felt bad as soon as I did it. The whole team was watching and me picking on Freddy wasn’t helping. The pain in my shoulder and the fact that I just killed three people was causing me to lash out at poorly chosen time. The team was already tense and I knew that I wasn’t making things any better. To be fair, I was probably as much to blame as Freddy. If I had fought him on the decision to send the two of them with me, perhaps I could have avoided my shoulder being cooked. But second-guessing things was just about as helpful as me being a jerk right now. So I decided to ease the tension. I turned back towards Freddy.

“Sorry. It was my shoulder talking. You understand,” I tried.

Freddy nodded, forcing a small smile onto his face. He stepped forward and placed his hand gently on my right shoulder, the good one, before he spoke.

“Thank you for keeping them safe,” he said.

I gave a half ass nod. It felt more appropriate than a “you’re welcome”. I watched Timothy, Danny, and Erika get the bodies into the bags. Erika found some car keys on Blacksuit, and she headed around the front of the building to check it out. I wandered over to lean against the building, giving Timothy and Danny room to get the bodies into the back of the van. Freddy and Kara were helping as best as they could. I offered to help, being in full possession of an uninjured right arm, but Kara was having none of it. I was beginning to learn that she could be a little protective at times.

They managed to get all of the bodies secured into the back of the van without any problems. Before they locked up, Kara grabbed one of my spare tee shirts from inside, and walked it over to me. She didn’t say a word to me, just gently lifted my arms, one by one, and helped me into the shirt. There was a caring and nurturing to her movements. I did my best to avoid grunting in pain in order to maintain my tough guy image.
 

“Thanks,” I smiled.

She looked me very seriously in the eyes before she spoke.

“Thank you,” she said, kissing me lightly on the cheek.

I tried to maintain my smile to hide my discomfort. But being thanked for saving someone’s life always feels awkward. As you have figured out by now, I only have one reaction to uncomfortable situations.

“Just doing my job ma’am,” I said in my sad attempt at a southern accent.

She rewarded my quip with a warm smile, the kind that showed on her entire face, making her eyes sparkle. She leaned against the wall next to me, and we both just sort of let our eyes wander about the natural beauty of the Country Club in front of us. The silence between us was comfortable, and I couldn’t help but grin when I thought about how quickly the two of us were getting closer. After a few moments, Kara started talking, never looking over at me but rather keeping her attention on the view in front of us.

“It’s beautiful,” she started, “It reminds me about something else that I meant to tell you concerning manna. Here, next to the golf course and all of this natural life and a link to the Veil, it is very abundant. As I said, it comes from all living things. So the Sorcerers had an ample supply of power with which to hurt us,” she turned slowly towards me, “You did the right thing. If they would have been allowed to start channeling that power…I doubt that we would have survived. But in the middle of a city, without being near a supply such as this, they would be much more limited in their casting ability. Magic users tend to gravitate to places just like this,” she finished, a little awe in her voice.

She then squeezed my good arm, an affectionate non-verbal goodbye, before heading back towards the van.
 
Freddy and Danny were both walking in the same direction, Timothy trailing behind. He stopped, looked over at me, and tried to smile. Instead he dropped his eyes, hanging his head slightly, clearly ashamed of his actions. A part of me wanted to walk over and scold him for what he did. His actions could have gotten any one of us killed. But he was the youngest of our group. I knew that he must have felt some drive to prove himself to us. Especially after I made that comment about his age in front of Dutton. Maybe that was why he acted so quickly, feeling the need to prove himself to me. I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder just to make sure that I had his full attention.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said.

“They started moving and I just froze,” he replied.

“Taking a life should never be easy. Otherwise you wouldn’t be human,” I said.

“I bet you didn’t freeze your first time, did you?” he asked.

“Believe me Tim, I really wish that I had,” I said somberly.

I wasn’t sure how I took an attempt to boost his morale and turned it dark. My career in motivational speaking was in jeopardy. I needed to break the seriousness in the air, so I messed his hair with my hand, as one would a child. Then I gave him a little shove towards the rest of the group.

“And next time, follow my lead,” I smiled.

He nodded and gave me a weak smile, “Your file doesn’t do you justice you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve never seen anyone move that fast. Ever,” he stated in awe.
 

“Thanks.”

I didn’t know how else to respond. I’d spent my entire lifetime studying more forms of hand-to-hand combat than I could count. I guess I should be happy that at least in this moment I was using those skills to do the right thing. That brought a small smile to my face. Timothy smiled back and turned to walk over to Freddy, Danny, and Kara. I followed after him and it was at about that same time that Erika came around the corner. She gave a brief glance at my shoulder before looking over to Freddy.

“The keys fit the mini van, but I didn’t find anything inside. Looks like a rental, and I doubt that they took it out in their real name, but we should probably check anyway, just to be sure,” Erika said.

“Good thinking,” Freddy nodded before looking at Timothy, “Please arrange for the vehicle to be picked up. We will want to go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Who knows what clues it may yet yield.”

After noting that Freddy liked to use that comb expression, I watched Timothy jump into the van in order to contact HQ via the secure thing-a-ma-bop. And before you ask, yes, that might very well be it’s technical name. Freddy looked briefly over our faces before he started speaking again.

“Unless anyone needs anything else from this location, we should probably get back downtown. We will want to get these bodies to the lab, examine the car, and get started on some of this paperwork,” he said.

“Shouldn’t someone stay here and wait for Lazarus,” I asked.

Freddy shot me a quizzical look, “We neutralized the threat and left a message for Mr. Lazarus to contact us. When he does so, I will fully explain the situation. If he wishes, we will provide him with some protection or relocate him to a secured location. But in the meantime, we have no way of knowing when or even if he will return to the bar. As Timothy told us, the man operates off of the radar, if he knew that he was in danger, he may very well already be in hiding. This was a good hunch, and we followed it to its conclusion. The Sorcerers have been stopped and now I believe that our attention could be best utilized elsewhere,” he said.

“You can’t think that this is over?” I asked.

“I believe that Kara explained to you how powerful a Sorcerer is? We just stopped three of them. It seems very unlikely that they would need to work with anyone else Mr. Chang,” Freddy said.

“Then where’s the sword?” I questioned.

“I am sure that it will turn up. They were probably planning to bring Mr. Lazarus to another location where they had the sword waiting. I am sure that Kara could shed more light on the subject, but it stands to reason that the sword was part of some complex ritual. I would assume that they did not want to perform such a thing out here in the open,” Freddy smirked.

“Doesn’t the fact that three sorcerers were working together prove that this is bigger than killing a few immortals? What if they were just errand boys for someone much more powerful,” I asked.

Freddy gave me a condescending smile, “Is this about your car?”

“What? No, this is about the case.”

“Mr. Chang, you have made it very clear that you want this case to be of a much larger scope than any of the evidence would suggest. We have a series of murders, three liable culprits, and in all likelihood, the end to these brutal events. I believe that you are projecting the idea of a larger conspiracy so that your world saving event can be real.” Freddy said.