Tully looked at me, sympathy in his eyes. He knew, curse him.
“We’re not taking vehicles,” Dara said. She nodded at Riley, who went to the second door on the far wall, opened it.
A shining corridor appeared.
Wonders knock me flat, I swore silently. The A.S.A. had teleportals, too.
“Guess teleportals aren’t as secret as we thought,” I said, trying to sound funny.
“Is that what you call them?” Dara asked, her voice incredulous.
“Sure, what else would you call them?”
“Not that,” she replied. “We’re going to go in in three groups.”
I noticed the men and women in black had lined up in two groups of five at two other doors.
“Alpha group will take the access door in the north wing of the convention center, facing the hotel. They’ll deal with reshaping perceptions and memories of the ordinaries fleeing the hotel. Bravo team will go to the service elevator at the hotel, and clear any secondary threats, and stand ready to assist us. We’ll be arriving next to the grand ballroom, where we forecast Gott will be. It’s on the second floor. The local embed has already been notified to call in a fire alarm for the hotel in--” she glanced at her watch, “--three minutes. That should clear out the normals and enable us to neutralize Gott.”
She made it sound so easy. Gott was an unknown wizard who shouldn’t possess the apparent abilities he had. Then again, he was in the closing stages of his ritual, and would have already expended many of his spells. His super-staff had to be nearly exhausted, as well.
“Let’s do this thing,” I said. A few groans sounded at this. Tully gave me a look I decided must be disbelief, while Dara and Riley both rolled their eyes. “Come on, people, lighten up a little,” I said.
I admire your confidence, a voice said in my mind, coming from the direction of my stomach. Confidence underpins spellcasting. Apparently, the mana snake was a talker.
The two other teams went in first and then Dara led us through our teleportal or whatever it was they called theirs, Riley bringing up the rear. We arrived in darkness. I ran into a brick wall that went oomph, and a realized I’d just bumped into Tully. I stepped aside just as Riley came through.
Dara spoke a command word and her wand lit up the room. We were in a conference room, empty of chairs and tables.
“The alarm should be sounding in sixty seconds,” Dara said.
That was cutting it close. The four of us headed toward the doors. The building shuddered. Ear-piercing screams erupted in the ballroom next door, punctuated by what sounded like a full chorus of cacophonous gremlin laughter.
The overhead lights came on, strobing rapidly.
“Looks like Gott started ahead of your schedule,” I said.
Dara ignored me. She pressed a hand to her ear, lips moving without sound. She was subvocalizing with the other teams, no doubt using an artifact.
“Bravo team is in trouble,” she said, continuing to lead us to the doors. “We don’t have a reserve.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Immaterial,” she snapped. “We need to go after Gott.”
I could put two and two together. Bravo team teleportaled into a service elevator in the vicinity of a gremlin outbreak. The elevator had likely turned into the world’s most vomit-inducing “amusement ride,” or worse, a one-way trip to Hades.
I swallowed. Not a good way to go, if the latter had been the case.
Riley jogged past me to join Dara at the doors.
The screams grew louder, and the gremlin laughter more maniacal. I met Tully’s concerned look, and made a show of shrugging. I got the tiniest of headshakes back, any reaction was better than no reaction, especially now. If I wasn’t trying to make light, I’d be curled up in ball, whimpering.
Dara nodded at Riley, who hit the crash bar on the right-hand side door and rushed into the hall. Brandishing her wand, Dara went next. I followed her, Tully right behind me. Purple haze filled the hallway. Mana. Lots of mana. I could actually see the eddies in the mana, there was so much of it, as it swirled down the hallway toward the grand ballroom. The overhead lights strobed like a light show at a metal concert.
Riley crouched down at the far side of the hall, next to a fire extinguisher in a glass case. Dara crept along the near wall, heading toward the grand ballroom where the sound of screams and maniacal hee-hee’s echoed . I glanced back behind us. The hall ran past more doors, no doubt conference rooms, and then a bank of elevators.
The grand ballroom’s doors flung open, and an older man in a tuxedo ran out, screaming, pursued by a pair of flying monkeys straight out of the Wizard of Oz.
The monkeys grabbed him under each arm and lifted him into the air, his legs still pumping away.
“Petrify!” Dara snapped her wand and a cone of force smacked into the nearest flying monkey, knocking off his little fez. The flying monkey stiffened and fell to the carpeted floor with a loud thump! The other monkey let go of the man, who fell heavily to the floor.
“Banish!” Riley said in Russian, pointing his silver rod at the other flying monkey. The monkey did a barrel roll away from us, but couldn’t escape the laser-like gold beam shooting from Riley’s artifact. It turned to black smoke.
More people ran from the ballroom, two women in slinky little black dresses and a bald guy in a tuxedo. The floor shook from something huge following after them.
“Hee-hee,” a deep bass voice boomed. The women’s dress straps sprang off and they tripped in the suddenly descending fabric, sprawling out on the floor in their expensive bras and panties. The man’s pants burst and he also tripped and fell.
A troll-sized gremlin burst through the doors, lumbering into the hallway. It stepped on the frozen flying monkey. There was a purple flash and a loud pop, and black vapor rose around the mega-gremlin’s giant
