Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,63
making small talk and waiting for the trap to be sprung. I was ready to deal with whatever was coming.
London winced at my directness. Too bad. I didn’t want to play games with her, watch her hem and haw around. “It’s about that guy, the Hacker that transmitted those messages earlier this morning. Him.”
I nodded, not wanting to wait any longer. “Go on. So, who is it?”
She hesitated. I ground my teeth. She’d started this, taken the situation this far, and now she didn’t want to spill? What the hell was she playing at?
“Goddamn it, London, tell me what you know!” I exploded. I made sure to put a bit of magic in my exhortation, too. The light fixture at the back of the room rattled, and the room’s illumination brightened and dimmed. London’s eyes darted to and fro. She looked paler than usual, if that was even possible.
“It’s Dylan,” she blurted. “Dylan’s the Hacker.”
I stared at her in shock. “Dylan? Our Dylan? From the bar?” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “He’s nothing to be scared of. He isn’t smart enough to make any sort of take-over-the-world plans, and even if he is, he isn’t powerful enough to pull them off. There’s no way he’s powerful enough to scare you like this . . .” I stared her down. “Or to kill Howard in cold blood.”
Her eyes bulged out of their sockets. “He’s killed Howard?”
I shrugged, acting nonchalant and unaffected though I felt anything but. Better she think I was still above that kind of thing.
“Howard called me earlier, panicking. Much like you,” I said, frowning. “And then he was dead and there were a few of the Dragon’s men showing up.” I cocked my head. “Anything you want to tell me, London?”
London blanched. “No. But if Howard’s dead, I’m surely next.”
I laughed without mirth. “Jesus, listen to you people! It’s Dylan! For God’s sake, Dylan couldn’t cast a high-level spell if his life depended on it. He’s never shown any sort of techno magic that I’m aware of.” At the same time I made a mental note to ask Cyrus later. With luck he was listening in on this conversation back at EHJ headquarters, taking the initiative and looking up everything to be learned about the guy. Because, as much as I was blowing smoke, it was beginning to sound like I didn’t know Dylan as well as I thought.
London shook her head forcefully. “You don’t understand. He’s different now, Fantazia. He’s hooked up with some really scary people. Powerful people. They’ve boosted his magic a hundredfold.”
“Someone’s helping Dylan grow stronger? Who? Why would anyone do that?”
“I-I don’t know. All I know is that it’s happening.”
“Well, all I know is that I’m going over there to hurt him—badly,” I said. Then: “Portami da Dylan.”
I cast the spell to take me directly to him, but nothing happened; I was somehow blocked. Someone was taking high-level precautions, and I was willing to bet it wasn’t Dylan. His mysterious benefactors had great power at their disposal.
London saw the shock on my face and realized, “You can’t get to him. They’re protecting him, aren’t they? You can’t find him, he’s hiding somewhere where nothing can detect him. He just shows up when he wants to take someone’s power. They’ve somehow gifted him with techno-mage powers, which I didn’t even know was possible. You know as well as I do that he never used to be able to cast that kind of spell, but he can now. He can now . . .”
Tears welled up in her eyes, which was scary in and of itself. I’d never seen London cry.
“I was with Joseph’s brother when Dylan came for him,” she continued. “W-we’d been seeing each other for a while. It was even starting to get serious. Poor Johnny.”
I know my mouth dropped open at that. London and Johnny? The Victorian Goth queen who never smiled and the most happy-go-lucky Brother of Power? No way!
Her body was racked by sobs. “He didn’t stand a chance. We were at his place when Dylan showed up. Alone. Dylan took Johnny out alone—one of the Brothers of Power for God’s sake! He took him down without so much as an eyeblink. Just said a few words and everything in the room—the television, the CD player, the video game system, hell, probably even the microwave and the toaster oven—everything just seemed to be draining him. His magic, his life, everything.”