“George caught a rat,” Jo announced without preamble. “It had one of those cards with it that it was attempting to place in the house. He wants to know if he should let it go or keep it, but hey, at least that theory has been proven correct.” She nodded in Lynn’s direction. “Good job on that.”
Lynn blushed and looked happy while the rest of us considered the answer.
“I’m inclined to say keep it,” I said slowly. “Chances are if a techno vampire is involved, they already know about us, and having us catch the rat would just make the game that much more intriguing to them. If they don’t know about us, I think the same thing still applies.”
Cynthia nodded once, firmly. “I think so, too. It tells them they’re not the only ones playing the game anymore. They have players against them, who are aware of what they’re up to. We don’t exactly want to scare them off because the only way to actually stop them is to, well, stop them, but given what we know about them, that they seem to enjoy it when the prey is able to escape for a while, I think August is right. They’d just be intrigued and more excited about the Hunt.”
“Can I keep it?” Lynn asked. “I know I can’t touch it directly and all, but it might be nice to have a pet, and rats were the only friends I had for a couple of years there, though I was always worried they’d touch me by accident. At least with a pet one, I could control for that better.”
I hadn’t ever thought about having a pet rat before, but the way Lynn and George talked, they made good pets, so I didn’t particularly see a problem with it even if I assumed that George and I would be the ones mostly taking care of it.
“You might have to fight George for it,” Jo warned. “He’s been talking to it since he caught it, discussing the history of rats helping with robotics and science and stuff I don’t understand and doubt the rat understands, but he’s enthusiastic. He’ll be glad you don’t want him to let it go.”
Lynn just smiled happily again. “We can keep it,” she clarified.
Jo nodded and looked at Cynthia. “Got the cabin chosen?”
Cynthia nodded slowly. “I think so. There’s one by a lake, set off far from anyone else. Shouldn’t be campers, hikers, anything like that. In the off chance they do catch us outside and we can’t get away, my theory is everyone but Cyra can make a run for the house and she can basically block the doorway into the house, since her fire shouldn’t destroy the structure, right? Alternatively, we could possibly make a run for the lake. A gamble, I know, but I’m thinking Lynn’s abilities might work better there because we’d have the water to offset the heat. That’s more of the last-ditch effort if nothing else works, but at least we have a few options.”
Jo raised an eyebrow. “We?” She repeated. “You’ve never gone with us on these before. Except for the first one with August.”
She was right. I’d always chalked it up to Cynthia being less into combat and more into computers, but what if it wasn’t that? What if Cynthia had been as shaken as I was about the realities of wiping out a Hunter clan and didn’t want to have to face it, either?
“I’m coming,” Cynthia announced briskly. “Everyone else is risking their lives for this, and if this is to be our last Hunter clan takedown, I think we should do it together. Besides, this way I can help somewhat in trying to keep them from getting to Ian. I may not care for him and actually dislike him quite a bit, but my daughter sent him to me and I can’t ignore that. I may be better at potions than combat spells, but I can do enough to help.”
The others paused, looking at the space that I presumed represented Cassie, and then Cynthia nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Yeah, I can make invisibility spells. We could hide Lynn that way, maybe even Cyra if you think the techno vampire would be a risk – because it shouldn’t be able to see her with an invisibility potion, even through technology – but you don’t want to use them repeatedly for long periods. It can turn into almost motion sickness if you use too many of them without spacing it out enough. Since we don’t know how long it’ll take before they make their move, it might not be fun for those involved.”
The others all looked at the empty space again, Jo seeming almost taken aback while George and the phoenix were opting more for amusement.
“Cassie is really excited about the idea of Cyra being invisible,” Lynn whispered to me. “She says then Cyra can be an honorary ghost with her. She’s practically jumping up and down in excitement. Um,” she returned to a more normal tone, “would Cassie even be able to see Cyra if she was using an invisibility potion? Or me?”
Cynthia shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, ghosts can see invisible people. Well, when it’s from potions. Other forms of invisibility, not often, but invisibility potions will make the other person appear kind of watery to the ghost, but they can still see them.”
The phoenix chuckled lightly and rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, Cassie, if it means that much to you, I’ll at least use one once so I can feel more what you feel. Even if we don’t end up using them for this mission. Happy?”
I assumed from the way she tilted down a bit that Cassie may have just kissed her cheek in response, which I also assumed meant Cassie found that answer satisfactory.
Invisibility potions could be useful. We’d tried them a couple of times to see if we could get George and Jo into the Hunter compounds sooner, but had ultimately decided that the risk was too great. They could still be heard while invisible and given the number of people that usually were in the compounds, there were simply too many chances that someone might bump into them or hear something and realize what was up.
For this mission, though, maybe it would help protect Lynn, at least, so she could help block the Hunters in without them ever targeting her. I really hoped that would be the case, because I didn’t want Lynn to be at risk here, even if I knew her magic might be helpful in trapping the Hunters where we needed them. Well, I didn’t want any of my friends to get hurt, but Lynn, like Cynthia, wasn’t really used to fighting Hunters like George, Jo, and I were, and I got the impression that the phoenix could actually handle herself in combat reasonably well if she needed to, unless she was just letting them kill her. Point was, if there was a way to help protect those who might be more vulnerable targets, I’d be happy to take it.
As I went to bed that night, mentally making a list of what I needed to start packing in the morning for the unspecified amount of time that this mission might take, I realized we’d forgotten a potentially crucial tool available to us.
We’d forgotten to account for Ian.
Sure, Ian would do what we wanted and go along with us when we wanted to get him out – he’d heard our plan by now and agreed to it – but we hadn’t made any plans that actually involved taking advantage of his magic. I wasn’t entirely sure it was something we would want to do, because honestly the idea of necromancy made me shudder a bit, but if we needed to, wouldn’t it be better to use that possible tool than ignore it?
I added a mental note at the end of my list to ask the others about that. After all, necromancy might be the answer we needed to keep the Hunters where we wanted them – aka close to the phoenix and away from the rest of us – without risking actual lives. Maybe the missing element we needed to make the outcome sure had been right in front of our faces this entire time.
~~~~~
Ian looked nervous but nodded after a long pause. “Y-yes, I can summon some if we need to.”
The phoenix leaned against his dining room table, looking thoughtful and ignoring George and Lynn over in the corner, cooing over the rat, who seemed quite pleased with the food offerings George kept giving him.
“Say you summoned several undead and helped contain the Hunters in the designated area we need them to be. I don’t know how well Hunter weapons would work against them, but they could probably hold up for long enough to do what we wanted, right? They’d be burned away in the phoenix fire – would that have any backlash on you?”
Ian thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Our summons d-don’t impact us when they d-die. It just releases the magic. How m-many would you n-need?”
“Depends on how many of the Hunters there are and how cooperative they are with our plan,” Jo responded grimly. “The more of them, the more we need. The more they attempt to bypass Cyra and head for you, the more we need.”
He considered this. “I c-can do several, but I’ll need t-to prepare in advance.”
“Right, then you and I will work on prep work,” Cynthia announced briskly. “You get your spells ready, I get potions ready. Everyone else, you know your jobs?”
“Get rid of cameras and evidence,” Jo confirmed. “Pack up everything we need for an indefinite trip.”
It was time to start forcing the Hunters’ hand.
The rest of us had already packed some stuff, but George and Jo still needed to grab some things from our place and George needed to deal with the rat. It took us a few hours to finalize everything, and then we loaded up into our two cars – George driving Ian’s car with Ian, Jo, and the phoenix in that car while Cynthia drove ours, Cassie up front with her and Lynn and me in the back.
I looked over a list on my phone while we went. “Most of the deaths of supernaturals they’ve targeted have been more hands-on. I was worried about the potential for explosives, but I don’t see anything like that except for one occasion which seems out of the ordinary. Maybe they were testing it out and something went wrong? Because they never tried again.”
Cynthia nodded from the front seat. “That plays in our favor, because explosives can be harder to deal with and we definitely don’t have experience with that. I was wondering that, too, but I’m also thinking maybe the kill wasn’t as satisfying? We know Hunters sometimes like to watch their prey die, and with this clan, that seems particularly true. They want to see their target running scared and terrified. They want them to realize they’re cornered and can’t escape. Probably an explosive was too simple for them – they didn’t get that moment.”
I wish I could say I hadn’t heard things like that before from Hunters, but I couldn’t. She had a very good point.
“Ian having bodyguards will up the difficulty level for this Hunt,” I murmured, “but they’ll probably still want a hands-on approach.”
While I was looking over the list and making mental notes of what corresponding things we needed to keep an eye out for – scenarios that would fit things they’d done before – Cassie apparently asked a question.
“I don’t – I’m not sure.” Cynthia sounded troubled, then glanced back and noticed my confusion. “Cassie wondered if Jean thought the other techno vampire really wouldn’t alert the clan to Cyra and the dangers of killing a phoenix, if there was more implications to that. I mean, for one thing we still don’t know for sure that there’s a techno vampire helping them. It could just be a really good human hacker. Assuming it is, though, and assuming Jean’s apparent belief that the techno vampire wouldn’t say anything about Cyra to the clan…I want to say yes, it means something. They clearly don’t have loyalty to supernaturals in general if they’re helping kill them, so I can’t believe they wouldn’t say anything for that reason. In fact, not saying anything would basically be standing back and letting us out the clan via phoenix, and the techno vampire would know the risk. But that doesn’t make much sense to me, because it’s likely not a captive, we’ve already determined that – a techno vampire would have ways to get out a plea for help, and more directly than having Jean send us the information about the clan and hook us up with Cyra. But if they’re not a captive, do they think the clan can win against Cyra? The techno vampire should know better. Even anti-magic weapons would give out under fire like that. What other options are there? That the vampire wants to up the playing stakes, too, and gamble on winning? I don’t – I don’t know. I can’t come up with a scenario that makes sense, but I do believe Jean wouldn’t sent us into a trap knowingly.”
That last word bothered me. “What are the chances she could have been tricked?”
Cynthia shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Techno vampires tend to have loyalty to each other, I find it unlikely that one would deliberately try to deceive another one, but this vampire sounds like it’s following different rules in general. It’s possible? But again, I can’t see how they plan to deal with a phoenix.”
“Unless,” Lynn said slowly, “they’re either planning to not kill her or hoping that if they have to, she’ll kill Ian and all of us in the process. Of course, they’d die, too, though, so that doesn’t really make sense.”
There was a lot that still didn’t make sense, to be honest. I just hoped that we’d have a chance to get some answers eventually.
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