The gremlin stood stock still, obeying my Command, but its eyes were huge and its mouth pulled back in a look of abject terror.
One of the suits with Farlance drew a scroll case from inside a suit coat.
“What’s he doing?” Kyle babbled, pointing at the suit. The sorcerer had unrolled the scroll, and began read a Law spell in Russian to the Gremlin.
I felt sorry for the officer. He’d probably just been out on a routine patrol in Portland’s industrial district, which was quiet after dark, especially in December when there were lots of other things going on, elsewhere.
“Officer Kyle, you’ve understandably been under considerable stress,” Farlance said smoothly. He held a silver flask. I wondered where that had come from. The flask glowed with a purple tinge. It held a potion, but what sort? “We’re here to help.” Farlance’s words were soothing. He deftly unstopped the flask.
My eyes narrowed. Was that a persuasion potion in the flask? Was Farlance going to attempt to magically persuade Kyle? Given Kyle’s state, that was dangerous, and it wouldn’t last. Kyle had seen way too much.
“Sir,” I told Farlance. “What can I do to help?”
Surprise and disapproval crossed the big black man’s face, but Farlance didn’t miss a beat. “You’re doing fine as you are, Agent Marquez.”
I crossed my arms and tried not to look too annoyed. Patronizing types could take lessons from him in how to be subtle.
He ignored my annoyance and turned back to Kyle. He handed him the flask. “Drink this, Officer.”
Kyle looked at it with dazed surprise. “What is it?”
“It will help you focus,” Farlance said.
There was no way in Hades that the cop would go for it. Drinking something offered by a stranger, and while on duty. What in the whole wide world was Farlance thinking? Here, and I thought wizards were clever.
But Kyle did as Farlance asked. He lifted the flask and sipped it.
“Tastes like honey,” he said. “This isn’t drugged, is it?”
I rolled my eyes. A bit late to ask that, wasn’t it? I’d have to give Farlance credit, he was persuasive.
“Go ahead and finish it,” Farlance urged. Kyle did as he was asked. Farlance wasn’t just persuasive, he was a master persuader.
Spinning sprites, I was slow. Farlance’s hand had been resting easy on the gold dragon figure topping his walking stick.
Dragons were masters at persuasion. The walking stick must be an artifact, a manifestation bound in the gold and wood. It was alive, like all magical artifacts, and permanent. It had been cast by a dragon or dragons.
I shuddered. You didn’t mess with dragons, or artifacts crafted by them. The bad guys, and there were many, would love to get their hands on such an artifact. I was shocked that R.U.N.E. allowed it. I was even more surprised that a dragon or dragons had agreed to create it.
Kyle’s face relaxed, and he smiled.
Meanwhile, the burners each gripped one of the gremlin’s arms with iron tongs and lifted the manifestation into the iron cauldron, while the suit continued reading the Law spell, in Russian. There was no spell as long-winded as a law spell. The suit finished. The gremlin’s crimson eyes turned coal black. It whimpered softly, and then melted into a glittering blue goo that sank into the cauldron.
One of the burners capped the cauldron, the iron lid making a metallic clank. Done. The gremlin had been executed. Within a short while, the oozing residue would vanish, leaving only mana for them to harvest. The iron contained the gremlin’s residue, shielding it from interacting with humanity’s collective subconscious so that something else didn’t manifest.
Executing a class II manifestation was relatively quick, but not the easy “zap it” process of dealing with a fleeting class I.
“Things are better already, aren’t they?” Farlance asked Kyle. “My team and I appreciate your help in getting things under control, officer.” he said.
Kyle nodded.
“We don’t need people getting the wrong idea,” Farlance continued
Kyle nodded again.
“After all, nothing happened here except a traffic control malfunction that affected three blocks and caused some accidents. You should report in,” Farlance told Kyle.
Farlance snapped his fingers three times.
Kyle’s expression became one of cordial professionalism. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I will.” He walked briskly to his police cruiser, got in, and began speaking on his radio.
A white paneled truck drove up, coming from the opposite direction of the traffic snarl, and pulled to a stop.
“That’s our transport,” Farlance told me. He led us to the vehicle. One of the suits rolled up the rear door and we all clambered inside. A low bench was mounted on the inside of one wall. The other had a tool rack, a monitoring station, and a gear locker.
I finally let out my breath. The last fifteen minutes had been way more of a pulse-pounding reunion with Portland than I’d bargained for.
Farlance gestured at the bench. “Please sit down, Elizabeth.”
The truck pulled out and began driving away from the traffic jam.
I planted myself on the bench, next to the black man I hadn’t been introduced to yet, and unkinked my neck. Farlance perched on my right, legs crossed, giving me room. The black man tried to give me room, but his big, muscular thighs brushed up against me on the crowded bench.
“Thanks for trying to give me room,” I said. The van swayed and I elbowed him. “Whoops. Sorry.”
He shrugged, but didn’t say anything. His silence was irritating.
I peered around him at the traffic jam slowly receding in the distance. “People will wonder how that happened so suddenly, with all the sparking and weird imagery on the signs.”
“That’ll sort itself out,” Farlance explained. “A near-critical malfunction of a normally well-functioning traffic system. Such outages are rare, but not unheard of.”
“I wouldn’t call traffic signals that start flashing oddball images mundane,” I pointed out. “Same goes for the way the lights strobed.”
He shrugged. “The people there won’t remember any of that.”
Memory alteration was R.U.N.E.’s go-to-play when ordinaries got an eyeful of the arcane.
The black man’s silence was
