Magic Rises

guard, seeing red, huh. You remember Rene Benoit?”
    I nodded. I first met Rene when she ran security for an illegal gladiatorial tournament. Since then she’d hired me for a job, and her glowing endorsement of my fledgling investigative firm was driving business my way.
    “After the whole Lighthouse Keepers mess, she was promoted,” Jim said. “She’d come up through the ranks and knew who was pulling their weight and who wasn’t, so when she got to the top, she cleaned house. Two weeks ago twelve people got let go. A couple of them showed up at the Guild looking to enroll and bitching about how unfair it was.”
    “Which one of the twelve would be more likely to hammer together a gang and stoop to kidnapping?”
    Jim frowned. “Leon Tremblay. He’d been in the Guard for over a decade, so he’s got seniority and people would follow him. The word is, if you’ve got enemies with deep pockets, you don’t want him to guard you.”
    “He sold his ‘bodies’?” I hated bodyguard detail. I’d done my fair share during my time with the Mercenary Guild, and some of my clients had done everything in their power to get themselves killed, while I put myself between them and danger. Selling the life of the person you guarded went against the very spirit of the job. It made you the lowest of the low.
    Jim nodded. “He wasn’t obvious about it, but once every six to eight months one of his clients would manage to croak under entirely plausible but very convenient circumstances. When Rene made major, she booted his ass out on the street. He must’ve been trouble, because when Rene fired him, she had six people in the room with her.” Jim finished his coffee. “You’re going after Tremblay?”
    “Don’t have anything better to do,” I told him. “Thanks for the coffee.”
    “Kate, you know you don’t have to save that asshole. He isn’t worth it and he won’t appreciate it.”
    “I know.” I went to the door. “There is a method to my madness. Trust me.”
    “Take backup,” Jim called after me. “At least take that dog with you.”
    Backup wasn’t a bad idea, and I knew just the right person to bring with me. I climbed the stairs up one floor and knocked on Derek’s room. A raspy voice called, “Come in.”
    I stepped into the room. Derek was doing a one-armed handstand against the wall. When I met him over a year ago, Derek had a face that made young girls turn and stare. Things had happened, and that face was gone now. The young cocky kid who owned it was gone, too. A man remained, calm, quiet, and thoughtful, with a face beaten up by life and big brown eyes that worried you if you looked into them too long. Derek watched people, preferring not to draw attention to himself, but when he acted, he attacked fast and he usually won.
    As I watched, muscles flexed on his chest under a torn-up T-shirt. His biceps bulged. Derek lowered himself down and pushed up. One-arm-upside-down push-up. Young werewolves. Full of energy.
    “Show-off. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
    Derek kept moving, lowering and raising his body in a smooth, measured rhythm, like a machine. “I was about to turn in. Just a little end-of-the-day workout before the shower.”
    It’s good to be a werewolf. “I need backup.”
    “Who are we killing?” He switched to the other arm and kept pushing.
    “Some ex–Red Guards, and we’re not necessarily going to kill them. We’re just going to visit them and explain that kidnapping Saiman for ransom is a bad idea.”
    Derek stopped moving. “They kidnapped the pervert?”
    I nodded.
    He hopped to his feet. “This I’ve got to see.”
    * * *
    The Mole Hole had been a tall glass tower housing the offices of Molen Enterprises, until its owners obtained a phoenix egg and coaxed it into hatching. I’d seen a newborn phoenix rise once, and it looked like the old documentaries of space shuttle launches. When the fire subsided, the tower was no more. A crater, one hundred forty feet wide and fifty feet deep, gouged the ground in its place, and the fiery afterburn of the phoenix left it filled with molten glass. A few days later, the glass cooled, forming a foot-thick shell on the bottom and walls of the crater, and the Mole Hole was born.
    We approached from the northeast, the shortest route from the Keep. The area had gone downhill a long time ago. Charred wrecks of houses flanked empty streets, and the hoofbeats of my horse sent echoes skipping through the ruins. Strange