Emp1

Grace of Mary rose over my little Civic, a fourteen-story off-white block studded with windows. The afternoon sun hung behind it, throwing the parking lot into shadow. I brushed some hair out of my eyes and studied the building. Like any other hospital, pain and hope and death and faith filled it, so much that no empath could ever fully clear it. But there seemed to be less than usual. Grace was almost due for its monthly draining, but the mana level felt thin and fresh, like the hospital had just opened. It should have been groaning with the weight of lives, slick with the residue of decades. The wards and protections I'd laid should have been covering the building and vibrating with mana drawn from the inside. Instead, the wards were in tatters and the power draw flickered and starved.

Not a good sign. I was the only Guild Empath for twenty miles, and none of the other Guildies in the state would go this deep into my territory without letting me know. There were always the rogues working for any number of factions, but Grace had my Guild mark on the outer protections. I grimaced, pressing my lips into a tight line. I hadn't had my territory long, only six months since Marcus had ceded it to me, and I knew the thugs and factions that ran large parts of it didn't really respect me yet. If one of them had drained Grace, I'd have to pay them a little visit and make an example or two.

But Grace was in a fairly nice neighborhood, not one of the warzones, and the wards didn't bear any mark but my own. If this was a message, it was entirely too subtle for the gangs. And Grace of Mary had far too much power for a single person to handle. That meant several rogues were running around with one hell of a lot of power, the mana equivalent of a nuke between them. Very not good.

I drew a deep breath, let it out. Pulled my car's door handle, stepped out onto the cracked asphalt. My backpack I pulled out after me and onto my shoulder, the powerstones clicking and humming within. I locked the Civic and set off toward the main entrance, the powerstones in my pack jogging against my side. As I walked, I focused, reached into the bag and laid a new powerline from one of the precharged stones. The building vibrated slightly as the wards slowly rebuilt, and I went over them slowly, checking for holes.

Oddest thing I ever saw, the wards were literally covered in rips. I stopped between two cars, looked up at the building, and rechecked the wards. Every single one of my alarms had been destroyed. But I hadn't felt the alarms go off at all. A bunch of other threads were pulled inward, coming together somewhere on the third floor.

What was before me was not impossible, I decided. But up until that moment, I'd believed it was. Something new had happened here, something I'd never seen or heard of before. When it comes to mana, especially the level of power a hospital puts out, ignorance was dangerous.

I set off again, through the last row of cars toward the great big glass doors to the lobby. Each was carefully inscribed with Grace's cross-and-caduceus logo, and if you looked closely enough, the image of Mary was embedded into each, eyes closed under her halo, a serene smile on her face.

I wished I could be that calm as I opened the door and walked through the lobby to the elevators, probing upward. The threads of my shields seemed to converge on the south edge of the third floor.

"The third floor chapel. That explains a lot." I told the ceiling. The elevator chimed softly in reply.

Father Cestillo was waiting for me in the third-floor chapel, his black cassock the sole shadow in the stark white room. The Church knows exactly what uncontrolled mana can do, and while they're not exactly happy to see us freethinkers, at least we don't get burned anymore. Much. So it was no surprise that he looked uncomfortable to see me. But seeing that big mustachioed Mestizo man not just uncomfortable, but fidgeting in his cassock, was new. Given that I was a woman a third his size, his nervousness would have been comical if the situation wasn't so scary. "Sister Adams," he nodded to me.

"I'm only a day early, Padre." I replied, stopping and hefting my bag. "Every single shield on this building was breached, and someone drained this place dry. You know anything about that?"

Cestillo stopped, his big bushy eyebrows climbing halfway up his brow. "How long ago?" he asked.

For a mindblind, Cestillo knew enough about us. "That is... why I called you here. Last night, there was an... incident." I waved him to continue, and sat in a whitewashed pew. His faint Mexican accent gave his voice gravity, importance; it lended itself equally well to fire in the pulpit and cool water in the confessional. "I was counseling a young lady, and suddenly the air felt thick and heavy. She felt very ill, and then the feeling passed, but," his voice failed, and he pointed at the flower-carved altar. I examined it, saw faint pink streaks. "Blood issued from... from there."

"Lemme take a look." I stood up, walked over to the altar. "By the way, it's not blood. It's ferric water. Appears when a lot of power goes through something solid." Cestillo didn't look relieved, and I didn't blame him. Ferric water is pretty disturbing to look at, especially the way it comes out of nowhere. I let my finger rest on a flower stained pink. The plaster was cold under my fingers, and I pushed inward, seeking the hidden strings under the world. Maybe an entire hospital's worth of pain and grief had gone into this altar, but where?

    Nowhere. Absolutely nothing lay within the altar, an aching void. I delved deeper, into the fabric of the world.

    And through, into Chaos.

    A howling maelstrom of energy pulled at my sanity, wrapped tendrils of impossible colors around my soul and pulled hard. I threw energy into the storm, pulled my soul free and back into myself. The chapel spun around me and I felt my knees hit the floor, so blessedly real. "Holy..." I gasped, wrapping my arms around myself, pressing my breasts into my ribs as I brought my racing heart under control. From running to walking, the pounding in my ears slowed, then from walking to beating. I could hear Cestillo moving to intercept someone in the hallway outside.

    I touched my backpack with two fingers, felt the charged powerstones inside, and in the front pocket, the fired-clay pieces holding the spirits I'd collected. I could feel one, its twisted form bulging the leather. I fed power, the bitter taste of ashes and grief on my tongue, dust on my fingers. I fed it some more, enough to fully Manifest the wraith, the faint silver shape floating and rippling above my backpack.

    The wraith floated into the altar and settled into the fabric of the world, magnifying the ripples and depressions too subtle for my senses. What it revealed was interesting - the fabric was weakened here, dangerously thin between our world and the Outside. Yesterday, something had torn a hole in reality, here in this chapel, inside this carved altar. Then drained an entire hospital of energy. Odder and odder. If Something had come over from the Outside, then its purpose was not just to feed on mana. We empaths know very little of the Outside, but we do know that next to the maelstrom, our universe is parched.

    Second, the Other was no longer in the altar, and reality had only been breached once. Meaning it had gone somewhere in our world. Anything as powerful as it would have been a beacon for a hundred miles - unless it was hiding itself. Very very not good.

    The thought of an unpredictable demigod running around my part of town made the thought of rogue empaths seem almost pleasant. I pulled the wraith back to its shelter in my pack. A knock on the door, Father Cestillo calling my name from outside. I stood slowly, stretched, turned with vague irritation to the chapel's door. I could see the edge of the Father through the open door. "I'm done."

Cestillo walked in, followed by a young woman who was almost hiding behind him. I froze, with my arms stretched over my head, on seeing her - between the fresh bruises and the older ones, her natural skin tone was hard to discern. Her features had a fierce sharpness, but the hands wringing in front of her were soft. They were not fighter's hands.

My second was oh my god, she's beautiful. Without Father Cestillo's cassock in the way, I could see she had an hourglass figure models would kill for, but she was so thin. Her hipbones showed between low-cut jeans and a V-neck sweater, narrow liquid brown eyes in that sharp face framed by long waves of black hair.

    "Sister Adams is an expert in the unusual. What you told me is something I think she should hear. She may have a solution for your problem." Father Cestillo waved her to a pew, and I rolled my shoulders and sat in the one across the aisle. She had the wary look of someone who'd dealt with social workers and scam artists, a kind of are you really on the level? question she silently asked of everyone she looked at.

    "You can trust me." I smiled at her. "Believe me, nothing you could say would be weirder than my day's been already."

    She looked down, at the hands clasped in her lap, and I had to fight to keep from hugging her. She didn't need that from me. Not now. Probably not ever.

    Being a dyke's a bitch sometimes. Like when you keep falling for girls who aren't.

    "Well, okay," she said softly. Her voice had a flat nasal tone I'd heard from people with injured jaws and tongues. "My boyfriend Jack, he came here yesterday, got home, got drunk and crazy again. Said he found something,wanted to show it to me. Then I'm flying. He didn't lay a hand on me, but he's throwing me around, like I'm wrapped in a blanket and he's swinging it." Her arm twitched, up and back down into her lap.

    Well, that was unexpected. "I need to check something, hold still." She nodded, and I pulled some mana and ran my awareness over her. Threads clung all over, evidence that she'd been around a hell of a lot of power, and all that power had been wrapped around her. "Hm. You said your man got whatever it was here?"

    "Yeah." She nodded. "He said it came from here, third floor chapel. A grey stone." She held up fingers making a circle about the size of my palm. "He said it was special. He got really crazy over it. I came to, I dunno, see if anyone was missing it, if someone's looking for it."

"The hospital staff has alerted the police to a domestic violence complaint." Father Cestillo put in. "Sarah, you could stay here, and I promise he wouldn't get to you. Sister Adams can -"

"Really bad idea, Padre. He's one of mine, and if I'm right, he's got a serious booster. He'd kill cops just playing around." I shook my head and looked up at him. "He's not just a rogue, he's a rogue with heavy power. Damned if I'm going to engage him in a populated area." Sarah was looking confused, and I decided to take pity on her. "Your boyfriend - what's he do? Has he done stuff like this before? Magic kinda stuff?"

She shook her head at her hands. "Deals, mostly. In Compton, near our place. Sometimes, he'll go down to Long Beach to buy. That's today, that's why I got out now. He done stuff like this before, burned me, hit me without touchin' me, but... not like that. Not that bad." She shook her head. "I swear to God, mam, I'm not high, not crazy, he did that, I dunno how, if he finds me he'll kill me, and anyone 'round me -"

Compton. Right in the middle of my territory. Not as bad as it used to be, but that was no protection for this shivering teenager, no excuse for the rogue empath I hadn't picked up on. "Hey," I broke in firmly, putting a hand on her shoulder. Her head came up, her eyes meeting mine, and I pressed my words onto her. "I believe you. Sarah, right?" She nodded, her shoulder tensing under my fingers. "Sarah, your man is an empath. And what he used - that stone - is a weapon, with a hell of a lot of power. So I'm going to track Jack down, and get it away from him. Want to help me out there?"

"Empath?" She said it slowly, her eyes narrowed on me. "How are you going to take him on, if the cops can't?"

I leaned back and held my hand under my face, drawing power into it and weaving the spell. Clenched my fingers, ignited the power, and Sarah flinched back. I didn't blame her - it's not every day you see a woman holding a ball of blue fire. "Because he's not the only empath in town. Won't be easy, but I can take him."

I dispelled the power and the fireball went out. She's a smart one, I thought. "Yeah, you are. If he's going to be looking for you, then you're the best way to get him where I want him, so I can take him down. Once that's done, I'll drop you off wherever you want."

"S'okay. I'm use to getting used. At least you're honest about using me." She shrugged. Her grimace - no one could call that tortured expression a smile - twisted my heart.

Quick negotiation of Torrance traffic brought us to the sandwich joint down the street. I was looking up past Sarah at the hotel across from us when she started tapping her fingers on the table. The place had a couple small speakers turned to an Internet stream. Sounded like the local pop-crap station without any commercials or DJs. Then Sarah started humming along and the little eddies of power started twitching, pulling toward our table.

I dropped my eyes to her as the bracelet on her left wrist lit up with power - a crude and recent tracking spell. "Hey, where'd you get the bracelet?" I pointed. The spell was centered around a small silver S on a black band.

She stopped humming, and the power eddies snapped back to their normal flows. Her fingers twitched down, lifted the charm. "First foster home I had, long time ago. Why?"

"Don't react. Someone put a tracker spell on it - I'm guessing Jack. Hold still." I had to give her credit, she didn't move a muscle when I slid a hand beneath the table, right under the charm, and pulled. The charm jumped and swung as I pulled the spell off the charm and bound it to the table. On examination, the spell was extremely crude, the kind of thing I'd made in the first year of my apprenticeship.

"Can I move now?" Sarah asked.

I nodded, and pulled a flake of flint out of my pocket. Attaching the tracker to it wasn't very hard, then I had a fake Sarah that would hold up from a distance. Once her ex got close, he'd figure it out, but by then, I'd have him in my sights.

I brought my eyes down from the hotel to her. "It's Rachel, Sarah. I'm not a sister of anything."

I leaned back, the black iron chair complaining under me. "Good question." I munched on a handful of chips. "I'll tell you what we're sure of. All people, and most intelligent mammals, have emotions. Chemical reactions to outside stimuli." She nodded, and I continued, "Well, any emotional reaction releases some energy. We call it mana, and an empath is someone who can pull and manipulate it. Lots of names for us, curanderos, vaudun, sorcerers, magickers, weirds, and so on. So, too much mana in one place is bad. Really bad, so bad it affects people. Way too much, and it can actually drive people crazy. So my job is to pull it out, store it safely, keep people like Jack from using it. Sometimes the mana comes together, forms these creatures, and we make sure they don't cause any damage. I think that's what Jack found."

"So this is a big secret, right?" Her eyes were narrowed into slits, and her body tensed. I could tell if I said the wrong thing, she'd be gone in a flash.

"Yeah, kinda. More like nobody believes it, really. Are you ready to go?" I pushed the iron chair back and stood up. My trash went into a convenient can.