“People are constantly coming and going, so your presence shouldn’t draw attention.” Blake shot off a quick text on his phone. “But I’ll ask him to meet us out here.”
I joined the others at the hatch, and Aaron passed me my combat belt with its two remaining alchemy bombs and Hoshi tucked in the back pouch, sleeping in her orb form.
A minute later, the building’s plain steel door popped open and a tall, well-built man in his fifties walked out. With buzzed gray hair and a steely expression, he embodied every “army sergeant” stereotype ever.
“Blake,” he rumbled, extending his hand. “You made good time.”
The terramage shook his hand. “No time to waste.”
The guild officer nodded, then turned to our group. “And my thanks to you as well for coming out.”
“We’ll do what we can to help,” Aaron said smoothly, stepping forward to clasp hands with the man. “Aaron Sinclair, Crow and Hammer guild.”
Russel’s eyebrows shot up. “Sinclair?”
Aaron flashed a grin in acknowledgment. “These are my guildmates—Kai, Makiko, Tori, and Justin.”
Justin blinked at being included as a guildmate.
We all shook Russel’s hand in turn. His grip was strong, his fingers calloused from a lifetime of weapons training.
With introductions out of the way, Russel glanced toward the building. “Anand—the fifth officer and our top suspect—is out on a job, but we shouldn’t linger outside. The CT floor is the most private space in the building.”
“CT floor?” I questioned.
“Combat training,” Blake explained. “It’s a basement room reinforced with protective spells and abjuration. It’ll work well enough for a meeting.”
Russel led us to the steel door, which looked comically puny next to a double-wide overhead door. He punched a code into the security panel and the lock clacked. As we entered a long, nondescript hall with a tiled floor and plain gray walls, I glanced over my shoulder. Justin and Makiko stayed with the vehicles, as planned. They were our backup.
Russel noted that our group had shrunk with an arch of his eyebrows but didn’t comment as he headed down the corridor. A trio of heavily muscled men crossed our path a couple dozen paces away, none of them glancing in our direction. It was quiet in a “there are lots of people around but everyone is busy” sort of way.
Following Russel, we descended two floors and entered what I could only describe as an antechamber. The long space contained a wall of lockers labeled with various types of training gear, as well as entrances to a bathroom and a first-aid room, the latter’s door open to reveal a tidy space transplanted straight out of a hospital.
Dead ahead was a pair of double doors in thick steel, and Russel swung them open.
The Crow and Hammer’s combat training area had nothing on the Keys’ version. The room was the size of a gymnasium, with a floor made of hard black rubber. Thick padding covered the walls, and stacks of gear and training equipment filled the far end of the space—from practice dummies to targets to sets of portable walls that could be arranged into makeshift rooms.
Paintball practice in here would be seriously fun.
A wooden table—one that, judging by its scratched surface, was normally used as a prop—sat in the center of the room, several brown folders stacked on it. Standing nearby, two men in their thirties waited.
“Come,” Russel said, leading us toward them. “Chay and Piotr are already up to speed. They have my complete trust, and they’ll assist with apprehending Anand.”
Blake strode ahead of me, Kai, and Aaron, and the two other Keys mythics came around the table to meet him. The terramage shook hands with the stocky blond guy, whose biceps were thick enough to generate their own gravitational force.
“Piotr,” he said to the second man as they grasped hands. “Third officer, correct? We met at the AGM last year.”
Piotr—a beanpole of a guy with a shiny bald spot, glasses, and a shrewd gleam in his eyes that made Kai seem as wily as a kindergartener—nodded. “I remember. You’ve been well?”
“Well enough.”
Aaron, Kai, and I did the handshake thing too, then we all gathered around the table.
“Let’s begin,” Russel said. “I had another trusted guild member take Anand out on a job this afternoon. They won’t return until I give the signal, so we have time to plan our next moves.”
We nodded our agreement.
“Capturing Anand should be straightforward. He’s a talented offensive sorcerer, as you can imagine given he’s an officer, but he won’t be expecting an ambush. As far as he knows, Blake is in Portland and no one here is aware the cult was discovered.”
“What about the assassin?” Aaron asked. “Do you think Anand or the cult hired her?”
Russel rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Anand knows how to quickly hire an assassin from his work with the guild,” Piotr murmured in his hoarse, chain-smoker’s voice. “When you observed the cult, did they seem to be civilians or rogues?”
“Civilians,” I said firmly. “With the possible exception of the Praetor. He was a contractor.”
“We can probably assume Anand is responsible for the assassin,” Blake said, swiping his hair off his forehead. “He knew where I was staying, and I suspect he instructed the assassin to follow me to your first rental place. She went for Tori minutes after I’d arrived.”
I shuddered at the memory.
“We can confirm once we’ve detained Anand,” Russel decided. “Before that, my concern is the chance, however slim, that there may be more than one mole inside the guild.”
“One is already a stretch,” Chay growled. “How could they get to more guildeds?”
“The same way they got to Anand, an officer,” Piotr shot back. “We can’t rule it out.”
Kai folded his arms. “You also can’t rule out the possibility that Anand has corrupted other members. He may not have brought them into the cult, but he could have won loyalties that supersede their loyalty to the guild.”
Russel, Piotr, and Chay exchanged unhappy looks.
“That’s certainly possible.” The creases around Russel’s mouth deepened. “We can’t assume anything at this point.”
“Exactly,” Blake said. “We don’t even know the true reach of the cult. I doubt the group in Portland is the extent of it. The demon mage doesn’t seem to be local. He came from somewhere outside the Portland group.”
“How many more people could be involved?” Chay asked. “The cult was wiped out eight years ago.”
“Was it?” Kai rubbed his jaw. “Was Enright the core of the cult? What if it was more of … an extremist offshoot?”
“How could seventy members and a dozen demon mages be an offshoot?” I demanded.
Russel fixed his stern gaze on me. “If your goal was to form a group like Enright—tightknit, fiercely loyal, and so committed to your mission that they’d willingly offer themselves up for demonic rituals—how would you find suitable candidates?”
“By creating a religion that isn’t as radical,” Kai answered tersely. “Lure mythics in with a demon-worshipping sect like the one in Portland, then choose the most fanatic for your extremist commune.”