The only spells he refused to let me study were the night magic spells in his special grimoire. He’d given me a royal chewing out after learning that I’d burned the tremblor spell into a tattoo. I’d done it to save his life, but he hadn’t thought that was a good enough reason. Rafe can be a typical pig-headed man.
“Beast and Maia take top cover and warn us if something appears amiss. If something goes wrong, we’ll whistle.”
“Not that anything would ever go wrong with one of your plans,” Beast growled.
Rafe glared at him, but didn’t rise to the bait Beast set. The two of them were like teenage boys at times, always teasing or taunting each other. Maia and I, on the other hand, were more mature in our relationship.
Our familiars leapt into the night sky behind their hawk glamours and I reached out for Rafe’s hand. He took it in his and in a few seconds, we meshed auras, senses, and emotions. It had become so automatic for us that we meshed anytime one of us was going to use magic. It was all for my benefit, of course, Rafe could handle himself without assistance–except for the part of getting himself killed or maimed–but I needed all the practice I could get with magics, even those that I hadn’t learned yet.
I felt the snap of power when Rafe cast a glamour on us. This time he had us appear as a couple of Air Force Security Police, complete with perfectly creased uniforms and shiny boots. Both bothered me, the military had gone away from starch and spit-shines except in formal situations. A moment later, noticing my concern, Rafe altered the uniforms to how I pictured the modern military.
He winked at me as he dropped my hand. Once we were meshed, we could hold it without physical contact, as long as we didn’t get too far apart or have something break our concentration.
“So, we just walk in the front door and take what we came for?” I asked.
Rafe shrugged. “That’s the plan. We’ll see how it works out.”
“You’re the Boss,” I said without emphasis, but he caught my thoughts.
“You think I should just cut an opening in the wall, rush in, and then rush out before anyone can respond?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll be very alert. It’s not like someone is going to try and steal a dragon carcass that’s larger than a full grown elephant.”
“I could make the opening easily enough, but I couldn’t repair it so they couldn’t tell someone had been here. I’d rather try to keep anyone from knowing we were ever here,” Rafe said.
“What difference would it make? You don’t worry about government interference in Wanderer business.”
“True, but the less we appear on their radar, the less chance of that changing in the future.”
He may have had a point. I nodded in agreement and followed as he started for the corner.
We went straight to a personnel door set in one of the huge hangar doors. My enhanced senses revealed infrared motion detectors that were actively sweeping the exterior of the hangar. It was a common enough security arrangement, but Rafe had arranged his glamour to disguise our heat signature from any detection, just as he had our visible spectrum. Since my enhanced senses tat was active, I could see the little detectors that glowed in the infrared band at each corner of the hangar’s exterior.
We made it to the personnel door without the squeal of an alarm interrupting us. Rafe stopped before the brown metal door and raised one hand before it. He activated a tattoo and then nodded.
“No problem, nothing fancy on the door except what looks like a tamper switch to send a signal to whoever watches over this building for intrusion. It won’t be a problem.”
He cast a spell and the door’s lock made a soft click that I wouldn’t have heard if not for my enhanced senses. He cast another spell and I saw a small point of cold appear on the top corner of the door. Rafe rotated the heavy metal handle and swung the door open. He stepped through and I followed closely.
Once inside, I turned toward the door and saw a point of intense blue in the corner of the doorframe.
As Rafe eased the door shut, he transmitted over our meshed link, *That’s the sensor. I froze the workings so the contacts can’t move. Once we leave, the contacts will thaw out, but if the door is shut then it won’t send a signal that it was ever opened.”
I nodded, thinking Rafe wanted silence while we were in the hangar. Knowing the paranoid state of all military units, there was bound to be other sensors and some would probably detect sounds.
I turned and stared out across the massive bay of the climatic hangar.
The facility was huge. The Air Force had tested their largest aircraft in this hangar for more than seventy years. Steel rafters supported an insulated roof and the sidewalls had “R” values that I couldn’t begin to guess at. The cavernous space was nearly empty tonight, except for the Greyhound-bus-sized monster that lay at rest in the center of the chamber.
The monstrous black dragon was as frightening to see now, as it had been when it was still alive. Its great head, although torn and rent from
