I got the call at 3am just as I was headed downstairs to the gym. I might have been stronger than your average bear, but I still needed to train.
“Another one, Sula,” my assistant director, Badak, said around a yawn. “Uptown.”
“Like the others?” I asked. “Mourn?”
“No, this one was off our grid,” Badak said. “Doesn’t fit the profile of the others, but the level of destruction got our attention.”
“Where Dak?” I asked, calling him by his shortened name. “Location?”
“Gracie Mansion has been reduced to kindling.”
“The entire structure?”
“Is now non-existent.”
“Everything…is gone?”
“That’s what non-existent means. But no worries, we still have pictures.”
“It’s too early for your version of humor, Dak.”
“Yoté and the crew are headed over there now. Looks like an all-day affair.”
“You think?” I said, rubbing a temple. “Who do we like for it?”
Certain structures were being targeted throughout the city, but this one made no sense. Gracie Mansion wasn’t on a nexus point and had no connection to the Mourn that I could see.
“I’ll give you one guess,” Dak said. “One freshly baked immortal, one antisocial mage, and a hellhound puppy. Sprinkle in some volatile magic and BAM, there goes Gracie Mansion.”
I could feel the headache gripping the base of my neck. It was too damn early for this.
“Those two are going to give me a stroke, I swear. Is Widow ready?”
“Yes ma’am, if you mean that monstrosity you call a vehicle.”
“I doubt Cecil would appreciate you calling her a monstrosity.”
Widow was my black 1947 Plymouth Business Coupe specifically runed by Cecil from SuNaTran, to take punishment.
SuNaTran—SuperNatural Transportation—specialized in providing transport for the supernatural community. Widow was designed specifically as a null siphon and was runed to deal with the damage the Mourn would throw at me. She’d kept me and my team alive more times than I could remember.
“Fine, that automotive abomination of atrocious aesthetics, then.”
“You’ve been saving that, haven’t you?”
“At least a week.”
“It doesn’t have to be pretty. It needs to be functional. Just like me.”
“Can’t recall anyone calling you pretty, that’s for sure.”
“I have a hammer that can adjust your memory. Keep it up.”
“That’s what she said.”
I hung up on the laughter. It was going to be a long day, and I still had to get my training in. Kate would be here any minute.
All joking aside, this situation was escalating out of control. The Montague and Strong Detective Agency didn’t pose much of a threat to the city, despite the fact that they seemed intent on demolishing it, one building at a time. Gracie Mansion wasn’t like the other incidents. Those were something else. They were deliberate attacks on specific structures—nexus points.
As the Lead Director of the Decons And Magical Nulls-Elite Division, DAMNED to friends and enemies alike, it was our responsibility to investigate strange occurrences, especially those of an explosive nature. Our job was to maintain the balance of runic energy in the city. Runic energy that was carefully calibrated and channeled through nexus points.
The points were a configuration of interconnected locations, housed in structures I liked to call Oracles. They were plain, small, rectangular structures about twenty feet square, that existed just sideways of our plane, invisible to the naked eye—unless you were sensitive to runic energy or were one of the DAMNED.
In the center of each Oracle rested a confluence of energy with extensions running in different directions. To either side of the confluence, connected to the extensions, were line regulators which allowed the point to be isolated if it became corrupted or was attacked.
Nexus points were being thrown out of balance by the attacks. The structures that housed them, carefully attuned to the energy contained within, were being attacked. My job was to stop those attacks.
I closed my eyes and pulled up my mental maps.
One was a detailed grid layout of Manhattan. Overlaid on this image was a diagram of the nexus points in dull gold. Nexus keepers—also known as Protectors, were linked to the nexus points under their responsibility. Mine ran from the tip of the island to the top of Central Park. So far, these had been the main ones discovered in the city. My team and I were responsible for a large group of nexus points. NP-1 through NP-20—twenty points I needed to keep functioning. Twenty Oracles I needed to keep in one piece.
I was a novice nexus keeper. The fact that I had my weapon worked in my favor, even as a novice. Even though my sensitivity wasn’t yet strong enough, at the very least, I could sense the occurrence and general direction of a nexus point under attack. Since several points were close to each other, it could be confusing to get the exact point sometimes. Once I honed my mental map, the fine details would appear.
That’s where Kate came in. Every nexus keeper spent the first five years with a mentor—if they survived that long. Kate was the reason I was getting up at three in the morning. That—and the pounding on my door threatening to launch it from its hinges.
“Coffee,” Kate growled as I opened the door. “Now, please.”
“We have these amazing devices called cellphones—a miracle of technology,” I said, pointing to the kitchen. “Why don’t you just call me, and I can meet you at the gym?”
“Why do I need to call you?” she said, grabbing my largest mug and pouring herself a generous amount of the ink I kept brewed for emergencies—like waking up. “I’m here. No cellphone needed. Are you ready yet—tempus edax rerum.”
A week after I was chosen as a Protector, Kate appeared at my door. She showed me the symbol on her forearm. A tree of life made up of circles and lines—identical to my own except for the color. Then she informed me I was in training, and demanded coffee. Pretty much what she did every day since then.
She stood a few inches shy of five feet, thin as a rail, with short brown hair, and piercing black eyes. The first time I threw my hammer at her, I thought I’d killed her, until she proceeded to swat it away like a tennis ball and beat my ass like a drum.
I learned not to depend entirely on my weapons that day.
“There was an explosion,” I said as she poured her second mug. “I may have to meet them on site.”
“Don’t bother. It wasn’t a nexus point, and it wasn’t an explosion.”
