Chapter 16 – Distractions

Archmage Taisen hovered over the treetops by a lake in the middle of the Amazon Basin, invisible to every sense he knew how to counter. He knew that still left some gaps, but even a fae king would be hard-pressed to notice his presence. Which was demonstrated by the fae court that was going about its business directly underneath him.

He did not create Defensores Mundi in order to police the inevitable conflicts between supernaturals. It was meant to stop the threats from the portal worlds, which was more complicated without free access to the main portals, but he had the foresight to acquire his own. He also had, with some reluctance, taken up the task of restraining the more excessive sorts on Earth. Reluctant less because he objected to dealing with such people permanently, and more because it was the kind of mandate that had no limits. Without boundaries, any organization would expand to fill every available space.

So far as he was concerned, most of the problems that GAR had created sprang from the fact that it had tried to do everything. That kind of all-encompassing authority would always end up contradicting itself and snarling itself on cross-purposes. Taisen had no desire to make the same mistake. Nor did he want the responsibility.

Still, the goings-on below were definitely in the envelope of Defensores Mundi. Unlike the usual sort of fae enclave, this one was out in the open. No special rules, barely even a glamour, which meant that the massive tree that had abruptly grown to straddle the Amazon River itself was visible to the naked eye. To satellites too, most likely.

That was bad enough, but it wasn’t just fae down below. There were vampires operating with support of fae magic over hundreds of miles. While the Amazon Basin had been sparsely populated before, it was completely unpopulated by any mundanes now. Not all of them had been killed; some had just been driven out.

It irked him that Wells had tipped him off before his own sources could inform him of it. In hindsight, he should have suspected something with the way the Brazilian government had some vague coverage about an ongoing series of disease outbreaks in the Amazon Basin, but there were so many genuine disasters and problems worldwide. It was easy to miss those that might be supernatural. Not that any natural disaster created trees the size of skyscrapers. By any metric, wholesale destruction and alteration of the Earth couldn’t be allowed.

He clicked the transmitter of his scry-comm, the similarly-cloaked squad around him checking in with brief return clicks. Even if he was muffling sound with a judicious use of force magic, he didn’t want to take chances. He gave the signal, and they scattered.

Taisen drew on his vis, somewhat wishing that he’d been able to manage the sort of internal reinforcement that Archmage Huitzilan had described, but satisfied enough with the power he’d achieved by finalizing the step into Archmage himself. The creations he spun into existence inside his shell didn’t have much finesse, but they didn’t need it.

Orbs of coruscating light packed around bubbles of force appeared at eye level among the fae, exploding with an intensity that was blinding and deafening even to supernaturals. Massive wedges of force cut into the earth, severing the tree at its roots, and a vortex of intense gravity lifted it from its perch above the river. Bark and limbs crackled and crunched as the mana-enhanced wood collapsed in on itself, wind whirling about the rapidly disappearing tree.

Taisen’s resident fae expert had assured him the tree was the locus of the enclave, the source of any passage they had into the Ways and god knew what other connections that might be spilling out into South America. Normally it would have been nigh-indestructible so long as there were enough fae to anchor it, but he was an Archmage. By destroying it first he removed the fae interlopers’ shield and retreat both.

The sounds of combat came from below as he used his light senses to track his people. He could have simply wiped out the entire nest himself, but he was a big believer in empowering his soldiers. The more experience they could get, the better, especially when he was running oversight. At some point, he had to trust in his people’s ability to perform by themselves. If anything, he was spending too much time putting out fires on Earth, when it was obvious there were issues on the portal worlds.

He caught one fae trying to ambush a mage with some sort of magical spear, and a brief whorl of light magic sent an invisible lance downward faster than thought. Finding the right frequencies for magical lasers had been a pain, but an invisible sword a mile long was an extremely useful weapon. Taisen spun out some gravity chains and used them to cripple several large fae beasts, things that had been brought through from somewhere deep in Faerie.

Wind began to howl as his gravity vortex finished compressing the bulk of the tree and started in on the atmosphere, instantly condensing clouds as the shockwave raced through the air. The forty-story tree had been turned into an almost spherical lump of wood, so Taisen dismissed the vortex and let the wooden ball drop down into the river, where it sank like a stone.

From there it was mostly mopping up. Half the people he’d brought along were there to reshape the ground just to hide the obvious buildings and alterations. There was nothing they could do to fix what had been done to a lot of the local plant life, but fire would clear that up. He didn’t bother to take prisoners, because they already knew where this incursion had come from. At least roughly.

Faerie was leaking into Earth.

It had never happened prior to the GAR shakeup, so he was forced to conclude it was purposely being allowed, but none of his official inquiries had gone anywhere. BSE didn’t even bother policing anywhere outside of the main strongholds of Europe, China, and the US coasts. Admittedly, that was partly because he’d taken half their workforce with him. He allowed himself a self-satisfied smile, because it was the better half.

“Clear, sir,” the voice of the Lieutenant Armond came over the scry-com. He checked the battlefield with his own senses and nodded.

“Clear,” he agreed, and flicked out a massive glamour, now that there was nothing to break it. There would probably be mundane attention soon enough, something that Lieutenant Armond noticed as well.

“What were they thinking, sir? This could have gone very badly for everyone,” she asked, disgruntled.

“I suspect that, generally, they expect us to clean up their messes,” Taisen said, his mouth set in a thin line. “Maybe they thought we’d swoop in with glamours or something, but by forcing us to respond they’re able to stretch us thin and, when the time comes, ambush us.”

“That sounds an awful lot like war, sir.”

“It does indeed,” Taisen said grimly. “There is a reason that GAR is supposed to keep other supernaturals very restricted. We aren’t fae or vampires and don’t live like them, nor do they live like us. The very first agreements made it clear that they could live with us on Earth, not displace us. What they’re doing is exactly why I created Defensores Mundi in the first place.”

He wasn’t a fan of the American Alliance for those exact same reasons, but they had at least committed to much of the same restrictions as GAR. In fact, Chester’s people preferred to blend in and Wells’ specific moral requirement opposed any sort of creep into an actual threat. Of course, they covered more densely populated and surveyed lands so what they could do without attracting attention was fairly restricted. And the potential consequences were greater.

The American Alliance blended in with the general mundane population and spread itself wide, rather than separating itself out into fae enclaves or mage Houses. If they ever needed to be dealt with, it wouldn’t be easy to even find them, let alone corral and contain them. Not as diffuse as they were.

“I’m glad it’s not my job to figure that out, sir,” Armond said. Taisen grunted.

“Sentiment noted, Lieutenant.” he said. “I’m not looking forward to trying to tackle it myself.” He surveyed the aftermath of the battle. Here and there fires burned, soil and rock was churned and displaced, foliage was torn and mangled. To say nothing of the bodies. “For now, we’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

***

Mateo Torres rolled the gold coin over his fingers while his men drove the trucks into town. While the stamping was amateur at best, it was very definitely pure, and his cartel was very interested in whoever had dumped nearly a million dollars in gold into their territory. Theirs, because the previous owners been useless, as evidenced by the how easily they’d been taken over and how they’d ignored such an enormous potential resource.

The Torres family could always use more traceless gold, but tracking back the coins to a small village in the middle of nowhere had made them all suspicious. Flooding the area with gold was the sort of move that might mean a large militia, or a mine, or a facility to control something even more lucrative. Most of the various products and services in the area were under firm control, but there were always people trying to strike out on their own.

Their convoy came to a halt inside the little village, which had quickly become deserted. Everyone stayed inside, knowing they didn’t want anything to do with such a convoy. Mateo glanced around as he slid out of the car, seeing that despite the size and remoteness of the town, there seemed to be a lot of new vehicles, new facades, and even new asphalt on the roads. A lot of money had clearly been dumped into the area.

He meandered away from the vehicles toward the target of their interest, a building owned by a man named Miguel Vasquez. Mateo’s armed guards surrounded him, one of them pounding on the door until it opened. An older man stood at the threshold and blanched at the sight of Mateo and his people arranged outside, though it wasn’t like he could have missed them before. Nobody else had.

“Where’s Miguel?” Mateo’s lieutenant demanded, and the doorman stammered and backed up, gesturing them inside. The lieutenant snorted and shoved the doorman out of the way as he stepped through, weapon held casually as he eyed the interior then signaled the all-clear. Mateo walked in and glanced around, finding the house obviously sporting new furniture and appliances too.

“Mister Torres, welcome.” A man stood in the living room, keeping his hands very obviously in sight and giving him a respectful nod. “What can I do for you?”

“You’re Miguel?” Mateo asked brusquely. The man nodded again, and Mateo flipped the gold coin his way. Miguel caught it and looked at it. “You’re going to tell me who is spending so much gold around here. And where I can find him.”

“Ah. It is just some gringo who wanted a private house. I can show you the lot on the maps…” Miguel offered, handing the coin back into the demanding hand of Mateo’s lieutenant. “However, the last group that went down there couldn’t find anything. They said that the road and the tracks just vanished.”

Mateo grunted. He hadn’t heard about that, but then again, the previous owners had been fairly careless. Whatever had happened, it had been buried well. Or maybe they’d just gotten the wrong area, assuming Miguel hadn’t misled them.

“So, what, an American? Show me.”

“He was an American, yes,” Miguel said as he hastened to obey. “But he didn’t seem too worried about people looking for him.” He headed back into an office and dug through filing cabinets under the watchful eyes of Mateo’s men. He came back with a large map and spread it out on the desk. The plot of land was off near the village of San Fernando, one of a thousand such villages with that name, but the location was clear enough.

“I think he was a dangerous man,” Miguel added uncomfortably as he showed them the map. “Perhaps, American military? I do not know.”

“Yeah?” Mateo pulled a cigarette from his front pocket and lit it. “Well, I’m a dangerous man, too,” he said, taking a long drag and blowing the smoke out at Miguel. “The Torres family isn’t going to permit foreigners to do what they like in our territory.”

“He offered a lot of gold,” Miguel said, by way of excuse. “And he just wanted a house. I hired the workers myself, so I know that’s all they built. I still have the house plans somewhere around here.”

“Sure, get those too.” Mateo acknowledged. He had doubts that it was just a house but Miguel wasn’t acting like he was hiding anything. If anything he was being too accommodating. Not that many people would hesitate when confronted by someone in Mateo’s position. Or by the firepower that came with that position.

While Miguel was digging for the documents, Mateo texted an update back to his brother with a snapshot of the map. Not that either of them expected real trouble, but lack of communication was an easy problem to avoid. The family they’d removed hadn’t been the best at keeping each other updated, and that had let the Torres family roll right over them. Mateo wasn’t going to be that stupid.

When the house plans came out Mateo did feel a bit stupid, because he couldn’t read architectural drawings. Not that he let it show. He just took more pictures and sent them off. What he did understand looked normal enough, just a basement and some places labeled as bedrooms and bathrooms and a living room.

Which was only more suspicious. Who would bother trying to build an ordinary house off the grid in rural Mexico? There was no telling what might be going on out of the sight of everyone.

“What was his name again?”

“I don’t know. The documents are in the name of Mister Smith, but he paid in gold.” Miguel shrugged. “I didn’t ask too many questions.”

Mateo scowled, considering whether he should make an example of the man or not. Miguel should have reported on the American back when the property was purchased, but little more could have been expected. It was hardly reasonable to expect him to pry anything useful out of a rich and dangerous man who obviously wanted privacy. Miguel also paid promptly and completely, so it probably wasn’t the best idea.

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“If anything like this happens again, you will notify me directly,” Mateo said. One of his men shifted the gun he was carrying.

“Yes, of course, Mister Torres.” Miguel said hastily.

“Come on,” he said to his men. “Let’s go check on this Mister Smith.”

***

Lucy sat in her section of the back garden, pulling weeds. She was hoping that eventually she’d be able to interact with a telekinesis focus enough that she could do it that way, but it wasn’t like she actually minded the work. She never would have guessed before that she liked it, but there was something relaxing about working with plants. Fiddling around with drones and rapid prototyping was still more fun, but she couldn’t do that with Alexander.

Her son was busy grabbing the plants she’d pulled out of the soil and carrying them over to the compost pile, where he threw them as hard as he could. They didn’t go very far, but he seemed to enjoy it. He ran back toward her and she opened her arms.

“Come and give mommy a hug,” she said, and smiled as Alex ran full-tilt into her embrace. “Mwah,” she said, and he giggled as she gave him a big sloppy kiss. It was just the two of them for the moment, since her husband was out shopping.

With Alexander, Lucy hadn’t had any cravings at all, but this time she was getting them something fierce and Gayle couldn’t do anything about it. Or rather, she couldn’t do anything permanent, not without running risks nobody was willing to take. Fortunately it wasn’t like it was hard for Callum to make a grocery run, nor was it like she was asking for anything completely outrageous. Even if Callum did give her a look when she asked for licorice.

She wasn’t sure what he had against licorice, but it’d be fun to tease him about it later on.

Her phone chimed from the chair on the deck, and she frowned. It wasn’t the usual tone, and it sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. Brushing the dirt off her hands, she stood up and walked over to check the phone, only to doubletake when she saw the notification was a warning from her home security system.

“Oh, heck,” she said, mindful of Alex following her. She swiped open the phone and tapped on the notification, getting a picture of a bunch of men with semiautomatic rifles marching through the forest near the road. A chill went down her spine and she gawked at the picture before she dropped the phone into her pocket.

“Come here, sweetie,” she said, scooping Alex up and hurrying inside.

“What’s wrong, mama?” He asked, though it came out a little garbled since he was still only two.