Satyr Play 03 Pt. 01

The case of the death of Thane del Neev was still open. She didn't consider it a failure as she wouldn't stop until she found the guilty party and ended them.

Her destination tonight was an apartment in a building next to Central Park. She'd be staying there during her visit.

She would meet her client in a seventeenth-floor suite after dropping off her carry-on luggage in the apartment the Council kept for these purposes.

Minkah watched the city out the window and marveled at how much it had changed since she'd last visited.

When the taxi finally stopped before the building, she paid the driver and got out. She stretched her tight muscles as she panned her eyes around. She noticed a small sign across the street indicating the Metropolitan Museum of Art was nearby. She hoped she might get a chance to visit while she was here, but the mission took precedence. Her eyes tracked all nearby motion, and before she got dizzy from the sheer volume of it, she set off across the sidewalk and went in the front door.

She went up to the fifteenth floor, found the door to the apartment she was to use and punched the code into the digital door lock to open it. She listened and took the scent before flipping the light switch next to the door. A single floor lamp in the corner of the living room illuminated a mostly empty space. She entered and took in how minimally furnished it was. Essential requirements were met with no concern for style. The room contained two mismatched high back chairs, the lamp, and a small table between the chairs.

The dining space had a card table with four steel and vinyl padded chairs pushed up against the windows. A small lamp sat on the card table. A basic kitchen faced the dining and living rooms.

She moved to the bedroom and saw a single, double bed, an end table with a cheap lamp on it, and a small three drawer bureau. She left her carry-on on the bed then immediately left the apartment to head back to the elevator to go up two more floors. She saw the meeting would take place two floors above the unit she was staying in. She knocked on the door and listened. The privacy field must have been active as the lock clicking open was the first sound she'd heard from inside.

When the door opened, she looked down into the suspicious gaze of a red-bearded dwarf. She recognized him as Rand von Deussel, Council Investigator for the Eastern United States and cousin of Thane del Neev. She wondered why he was here tonight. Was he working in his investigator's capacity to assist with the new assignment, or was he here as the cousin looking for vengeance?

He grunted quietly, stood aside, and gestured for her to enter. She did, and when the door closed behind her, she felt the slight pressure change from the privacy field engaging. She walked down the hall to enter the living room. There was more furniture here than her unit had. Two couches faced each other across a coffee table. End tables, a small area rug under the table, and pleasant scenic pictures in frames hung on the walls.

On one of the sofas sat a woman in her sixties, dressed in a tailored business suit: Lise-Anne Hoek, Minister of Security and Minkah's contact.

The assassin sat on the sofa across from Lise-Anne. "Why is he here?" she asked, gesturing to the Dwarf.

Rand scowled as he took a seat next to Lise-Anne.

"I'll explain that momentarily. I see we are dispensing with the niceties," the Minister said with a weary look.

Minkah saw the strain on the face of the woman across from her. That made sense considering how difficult her job had become in recent weeks.

The older woman slid a dossier across the coffee table. "You weren't the resource I originally requested. The target's unique circumstances escalated my request to the highest levels, and the Chancellor himself insisted I wait for your availability. I understand your specialty is assassination, but your reputation for managing difficult assignments made you the best candidate for this one."

Minkah's brows rose when she heard the leader of the Hidden Races Council administrative branch had involved himself in one of her missions. That raised the stakes. She frowned as she opened the dossier.

There was a collection of candid pictures of the target taken from a hidden camera as he was walking outside. One showed him smiling as the sun was on his face, and he looked genuinely happy. Looking at the other images, she noted that he was tall, muscular, and handsome with shoulder-length wavy brown hair. One image stood out in the set and caught her attention. The target was walking within a group of people on a busy city street, likely on their way to work based on the quality and angle of light. A couple of women behind him were visibly checking him out with admiring smiles on their faces.

She could read a lot about a man from his eyes in candid photos like these. She was a little puzzled as his expression didn't show the confidence she expected from such a large, good looking specimen. She knew it was just one still image but using it as context, the remaining pictures showed he was more comfortable alone than amongst strangers.

Her eyes returned to the image of him enjoying the morning sun. She thought he looked most attractive in that picture. It seemed a shame to terminate him but if that was the job, so be it.

She looked at his biographical data and froze. She looked to Lise-Anne incredulously. "His adoptive grandmother is Baba Yaga?!?"

The woman had the good grace to wince. "Yes. She has demonstrated a certain... level of... concern for his well-being."

Minkah slowly set the dossier down on the table's surface and pushed it away as she gave the two people across from her a stern look. "As you indicated, my specialty is assassination. A termination mission is out of the question for this target. I'm not suicidal."

"That's one of the reasons why it's not a termination mission," Rand growled.

Once more, Minkah's eyebrows inched upwards. "One of the reasons? You need more?"

Lise-Anne frowned as well. "There is also the possibility that his continued survival is required to keep the Fae alive."

Minkah made a choking sound. "Why were my services requested?!?"

"Read the rest of the docket," Rand said in annoyance, pointing to the file.

The assassin frowned but picked up the docket and continued reading past the reference to the witch.

As she read, she caught the motion of Rand glancing at his cell and heard his quiet grunt of exasperation. She looked at him, but he shook his head, so she went back to reading.

Finally, she set the docket on the coffee table again. "It's not an assassination. It's an abduction and containment exercise. You must have teams available for that who'd be able to take a single target. I don't understand why I'm involved at this point."

"Due to the possibility of interference from the crone, his continued access to the Fae's Global Overlay Spell even though we have reason to believe he lost this, the potential for Fae surveillance, his link to a domain of Wild Magic which may thwart magic attacks, and the number of Wild Magic powered beings who stay close to him, information on them is included in the dossier, we need your expertise for engineering an extraction plan," Lise-Anne insisted. "Everything you do up to the moment you pull the trigger is required for this mission. This time, instead of killing him and escaping, you'll capture him and get him to containment. The Chancellor was explicit that we need your expertise."

Minkah was secretly pleased that the Chancellor held her work in such high esteem, but this wasn't a time to bask in praise. She couldn't make reasonable and rational decisions if she was high on accolades.

She looked at Rand, who was almost vibrating with his frustration. "Did the message which upset you involve the target?"

He held her eyes, then nodded. "There's been another sighting of the bloody Aurora Borealis. This time they were able to identify it was centered over Jersey City, where the target lives."

Minkah frowned. "A lot of people live in Jersey City."

"Only one of them is linked to the Fae's healing spell," Rand explained. "When the magic is concentrated, it looks like wispy green curtains in the sky."

Minkah picked up the docket once more and scanned the biographic data page. "This says he's a conduit, not a wielder. How could he influence the Fae spell?"

Lise-Anne sighed as she was treading on more secrets. "He used to be connected to a magical artifact which was directly bound to the Fae's healing spell. This artifact was taken from him, but somehow he's still able to interact with the spell... without being a wielder."

"What good would it do him if he cannot use the magic?" Minkah insisted.

"He has friends who are wielders, but they aren't linked to the Wild Magic, so they could use the Fae's magic he gathers to him," Lise-Anne said as she recalled the file. "They live in the same building too. Yuko and Jun Imamura. They're Kitsune. Mahati and Kali Chandra. They're Nāga."

Minkah leaned back against the couch cushions as her travel fatigue seemed to suddenly catch up to her.

Nāga. Shit. They could be seriously powerful opponents if it came to that. She'd taken a Kitsune down before. They were not as much of a threat.

Her eyes widened as the name finally registered. "Chandra? As in Indrani Chandra?"

Lise-Anne nodded. "Her daughters."

Minkah grimaced. More complications. Still, she knew she was going to take the job. Damn.

"I work alone. I don't want or need people interfering." She saw the two across from her relax as they took that as her acceptance of the mission. "That said, when the target is isolated and ready for transport, I'll require immediate assistance in getting him to the containment center. The collection team will need to be nearby." She frowned as she tried to recall if the file mentioned the destination.

Lise-Anne slid another sheet across the table to her. Minkah looked at her in question. She'd withheld the location?

The Minister of Security leaned forward. "This containment facility is completely off the books. No record of it exists. Outside of the three of us, only the Chancellor is aware of its existence, but even he doesn't know its location. Its function is to contain risks to our secrecy and security, which require study before termination. This target will be a permanent resident. To ensure you are not observed by the Fae, a Pixie surveillance team will be used as spotters for Fae. They will report to Rand, and he will be your collection team. Until you complete the mission, he will be at your service. As you wish to work without interference, he will be nearby, able to respond within seconds when contacted."

Minkah frowned but understood this was the best she could hope for in this mission.

She took a look at the sheet and saw the facility was in Hainesburg, NJ, just a little more than an hour's drive from the target's home. At least she wasn't going to have to do a long-distance road trip with the Dwarf and the target. She memorized the route and address then handed the sheet back to Lise-Anne.

"I'll begin my preliminary surveillance on Monday," she said. "Did you bring my requested items?"

Rand nodded and stood to go into the next room. He returned with a small suitcase which he set on the coffee table before her. He took his seat before she opened the case.

Minkah reviewed the contents to ensure they'd missed nothing she'd ordered. The bottom of the suitcase was foam-lined to securely hold the items in place. She saw the twin SIG-Sauer P229 handguns with a dozen extra clips loaded with hollow-point ammunition. Suppressors for the pistols. Ten throwing knives and two combat knives.

Also fitted into the foam was a burner cell phone for keeping in touch with Rand and three auto-injectors. She pointed to the drug injectors as she looked to Lise-Anne. "Are these calibrated to the target's body mass and metabolism?"

"While we don't have information on his metabolism, they're guaranteed to put him under," she confirmed, and Minkah nodded.

The top of the case had a mesh net holding packages containing the holsters and straps for carrying the weapons and extra ammo. She saw two more boxes of hollow points and wondered if they thought she was going to war. She understood the omission of the sniper rifle as the mission parameters had changed. She'd do a more thorough review in the privacy of her room. For now, it seemed like she had everything she needed. She placed the target's dossier in the case and closed it.

She looked to Rand. "I'll contact you when I'm ready to begin." She nodded to them both, lifted the case, and left the apartment without another word.

Once she was in the apartment on the fifteenth, she pulled the dossier out of the suitcase then stored the luggage in the bedroom closet. Walking into the dining room, she turned on the small lamp and sat at the card table, and glanced once out the window overlooking the dark park across the street. She plucked the pictures from the folder and spread them out in front of her. She scanned her eyes over them, memorizing Henry Gable's features so she'd be able to pick him out of a crowd at a glance.

This was shaping up to be the most challenging assignment she'd ever undertaken. Killing the target would be a walk in the park by comparison.

As the night grew late, she sat quietly on her chair, vexed by that one image of the strong, handsome man wearing the expression that didn't belong on his face. She couldn't help but get the impression she was looking at a smaller, less confident man somehow hidden inside a larger body.

Chapter 6

The fat tire bicycle's plush suspension absorbed the worst of the bumps on the monstrous city's dark streets. Roger chuckled to himself at his clever thoughts. New York truly was big, and yes, it contained monsters, too.

Roger's stomach rumbled as he hadn't eaten in a while. It was time to find another of the creatures hiding in plain sight. He was discovering there were fewer of them than he first guessed. This made them harder to find, and his meals came farther apart than his appetite preferred.

He was always hungry.

The original owner of this bicycle had been one of the first monsters Roger had killed and consumed.

Before Roger became what we was now, he would never have accepted that he could be a killer. The idea of eating his victims would have been revolting and ludicrous!

That was before he'd discovered how natural it felt to hunt these freaks hiding amongst humanity. He'd once been one of those blind sheep. Now... now he was so much more, and monsters were delicious!

The press didn't know about the death of the man who'd given Roger more than a meal because he'd been a hermit and apparently had no family or friends. The main reason for the lack of news on this victim was that his body's remains were sealed in a defunct deep freeze in the man's home.

Needing a place to stay, Roger stepped into the man's life. He now lived in the dead man's grubby ground floor apartment in an abandoned building and used the man's bicycle to explore the city at night. How he'd come to own such an expensive two-wheel machine quickly came to light when Roger found his apartment full of stolen merchandise and a surprising amount of cash.

He'd quickly learned that it was a truism that no one pays attention to someone on a bicycle. He'd almost been in several accidents as distracted drivers launched their two-tonne death machines across intersections without care. Roger's new reaction time and strength had saved him each time.

In his favor, he'd been able to ride past his targets, catch their scent, and ambush them without them being aware of him until he attacked.

He enjoyed riding the bike as it let him move almost invisibly throughout the city. The bike's frame was wrapped in dirty, black hockey tape, perhaps to disguise it and hide it from its original owner.

Using some of the money from his hideout, Roger picked up black track pants and a baggy black hoodie. Granted, in the store, he'd had to pretend to be blind when he bought the clothes as he no longer saw color with his new eyes.

Roger reflected upon his new abilities to finally see the truth. Before that fateful night, he'd been one of the seemingly small number who were aware of a... wrongness in the world. He'd felt it in his being that he was somehow immersed in a vast conspiracy, but he could not make sense of it.

When he arrived at the hospital that night, he'd immediately gone to Tish's room but was blocked at the door. He'd felt a desperate need to turn away, to leave the area, but his friend Tish was inside, and he had to see her. The other nurses said they'd heard she was permanently crippled. Nothing was going to keep him from seeing her. It took everything he had to push through that door and burst into the room.

He'd been utterly unprepared for what he saw next. The image was seared into his brain and remained sharp to this day.

A large being with curling horns and furry goat legs had been leaning against the hospital bed with his right hand resting on the stomach of a smaller goat-legged being resting on the bed where Tish should have been. The larger goat being's left hand held a coil of golden hair, which was just part of a considerable mass currently attached to Sandy's head. More strands of the same hair held a small man with pointy ears suspended above the bed, holding one of his hands to the belly of the being in the bed. Then the incredible strong hair captured him, and he passed out.

When he woke, he was alone, feeling an intense need to get away, to hide. All he could see were outlines, but he managed to rush out of the room and ran down the stairwells faster than he'd ever done before. The hospital seemed oddly quiet, so he snuck out through the workman's door. He spotted an SUV parked by the hospital's side door and saw the shape and features of Henry Gable carrying the goat-legged being who'd been in the bed. He now knew that being was Tish. Before Roger was spotted, he rushed off into the night.

The first day at his apartment was difficult. Dealing with his new sight was terrifying, but he slowly learned how to use it. He slipped out that night and found he could easily navigate his way around without the need for any light.

But he was so incredibly hungry! He surprised himself when he caught and ate his neighbor's cat. It didn't stop his hunger, but it showed him what he was capable of.

On his way back to his apartment, he spotted a team of creatures casing the place. There were six of them. Two that reminded him of the small man who'd been in the hospital room and four others with wildly different shapes. They were hunting for him, so he'd faded back into the darkness and never went back.

He'd found a quiet place to hide and rest in an abandoned factory. There were plenty of rats to eat, and he realized he wasn't squeamish about hunting and eating them. While they kept him alive, he found them unsatisfying.

As he hid and learned about his new abilities, making nightly excursions to spy on the people who had once been his friends, he began to put some of the pieces together. Tish had been changed into some kind of goat-legged monster. Sandy now had all that hair, which moved on its own. Dayshia? He wasn't sure what her change was, and she still intimidated him too much to get close enough to check.

He also learned he had some drawbacks. He couldn't see through glass, and reading signs and printed material, like money, was particularly difficult. Not impossible, unless the written surface had been laminated.

Glass being opaque to him meant Roger couldn't drive. Granted, he hadn't known how to drive before his change, so no loss there.