AM 7: Durance, chapters 15 and 16 (Patreon)

 Both these chapters are shorter than usual, so I'm putting both up.  Now I'm off to edit Earth Fathers.

Chapter Fifteen

“Well this is fucked up,” Ahtisham said. Kavon didn’t remember ever hearing the man swear before. 

“No joke,” Les said quietly. “None, zero, zip, zilch, nada.”

Ahtisham scratched the side of his neck. “Is there a reason you’ve decided to brief me on this?”

Kavon traced the grain on the table top. “The Talent community can’t keep this secret. This is the fate of our world, and all of us share it.”

“Yeah,” Les said. “And if we’re going to be miserable, you might as well share in the unhappiness.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ahtisham said. “So, are we looking for the human partner or are we focusing on the durance? I am feeling useless in this fight, so I need someone to point me in the right direction.”

“You’re not alone there,” Rima said. “I’m almost sorry I didn’t become a shaman because I wish I could see trouble coming at me. And on that note, Joe is a shaman. If he’s on the team, shouldn’t we tell him what’s going on? He’s going to notice shamanic magic.”

Les spoke before Kavon could. “Man, I am as pro-sharing as a man can get, but maybe we can avoid dragging any new people into this until we have something that approaches a plan?”

“I agree,” Kavon said quickly. He didn’t want untested and unproven agents in the middle of this particular fight. Darren looked ready to argue the point, but Coretta spoke up before he could.

“So what are we going to do if Pochi decides to start a new purge?”

Kavon grimaced. Sometimes he really disliked Coretta’s habit of going straight for the jugular. 

“That’s reassuring,” Les muttered. “Please tell me that your silence isn’t a suggestion that we’ll all die in a fiery blaze of glory.”

“I assume there will be less blaze and glory and more death,” Darren said. “However, Bennu is on our side and I think Pochi is willing to wait, at least for a while.” He gave Kavon a worried look and his hand touched his hip. Kavon felt a tingle in his own mark. If Pochi killed them, Bennu would probably be forced off the earth with them. It was a leash, on that the other ifrit hadn’t insisted Pochi wear. That suggested that Pochi had more standing with the other ifrit than Bennu did. 

Their timeline was definitely tight. If the battle went against them or if their solution took too long, Pochi would act.

“So the little hummingbird I had to carry off the battlefield is the great docent general?” Les asked. “That is not reassuring because he got his ass kicked.”

“Great,” Coretta said wearily. The whole group was sounding defeated before they started. Kavon stood. 

“Pochi lost went he fought alone.” Kavon looked at Darren. “Bennu was tactically useless. Brief Ahtisham on what happened in the battle and talk to him about asymmetrical battle strategies. Coretta, keep Milton working on that list. Rima, Les, get cell phone records from our other hot spots and see if you can find anyone who appeared at multiple scenes.”

That bit of practicality was all it took to push Darren out of his despair and back toward his more natural optimism. “As soon as Ahtisham stops telling me what an idiot my guide is, I’ll be out to help with the paperwork,” he said. His energy seemed to fill the room, and the rest of the team nodded.

“And I thought SWAT was dangerous. Come on,” Ahtisham said, “you can explain why Kavon thinks your bird is next to worthless.”

“Use the meditation room,” Kavon said.

Darren smiled at him and headed for the door. The rest of the team followed until Kavon sat at the table with Coretta. She waited until the door closed before she spoke.

“What is Pochi’s motivation and how much should I worry about his relationship to an Aztec god of human sacrifice?” she asked.

Kavon leaned back and tried to find an answer that was both honest and useful. “I suspect he’s a battlefield general who has the authority to make a decision about starting a new purge, but I still believe the ifrit want to fix the planet. They don’t intend any harm.”

“No harm. So he’ll kill me and all the other people with Talent, but he won’t mean any harm,” Coretta summarized.

Kavon nodded. “That’s why I don’t want to make a general announcement about the changes in the Talent community.”

“Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.” Coretta stood and moved to a window. When she pulled back the privacy blind, sun divided the room into two unequal pieces. She stared out for a long time, and Kavon gave her time to collect her thoughts. Kavon had spent a sleepless night trying to get his own brain around the problem, so he couldn’t begrudge her a few moments of prayer or planning or raw terror.

When she turned around, her expression lacked any emotion. “We will get through this, but next time, you talk to me about what needs to happen, team lead to team lead. If you assign my people to unauthorized investigations again, I will file a complaint.”

Kavon sat up, but before he could defend himself, Coretta held up a hand. “I understand. These are extenuating circumstances, but I just came out of a meeting with White and the director where they made a damn good argument that this being our new normal. Magical sinks and spills and increasingly powerful Talent is now normal. And you are all about rules, so I’m putting my foot down here. We can’t have the entire Talent team tangled in this problem. Someone has to be here for the murders and rapes and bank robberies. Someone has to make sure that at least some of our team members take nights off and go on vacation and get their heads out of their asses. And since I can’t do that for your team, I’m doing it for mine.”

Kavon swallowed a bone deep need to defend himself and considered her words. She was right. They weren’t a military unit, and they couldn’t do their jobs during the day and fight a war at night. The bureau had rules about hours worked in a week to avoid the sort of burn out Coretta feared. Kavon slowly nodded. “Understood. I’m going to brief White, and then we’ll decide how to split the workload, but I won’t step on your chain of command again.”

With a sigh, Coretta came around the table and chose the chair next to Kavon. “How did we get here?” she asked.

“I think we’ve always been on this train. We just didn’t know it.” He shrugged. He didn’t have a better answer.

“At least I like the company, even if the conductor is driving toward a cliff.” Coretta rested her hand on his forearm for a second before she stood. “Have fun explaining this to White.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kavon took a deep breath outside his boss’s office. This might be his last moment as a supervisory agent if White wanted to get aggressive with the rules. However, it was time to worry about the world, not his career. At least Coretta was in place if Kavon got demoted or fired.

“Come in,” White called.

Kavon felt a tug at the bond, and he locked his emotions down tighter. Darren didn’t need to feel any of this. Before heading into White’s office, Kavon schooled his expression. “Thank you for making room in your schedule,” Kavon said.

White stood. “Considering everything that’s been going on, when one of my agents wants to speak with me about Talent crime, I’ll make room on my schedule.  I have to say, the formality of your tone is concerning. Take a seat. What's on your mind?”

“The attack outside the hotel yesterday,” Kavon said as he settled into one of the visitor’s chairs.

Any trace of levity vanished from White’s voice. “Is Agent Oberton okay?”

“He is.” Kavon had never shown any innate skill with healing, but Bennu was associated with rebirth in Egyptian mythology, so perhaps healing was one of his areas of expertise.

“Glad to hear it.” White settled down behind his desk. “From the reports I heard, he was seriously injured.”

“Being a shaman has a few perks, if someone has access to enough power to heal someone.”

“He’s a lucky man.  But I get the feeling that's not what you wanted to talk about.” White closed the files on his desk and pushed them to one side.

Kavon felt like he was preparing to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, but the alternative was pushing the mundanes out before him. “I wanted to talk about the guide that committed the assault.”

“The guide? I thought guides were tools that shamans used.”

Kavon might have allowed that misconception to stand too long. He now regretted passing up all the small moments when he could have shared information about how shamans worked. “Guides have minds of their own. They take animal form because they prefer certain behavioral patterns.”

“Which is exactly why profilers are always interested in learning a shaman’s guide. I understand that. However, I thought guides didn’t act on this plane of existence, not without a shaman’s or adept’s encouragement, and if they did act, they would mimic the behavior of their chosen animals.” White was spouting the council line.

“Guides are independent sentient creatures,” Kavon corrected him. “They need a connection to a partner to fully experience life, but they make choices that run contrary to their human partners all the time. Before I bonded to Darren, I would sometimes fight my bull for hours before he would give me the power for some shamanic ritual. He didn’t like expending energy for victims he didn’t perceive as part of his herd.” Those had been difficult days, and Kavon had learned to rely on his FBI training because his bull had been so recalcitrant. Even now Bennu provided the power more often than Kavon’s bull.’’

Kavon continued. “Many guides choose to connect to animals, and over time they will start to use the form of the animal. That does not mean they are animals themselves. They have their own thoughts and needs and desires.”

“Are you telling me that it was a guide and not a shaman that attacked you on the street?” White’s expression twisted in horror. He was probably thinking about jurisdiction and extradition. It wasn’t as if laws applied to the spirit plane or creatures from the deeper wells of magic.

“I'm not sure,” Kavon admitted. He wished he had answers, but he didn’t. “Most guides won’t take independent action. They’re on a ride along. But some older guides play by different rules, rules that 

could change the relationship those with Talent have with the world.”

“This is sounding ominous.” White picked up a pen and tapped it against the notepad.

“It is, and quite frankly I'm not sure how to navigate the political waters. The guide that attacked is called a durance. They were exiled from Earth and our spirit plane because they were reckless. They gave power to anyone who looked interesting.” Kavon had thought about that description. He’d worked enough violent crime to recognize the profile, although Salma would likely have a fit if she heard what he was about to say. “Durance are like bored teenagers, and we’re the hornet’s nest they enjoy poking. Thousands of years ago, their more level-headed cousins locked them out, but the lock is failing now. If I take this information to the Council, there is going to be a push for the Talent community to isolate itself. The doctrine of separate but equal is not one that I will ever endorse or condone.”

“Nor will I. The law enforcement community sometimes has a short memory when it comes to the amount of damage that they have done to shamans over the years.” White tapped his pen against the pad. Far more quickly than Kavon expected, White turned to practical matters. “How ancient, how independent, how powerful, and where have they been, if not on the planet?

Sir, I trust your judgment and your political acumen, and I am asking you to keep as much of this conversation confidential as you can.”

White sighed. “Two years ago, I came to you with one file on the top of the pile and I asked you to consider Agent Frane for your team.”

Kavon didn’t understand the change of topics, but he trusted White had a point. “Yes, sir. I understand why. On paper, her experience fit well with my team.” At the time, Les had been fairly new and Rima was in her thirties, but she still looked like a teenager when she wore jeans. That unfortunate genetic quirk meant that previous team leads had kept her out of the field. With the exception of himself and Coretta, none of the team had serious long-term field work. “If anyone should have noticed Agent Frane’s schemes, it should have been me.”

“I shouldn’t tell you this.” White paused, either for dramatic effect or because he was honestly struggling to find the words. “Frane was on desk duty the year before she transferred to your team.” He paused again.

“Agent Frane was an analyst. I understood she was on desk duty most of her career.”

White huffed. “In a manner of speaking. Before she was on limited duty, she went out with teams and acted as the liaison and technical on-scene coordinator. Her team was out in the field when a local department in Minnesota realized she had Talent. Our best guess is that a local officer or suspect saw something they recognized.”

Kavon got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. If the department was anti-Talent, that would be a lot of temptation—a magic user isolated, surrounded by armed mundanes. And if the department was in conflict with her team, if they felt like her team was invading their territory, the stress could reach a breaking point.

White nodded; perhaps he recognized Kavon’s horror. “I threw the weight of this office behind the investigation, but they’d had Agent Frane for two hours before her team called in, and they understood forensics. Three officers were dismissed, but I suspect that was to placate us more than any honest disapproval on the part of the sheriff. Agent Frane was an armed agent who had a gun, a badge, and her magic, and she couldn’t protect herself. I run a branch of the FBI and I couldn’t protect her.” White leaned forward. “I understand the danger the Talent community faces, and I will not expose more of my people to prejudice or hatred. Unless one of these ancient guides targets my agency, I will maintain operational security on this case the way I would any other. And I might neglect my report writing. So I repeat, how old, how independent, and how powerful ?”

Ignoring his instinct to hide information, Kavon outlined everything he knew or suspected about their enemy.