“Engage!” Boss hollered, and Dark Squad sprang into action.
They sprinted in different directions, ensuring the rezzers couldn’t regroup. Raven headed for a clutch of three, jade dagger in hand. These were definitely not the mindless, broken things from the forest. The way they moved, communicated, readied themselves, showed them to be every bit as alert and dangerous as an enemy could get, only far harder to hurt. At least the dagger gave her a distinct advantage.
She heard Smoke’s high-pitched laughter as she engaged the first assailant, then nothing existed but her own fight. The ninjas were fast, faster than any enemy she’d met before. The first kick came at her so suddenly it clipped her ribs before she could dodge fully, forced most of her air out. The shock of being hit so easily winded her more than the impact, but she managed to swipe the dagger across and felt it drag through flesh. The ninja put his foot down and his leg crumbled, sent him tumbling to the ground. She was already past him, blocking a furious flurry of blows from the next, barely twisted as the third threw another kick. The one she had cut was up on one leg already, hopping expertly to re-engage. She was hurt and still all three faced her.
Raven took a deep breath and whispered the word to her samjok-o. She asked for help and the three-legged bird stepped into the air again followed by a cloud of other shining black avians. They swirled and mobbed the ninjas, interrupting their approach. Raven let her mind slip into the state of wu wei, a Taoist concept of non-being. Her mind removed itself from her actions and she let pure training and instinct take over. No longer trying to learn or emulate, she let her magic flow as she danced with the flock of ravens, knives in hand, a lyrical, swirling display of athletic grace and deadly accuracy. As the birds dipped, she rose, as they fanned out, she dove in. The rezzed ninjas scored hits here and there, but she put off that pain for later. She felt the occasional searing burn of a blade strike and ignored that too. Her own dagger swept and flew, shattered flesh raining around in musical accompaniment to the dance.
Once her three assailants were gone, she moved with her cloud of birds across the courtyard, engaging wherever there was movement not of her Squad. Howls and shouts, cries and slaps of flesh on flesh, and then stillness.
Arms out to either side, the dagger held low in one hand, hair come loose and hanging over her eyes, Raven stopped moving. Statue-still but for the fast rise and fall of her chest, the rasp of rapid breathing. She let the emptiness drain away from her, slowly raised her eyes to look around.
Boss and Taipan stood side by side, hurt but smiling. Smoke strolled across the courtyard towards them. Raven’s eyes fell on Jet, sat back against a fountain, bleeding and bruised, one eye already swollen shut. Jet gave a shaky thumbs up as she hauled herself to her feet.
The Squad regathered and stood before the protective circle. In its centre, the necromancer looked shaken.
“What’s next?” Boss asked.
“You people are tenacious,” the necromancer said. “But let’s see you face this.” He began chanting, knotted his fingers into complicated signs and mudras.
“He’s summoning something,” Jet said, slightly slurred through swollen lips.
Smoke tilted his head to listen. “A demon, I think,” he said with a smile.
Raven’s eyes widened. A demon? Seriously? And why were they all so casually amused about that.
“Oh ho,” Boss said. “This’ll be fun.”
As the necromancer’s words gained strength, rapidly blurring together, Boss raised his arms as if in supplication. With a rush of burning hot air, he faded and vanished. Before Raven had drawn a shocked breath, Boss reappeared inside the protective circle, standing right before the necromancer.
The necromancer’s eyes went wide, his mouth fell open. “What the hell?”
“You really should consider,” Boss said. “If you plan to summon a demon, it’s best to know who’s already around, otherwise what you expect to appear outside might already be there, and then your spell simply reverses itself.”
Boss whipped his hand around, grip tight on the hilt of his machete, and the necromancer’s head sailed up off his shoulders, spinning over and over, still wearing its expression of shock and disbelief. The body crumpled to the floor at Boss’s feet.
Boss looked down at the body for some time as the magic of the protective circle drained away, then he turned and strolled back to the Squad. “There we go then.”
“You’re a fucking demon?” Raven asked. Her heart beat faster at this revelation than all the fighting up until this point.
Boss shook his head, slipped his machete away. “It’s really not as simple as all that. Perhaps I’ll try to explain it to you one day. Bad luck for him though, eh?”
Raven looked around the group. They all smiled and she felt like they were all in on a joke to which she wasn’t privy. It was frustrating, but she supposed there was an awful lot to learn about these people.
Boss turned to look at the raised dais with its ring of carved sigils. “That’s big enough for a chopper to put down, don’t you think?”
“I would say so,” Smoke agreed.
Boss turned to Jet. “Call it in, please. Tea and crumpet time.”
They were taken to an Armour base in Berlin to have their wounds taken care of. Taipan needed to wear a patch for a few weeks but was told he had been lucky and would retain his sight. Other than several dozen stitches between them and a few set bones, they weren’t in too bad shape. Some of the Armour mages used a few less than natural techniques to hurry their healing along.
By the time they were in a comfortable lounge being fed, it seemed to Raven that the whole encounter had been weeks ago instead of hours.
“It’ll be good to get back to New York,” Taipan said. “There’s a young man I know there who’ll be very impressed with my eye patch. I’ve got this whole story about defending myself from a mugging to earn his sympathy.”
“Don’t you ever think about anything but sex?” Jet asked.
“I think about fighting a lot.”
She laughed. “Fair point.”
Boss crammed in the last of a sandwich and stood. “Right, I’m going to Paris to debrief with Commander Giraud. You lot head home, I’ll see you in Manhattan. Except you, Raven. You’re with me.”
She frowned. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I want him to know how well you did, and for you to see a bit more of Armour operations.”
It wasn’t too long a chopper ride to Paris and the Armour HQ there. They went through a command centre with computer banks, busy personnel, a large round desk in the middle with holographic projections hovering over it.
“It’s like the bridge of the fucking Enterprise,” Raven said.
Boss laughed. “Armour has been around since the Crusades, fighting evil and gaining wealth and power. Come on.”
He went along a hallway to a door marked Commander and knocked.
“Come.”
Inside was a large office, filing cabinets and a sofa on one side. Behind a large mahogany desk sat a short man with dark, intense eyes and jet black hair. His face was deeply wrinkled, showing age that seemed to go beyond any mortal lifespan. Raven had no idea why, but she sensed immense power about him. It would take some experience and skill to be an Armour Commander after all, she supposed.
“Aha, Boss, please sit,” Giraud said. His French accent was strong, but something else was in there too. Something Slavic maybe. “It all went well?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Boss said. “But you know us. We prevail.”
“You hit some tough resistance?”
Boss nodded slowly. “We really did. The enemy were immune to Jet’s voice, fire barely slowed them down, it’s almost like they were the perfect thing to throw at us. Especially without Blinder and his skills. But like I said, we prevail.”