Slawter

person shouldn’t be killed just because they’re ignorant of the truth.”

“You’re too soft,” Shark grunts, then throws his door open and smacks his right fist hard into his left palm. “Let’s do it!”

We stand outside the electrified fence, in plain sight, watching as more guards gather. They cock their weapons, eyeing us critically.

“We’re here for Billy Spleen,” Dervish shouts. “Tell Prae Athim we know she took him. We’ll settle for his safe return. If she gives him back to us, or tells us where he is, we’ll leave without a fuss. We don’t have to go to war.”

A high-ranking guard speaks into his headpiece. Listens to the response. Nods and addresses us through an amplifier. “This is private property. If you try to come on to our grounds, we’ll use all available force to halt you.”

“War it is then,” Dervish sighs. He extends a hand and snaps his fingers at the fence. The wire splits and unfurls, leaving a gap wide enough to drive a bus through. The guards around it yelp with surprise and fall back a few metres. At a signal from Dervish we press ahead, marching but not running. The officer shouts a command. A group of guards raise their weapons and aim at us. Shark and Sharmila mutter a spell. The weapons melt and distort and the guards drop them, crying out that they’re too hot to hold.

Gunfire from our right. Much louder than in the movies. Terrifying. I yell and duck, covering my ears with my hands, expecting to be ripped apart by bullets. Juni ducks too. But the Disciples only pause, concentrating hard. After a few seconds I realise the bullets aren’t striking. Looking up, I see them dropping to the ground half a metre away. We’re surrounded by a magical energy shield which the bullets can’t penetrate.

“You could have told me about that!” I snap at Dervish as I stand.

“You’d have known if you’d stayed awake in the car,” he retorts.

We press on.

Shark finds the secret door and we slip inside. I’m delighted—the air was red with bullets around us, and I heard Sharmila grumble that she wasn’t sure the shield was going to hold much longer. Shark shuts the door once we’re all in and uses magic to seal it in place, so the troops will have to blast through to enter.

We hurry down a long, brightly lit corridor. As with the outside of the building, there’s something familiar about it. I’m sure I’ve seen it before. This is deja vu of the highest order. It’s really starting to bug me.

Guards spill into the corridor as we come to the end. Shark roars as they fire upon him, then throws himself at them, scattering them like a bowling ball knocking apart a set of pins.

We slip through the gap and race down a staircase. Guards are firing at us from all directions but the shield holds. At the bottom of the staircase we wait for Shark to catch up. The volume of gunfire increases. “We could use some help,” Dervish grunts at me. He’s sweating.

“What do you mean?”

“Break those up,” he says, nodding at the guards. “Stop them all firing at once.”

“How?” I frown.

“Magic, dummy!”

“But I can’t—”

“Of course you can,” he snaps. “Just focus.”

I feel uneasy about it, but I do as Dervish says, set my sights on a group of guards and direct a ball of magic at them. Seconds later, unnatural energy floods through me, smashes into the middle of the group of guards and sends them flying in all directions.

“Way to go!” Juni whoops.

I grin at her, pleased with myself, then disrupt more of the guards, causing as much chaos as I can, careful not to seriously injure anybody.

We advance through a series of corridors, up and down staircases, Shark leading, the rest of us—apart from Juni—providing cover from the guards. Eventually we come to a door which is operated by fingerprint recognition.

“This is your field of expertise,” Sharmila says, winking at me.

“No problem.” I step forward, lay my hand on the panel and trick the computer into believing I’m Prae Athim, much like I did back in the D workshops. The door slides open. We enter a large, dimly lit room. Grim brick walls. Lots of cells, cased off by hard glass panels, like those in the movie The Silence of the Lambs. Several lab technicians in white jackets. A handful of guards.

And Prae Athim.

The scientist is scowling at us, her dark eyes like a couple of drill bits. “You’re trespassing on private property,” she growls.

Dervish laughs. “Sue us!”

“This is outrageous,” Prae Athim says. “You have no right to come in here.”

“You have no right to steal my nephew,” Dervish retorts.

“I don’t know what you’re—” she starts to say, but before she can complete the denial, we hear a voice shouting from one of the cells.

“Dervish! Hey, Dervish, I’m in here! Help!”

Prae Athim glares at one of the technicians close to her. “I told you to dope him so he couldn’t speak!”

“I did,” the underling whimpers.

“Magic is stronger than drugs,” Sharmila laughs. She smiles at me. “I thought they might try something like that, so I sent out a wake-up call when we came in, guaranteed to raise just about anybody who was not dead.”

I race to the cell where the call came from. Bill-E’s inside, smiling shakily. “What took you so long?” he says flippantly.

“We weren’t going to bother coming at all,” I reply, turning the glass in front of me to water, stepping back as it splashes over the floor and washes away. “But Dervish said every family needs its simpleton.”

“Charming!” Bill-E huffs, then steps through the puddles of water and hugs me hard. “Thanks for not leaving me here,” he whispers. I can hear tears in his voice.

“I’d never leave you behind,” I whisper back, then push him away before things get any more mushy.

“Did they harm you?” Dervish asks, standing where he is, keeping a wrathful eye on the quivering Prae Athim.

“Hark at our old maid of an uncle!” Bill-E sniffs, winking at me. “Nah, they gave me some nasty injections, but they didn’t have time to do much else. You came too quickly—ruined their well-laid plans.”

“That’s a habit of mine,” Dervish laughs. He stares coolly at Prae Athim. “Now, we just have to decide what to do with—”

“No,” I say softly, interrupting. Dervish glances at me, one eyebrow raised. “No,” I say again, shaking my head, staring at the cells, the technicians, Prae Athim, Bill-E. My head’s clearing. All the little bits that didn’t add up… that seemed out of place or too familiar… I’m starting to see it now. Bill-E helped me make the breakthrough. Provided the jolt that shattered the spell. He called Dervish his uncle. Nothing wrong there—Dervish is his uncle. Except Bill-E doesn’t know that.

“What’s wrong?” Dervish asks.

“Wait,” I mutter, waving his question away. Thinking hard. Cutting through the web of lies and crapola.

These cells don’t just look like the set from Silence of the Lambs— this is Hannibal Lecter’s institution. And now I realise where I’ve seen the building before. In James Bond movies. There are elements from several of the films, all jumbled roughly together.

I step away from Bill-E, dizzy, fighting to hold on to my train of thought. “Grubbs,” Juni says, concerned, stepping towards me. “Are you OK? Can I help? Is there—”

“Shut up!” I shout, breaking through the labyrinth of untruths, rapidly, one lie falling after another, mental dominoes toppling quickly.

I’m a mage, not a true magician. I was only able to draw upon my potential in Slawter because of all the