Nine Swords

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Jennison Edwards switched on the television in Thomas Jackson's apartment in one of the Officers' Quarters buildings near Temple Hall. She flopped back on the huge, black leather sofa, stretching her legs out. These legs were immediately occupied by two fuzzy black shadows that slunk onto the couch from where they'd been lurking under the Ikea coffee table.

Jenn's cats, K-9 and Kat, made themselves at home, kneading at her jeans until they decided she'd been suitably tenderized, then flopping bonelessly over her at strange angles. Cats defied mortal geometry all the time. She stroked ears and flanks and whatever else the felines presented for her attention as she watched the Who marathon roll by. It was part-way through When A Good Man Goes To War at the moment.

She glanced at the wall clock again... a rather stoic-looking 19th century Vienna Seconds pendulum piece with an ebony and walnut cabinet... clearly a leftover from the previous tenant that Tom hadn't bothered to replace yet. It was getting late, and she was getting tired. She'd been in the field herself a good part of the day, getting home only a short time ago. Now, after a long, hot shower, she'd slipped into jeans and an old oversized t-shirt (oversized because she had flagrantly stolen it from Tom's drawer), made a pot of herbal tea, and settled down in front of the television. She didn't want to fall asleep till he got home... not the way she'd been sleepwalking lately. She was just so hellishly tired, though.

She rested her head back on the overstuffed arm of the sofa and watched Rory ask the cybermen if he had to repeat the question. She grinned and closed her eyes.

***************

The door clicked shut behind Jenn. She had comfortable combat boots on now and a duffel bag tucked over her shoulder. Her hair was still ruffled from the couch. She padded down the stairs and out of the Officers' Quarters without even a glance at the door guard when they nodded and offered, “Edwards,” as a perfunctory greeting.

She walked the fourteen blocks to the Edwards Arms London research and development division building without a sound. She didn't acknowledge any of the attempts at social interaction from the few people on the streets in this area at this time of night... not the polite nods nor the wolf-whistles and inquiries how much it would cost for a quicky in the alley.

Just before she entered the building, a man in a dark, well-tailored suit stepped onto the walkway from a sidestreet. He followed Jenn, just a few steps behind, catching the door with a black-gloved hand before it could close behind her. The sleepwalking girl didn't even notice him.

She entered the building, the glass doors sliding back into place with a hiss, catching to let the man in behind her, and then hissing closed. As she walked to the security desk, the night man looked up with a smile at Jenn. Her father's Security Chief, Pat, was usually here at night, but this was his night off.

“Miss Jennison! I'll unlock the core elevator for y...” The guard's fingers had keyed the elevator release, but he never finished his sentence. A soft whuff was the only sound that preceded the small round that entered his throat and embedded itself in his spinal column. The sedative from the round rushed through the blood-brain barrier and the guard slumped into his chair.

Jenn walked off toward the elevator, not noticing the man following her, the Browning Buck Mark with its modified magazine in his hand now, or the two other men who entered the building behind him. She didn't notice their dark uniforms or the body armor that was smoothly incorporated or the masks covering their faces. She didn't notice as one of those two broke off, went around the desk, grabbed the unconscious guard by the hair, and slid a palm-sized leaf blade knife with a narrow blade and a broad driving surface between the guard's second and third cervical vertebrae, pulled it out with a meaty sound, and dropped the dead guard back in his chair.

Two guards in grey and black Edwards security uniforms were standing around the corner and looked up in surprise as Jenn came down the hall with her uninvited guest. Nothing in the man's face or carriage tipped the guards to something being wrong. The first thought the guard on the left wall had that something was wrong was when his partner across the hall slid to the floor with a tranq round in his throat. It was also his last thought, as a quick follow-up shot dropped him, as well. The two clean-up men moved into the hall and finished the guards off as Jenn and her impeccably dressed companion moved on around the next corner toward the elevator.

A guard by the elevator bank down the hallway started to reach for his sidearm and his ear piece at the same time. He never reached either. Jenn didn't even look down as he slid down the wall next to the elevator, eyes rolling up into his head, legs convulsing slightly. She was on the elevator with the man in the suit before the guard reached the floor completely. The man held out a gloved hand again to hold the elevator doors while the other two finished this guard in the same fatally efficient way and entered the elevator.

It was all so quiet, all so clean and efficient. Jenn's spell-induced sleep wasn't disturbed. They stepped off the elevator on Sub-level 3. The only thing that stopped the cold-blooded killing here was that she had pulled all personnel off this level when she'd shut down her father's main anima weapon development lab to isolate the artifact. The only one who could get past the biometric locks on that lab door now was Jennison Edwards. Even her father's access had been revoked, to keep him from forgetting and wandering in.

She reached the lab door. The three men, together now, stopped behind her. Jenn had been lured this way in her sleep so many times now, it had become a mindless routine. She leaned forward to reach the retinal scanner, and a pale red beam fanned out and reflected violet off her electric-blue iris. She pressed her thumb to the pad next and the print was matched to hers in the company database. With both of those biometrics unlocked, the small green microphone light glowed to life next to the voice recognition input.

Jenn stood straighter again and said, in a rather dream-dazed voice, “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

The green microphone light flashed brighter twice, the door hissed open, and the first of two rounds pierced the middle of Jenn's back, close to but not over the spine. The dark-suited man put the second round in the girl as he walked past her before slipping the Browning back into his jacket. She was already falling, so the shot entered closer to her shoulder. All three men were in the lab before she hit the floor.

Jenn's consciousness returned with the first shot. There hadn't been any sound, just a slap of pressure before the burning spread, lightning-fast, and brought the numbness with it. She had pulled just enough blood magic to slow it when the second round was fired. She watched the men walk past her without being able to do anything to stop them.

The scene shifted for Jenn. She saw Tom bending over to scratch the cats' ears on his way out of the apartment the previous morning. Then she saw the lab again and the suited man inside lifting the box off the counter. He'd just started to slip it into her duffel bag, which one of the masked men was holding open, when she realized she was convulsing on the floor. She couldn't quite feel the tiles, but the angle of vision made sense. Then she writhed once, and went still.

The men exited the lab quickly. The two with masks navigated paths around the dead girl, but the suited man stepped over her, the heel of one of his perfectly polished Bruno Magli's pressing her hair onto the tile as he glanced down and smiled with just the corner of his mouth.

They were in the elevator before her body disappeared.

The whole thing had happened so quickly, none of the security on the upper levels of the complex had even realized something was wrong. The main level hallway was free of any living security, and the three men stepped out through the glass and steel front entrance of the building.

They walked briskly down the street, crossed at the corner, and disappeared into the alley next to the Edwards car park across the street.

A moment later, two bright flashes illuminated the alley... gone before anyone passing by could blink.

**********************

Pat's mid-sized brown sedan screeched to a halt in front of Edwards. He had just broken all the traffic laws possible and a few laws of physics to get across town after receiving a frantic text from one of the night staff.

He registered the body at the front desk and the nervous security men mulling around it in his peripheral vision as he checked the street before entering the building. “Where are the ambulances?” he snapped.

“We... don't need them, sir. We thought you'd want to secure the scene first.” The guard stepped back to let Pat up to the desk.

Pat quickly and clinically assessed the body as he stepped by. Keep it professional, Pat... he kept repeating that silently, so he didn't lose his dinner seeing one of his friends and employees laying on the floor like a pithed frog in a biology experiment.

His eyes flickered over the security cameras, watching fragments of the intruders that his men had set on loopback. The camera they'd set up outside the lab on Sub-level 3 was, as usual, full of static interference and blank patches... but there was enough video recorded for him to watch Jennison Edwards die. The picture fractured and cut out completely as the men walked out of the lab.

Pat's hand was cold as he reached in his pocket and pulled out his mobile. The first number he rang up went to voice mail:

“Mr. Edwards, this is Pat at the London Office. Sir, I need you to contact me immediately. Something terrible has happened. Please call soon, sir...it's Jennison.”

Pat started to ring the second number and cursed loudly and fluently while a man's voice instructed him to please leave a message and he'd get back to him between crises. The voice mail system beeped and Pat had contained his expletives. He left a message, as calm as he could:

“Mr. Jackson... there's been an incident at Edwards. Miss Jennison's been killed. I'm so sorry, sir. We're here if you want to come down.”

Pat closed the connection and put his phone back in his pocket. “No one goes down to Sub-level 3 until Miss Edwards' associates can be notified. I don't know what she had down there, but I know it was dangerous enough that she wouldn't mind us leaving her body untended a bit longer to make sure it's properly contained. If it's even still there. Show me the rest of ours.”

He followed the remaining security staff down the hall, checking but not disturbing the bodies. None of them went past the elevator.

Tom fumbled in the dark for his phone, hand thumping along the nightstand several times before it found the device. He eyeballed the time before answering. Ten minutes of god damn sleep, that's all he wanted. He was already bitter that Jenn hadn't been there when he got back, probably out researching that goddamned artifact again. He brought the phone to his ear, "It's my day off," he immediately grunted at the man assumed to be Sonnac on the other line.

Then his brain put the words together, and iced water ran through his veins. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he said, though the voice at the other end might interpret his voice as two bears having a knock-down drag-out brawl. He tried forcing himself to calm down, and managed to keep himself from tearing through doors and walls on his way out of the bedroom. However, most of the small objects resting on various surfaces in his room decided to bounce themselves off walls and fall to the floor in his wake.

He snatched a jacket from the back of the sofa, tugging it onto his shoulders without stopping his march to the door. Thankfully Kat and K-9 could sense which way the wind was blowing, and were off hiding somewhere. The door practically flew open when Tom reached it, lock still engaged. He would have to pay for the repairs to the wall later. The storm moved down the hall and out to the front of the building.

"Car. Now." Tom said to the driver on duty. The man took one look at Tom's pajama pants and bare chest, only half-covered by the jacket, and tossed him the keys before running off. Tom got into the car, and floored it, tearing off towards Edwards. God help any policeman who tried to stop him. He twisted his head, the jacket he wore smelled like vanilla and cordite. It had a somewhat calming effect on him. Enough that he wouldn't strangle the first neck he came to when he got out of the car.

Probably.

The tires locked and the car slid forward several feet in front of the large glass Edwards Arms building. Tom kicked the door open. It probably wouldn't ever completely close again. Tom climbed out and slammed the door shut, the glass in the window cracked. Tom stared at it for a moment, "Fuck you too." Then he stormed towards the building.

The wolf ran through the maze of trees. Moonlight spilled through the patchwork of clouds that dotted the skies above. He was close now, he could smell his prey and almost hear the thrum of it's heart as it hid motionless. Stopping only to scent the trail, still warm from where the doe had lain recently he loped on, saving his strength for the inevitable chase and killing strike.

Suddenly, something shattered the relative still of the moonlit forest. A cry, sharp and shrill broke the silence. It was a lone, plaintive howl, distant and echoing as though through some intervening barrier. The wolf's head snapped up and he responded in kind...

Wes' eye snapped open as his breath came in ragged gasps. It was as if he had been running in pursuit of something but he couldn't quite place what. Something inside him whined and whuffed and pawed at him to make an association. It was foggy at first but then became clearer and clearer.

Jenn.

Something had happened, he could sense it; something bad and traumatic. Wes raised his nose and scented the air reflexively, but there was nothing to note other than the familiar scents of his apartment. The Wolf-Spirit had waned with the moon in their eternal bond. Glancing down at Bryn's still recumbent form, Wes checked his phone to see if any message might have been left. Nothing.

Closing his eyes he tried to focus on the blood bond, the pack mark that they shared. He could sense her presence, but it was vague and imprecise. It was if he was trying to catch a glimpse of her beyond a veil of ever shifting fog. Once he had a general location, it was not hard to put two and two together. She had been near Edwards, that much was clear, but something had happened and she was now likely in the spirit world.

Wes rose quickly from the bed and tugged on his clothes.

He had only been in his office for about five minutes, but Pat felt like it had been hours. He'd just finished leaving several messages on voice mail systems:

"Ms. Kotone-Marsh? Izumi Kotone-Marsh? Jennison Edwards has you on her final directives regarding the item she was storing in the Edwards Arms labs. Ms. Edwards has been killed in a break-in. My name is Pat. I'll be here at Edwards if you need to reach me. We have no intel on the status of...whatever she was storing."


Then another voice mail...

"Mr. Vasiliou? Don Vasiliou? I'm sorry, Ms. Edwards has you on her contact list if we can't reach Ms. Kotone-Marsh. She listed Don. If it's Donald, sir, I apologize. My name is Pat, and you can reach me at ######### at Edwards Arms. There's been a break-in, apparently targetted at the object Ms. Edwards was storing here. She's been killed, Mr. Vasiliou... Jennison Edwards has. Please call?"

Pat's voice had been getting less calm with every person he couldn't reach, every voice mail message he had to leave.

He dialed Mr. Edwards for the fifth time and left another message. “Sir, I have to know what to do about the bodies. What level of privacy do you need me to try to keep here, Sir. These are our men laying here. I'm going to have to tell the Yard something. I'm going to have to tell their -families- something, Sir. Please call me back.” He slammed his desk phone down into its cradle and swung out from his desk chair to stalk back toward the lobby, where his men were standing somber watch over the front desk and the body behind it. “It's your bloody daughter, you sad old fart. Get your nose out of your fecking blueprints and answer your phone for once.” His voice was so harsh on that outburst, his own wife wouldn't have recognized it.

The Security Chief had just composed himself when he emerged to discover his men on high alert. “Pat, Sir...there's someone...” The frantic guard was reaching behind the desk to trigger the lockdowns on the front doors.

Pat looked out the doors at the remains of Tom's car and the young man barreling toward the front of the building. “Don't lock them!” His command snapped the guard out of his panic and he looked up to see Pat shaking his head. “It's fine. I hope.”

He had the playback from Sub-level 3 on a loop and turned where it could be seen from the front of the desk before Tom got inside the doors. As Tom came in, Pat was talking as fast as he could and still sound even faintly calm. “Mr. Jackson, Tom... so sorry. We've left the body on Sub 3. Didn't know the safety level down there. Can you secure that lab for us?”

Jenn sat, feet curled under her in the anima well, trying to get her bearings. She could see the park around her. She'd been here enough times, she recognized it almost instantly. She was here, so her body had to be gone from Edwards. She would never get used to this... never. She hated the bees.

People weren't supposed to suffer and die, over and over again. She was a medic when she deployed with a team for a reason. To keep this from happening. To keep anyone from having to wake up in a pool of honey-gold light, reliving their death over and over.

She rubbed her eyes, missing the ballistics glasses she'd had Gargoyles modify for her to look like any other pair of everyday glasses. She must have left without them...

Fecking spells. She knew they were there, twisting around inside her somehow, waiting for her to fall asleep or get distracted so they could draw her back to the artifact. Why couldn't she find them and do something to get them away from her?

And now it was gone...

She curled her legs up under her tighter, tugging Tom's over-sized shirt down over her knees like a blanket. She had to get up. She had to do something, she knew that. It was incredibly important. Every time she blinked, though, she was still seeing that view from the floor, her field of vision jerking around as her body convulsed and...died.

This wasn't supposed to happen to people.

Tom glanced briefly at the screen as he raged through the lobby. His eyes narrowed and shifted slightly to Pat. He half-growled something unintelligible, and continued on his path towards the elevator. When he reached back, he reared up and slammed his foot into the metal doors, putting a sizable dent in the door. His fist followed the kick, knuckles splitting as they impacted with the hard surface. He grabbed the handholds he had made, and shoved the doors open wide. He stared into the darkness for a moment, then jumped down. The roof of the elevator, if it happened to still be down there, would meet the same fate.

Tom landed on sub-level three with a thud, standing up and walking down the hall with the same determined purpose. Not even the snaps and crackles of his broken hands knitting slowly back into place bothered him. He stopped briefly at a dead body. He jammed a finger into the bullet hole and felt for the round, hooking it with a finger and pulling it out. He stared at it briefly before tossing it to the other side of the hall. He ran his other hand around the man's head, turning it to see the stab wound. Clean, professional. Tom paused long enough to close the man's eyes before he continued down the hall.

When he reached the end of the hall he stepped into the room where the box had been stored. He looked around the room. Not much had been disturbed other than the box. There wasn't even so much as a pool of blood on the floor. He knelt down and ran his hand across the floor near the door. Hair, black hair. She had been here, right where the camera said the body was supposed to be. Of course there was no body though, she was one of them.

He crossed the room to the nearest wall, grabbing one of the prototype shotguns and tucking a pair of pistols into the waistband of his pajama pants. He looked completely ridiculous, if you could get past the idea that he also looked ready to shoot you for looking at him sideways. He headed back up the hallway towards the elevator.

Katja took a deep breath of the night, she let the cold air fill her lungs and the warmth from her tea filled her fingers and up in her arms. She knew she could get warm without the help from the tea but to recall the memories of drinking tea, the smell of autumn and the sound of dry leaf under her feet was pleasant.

She remembered the first time she was here. Just as she had told Thanasi she had found the place magical, like a space between the words. Ealdwick park always made her calm, just as her spot at the landing stage in Transylvania, or Thanasi´s cliff in Egypt.

She smiled vaguely when she recalled meetings in this park, conversations. She could not help to think the kindness Thanasi had showed her after her meeting with Arianna Zu. They had stood close to the stage, next to the anima well. She glanced it when she passed and her smile disappeared. Was it not...?

"Jennet?"

Wes left a quick note for the still slumbering Bryn. Their rather inconsistent schedules allowed her to sleep on despite his departure. She was used to him coming and going at all hours and only murmured softly as he dressed and left the room. Even Taibhse only offered a feline glower at him from lambent orbs as he headed out the door.

It was a short walk to the nearest Agartha portal and then another short hop to Ealdwic park. After that it was a quick jog down largely deserted streets to the Edwards facility. A quick survey of the scene suggested someone had broken through the doors and had likely blasted through the lobby.

Was it Jenn who had done this? No simple covert action then, someone had even left a car half parked on the sidewalk. Wes was surprised at the violence of it all as he headed into the lobby and seeing the milling security personnel.

Jenn glanced up at the sound of her name. Seeing Katja, she began to focus on her surroundings again. She climbed shakily to her feet. "Kat?" She wanted to make sure she was really seeing her. The sedatives had triggered hallucinations before she died, and she wasn't sure they were quite cleared up. Sometimes, there was just so much residue after waking up in an anima well after you... died.

She shivered again and then tried shaking the cobwebs out of her head. "Kat... I've got to get back to Edwards. Something bad happened."


----------------


As Wes approached Edwards, he would catch a strong scent of blood from the alley near the parking garage.


As Tom approached the elevator... it would occur to him that he'd disabled it.

Wes catches the coppery scent and lifts his nose to try to follow it. Cursing softly that his senses were dulled due to the lunar cycle, he muttered about never having a nose for blood when you needed one. He thought he saw Pat inside and almost checked in with the man to get more details, but he was afraid of losing the trail in his currently all too human form.