Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller

"Angel's pregnant, isn't she?" Natasha asked.

"Yes. I'm going in after them."

"No, you're not," Janne said. "I'm not losing any more civilians to that place."

"You can't stop me," Kevin snapped.

"You're under arrest then. Laws of man trump your magic." Oh, good one, Janne.

"Not this time, Janne," Heather warned. "Women and unborn children in danger trump the laws of man here."

"A bullet in the knee should do the trick," Janne pulled out her gun. The challenge to her authority made her mad and she totally forgot about natural immortality.

"Stay still," Natasha put her hand up and Janne froze in place. There was magic at work there.

"Tash!" Shehzadi shouted.

"It's Natasha. You lost the right to use my friendly name when you abandoned your post! What do you need, Kevin?"

"Gold," Kevin said.

Natasha pulled out a gold chain and Kevin put it around his neck. The thing must have been monster heavy by the way he shifted. I offered my gold bangles to him and he slipped them on his left wrist. Nadia and Shehzadi offered nothing, even though their gold was right on their wrists. Janne offered the gold bands on her fingers, telling him that he better know what he was doing.

I couldn't resist giving him a kiss for luck, his mouth tasting like heaven. Natasha gave him a demure kiss on the cheek. Kevin got his bearings to the main road leading into Shannonburg and took flight.

"Kevin, you better come back," Natasha muttered. "Dying on my watch is not something I can live with."

"You too?" I asked her.

"Yes, me too. He's dating an actress now, Olivia Watson. Yes, the same Olivia Watson that Simone used to work for. Yes, she set him up, you little twat," Natasha said to Shehzadi.

Shehzadi offered nothing in return. "Just one actress?" I asked Natasha.

"The line is long, Heather. Ellie Salazar and her two surrogates are pregnant, ten of Olivia's twelve surrogates. There's a couple in there I don't know about yet. Sorry."

"A girl can hope," I mused.

"I don't know. Kevin likes exotic," Natasha smiled. "I'm not fooling with you, you might have a better chance than me and I just rode on his back for the last two hours."

"Sure."

"Anyways, Kyle Andrews has more kids. You should see his line."

A dozen or so figures appeared on my 'radar.' They were above us now, coming in for a landing...now. One man, sixteen women had come just out of the sky. "Where's Kevin?" the man demanded.

"He went to the town, Kyle," Natasha replied. "I didn't know you were coming or I would have told him to wait."

"Hi, I'm Heather," I offered my hand to Kyle. "Can I help?"

"We're going to need all the help we can get," Kyle took my hand. You're untrained, can you cast anything?"

"I can barely fold," I admitted.

"Kevin went for the dome?" Kyle asked Natasha.

"Yes."

"Annabelle, give Missus Jenkins-Sagemueller a lift," Kyle ordered before he took into the sky.

"Yes, dad," one of the women came over to me as the rest shot upward. "Oh, Kevin what have you gotten yourself into?"

"You too?" I asked.

"I got the bonus," Annabelle gave me a wink. "It'll be a short flight, but try to do it yourself. It's fun to fly, especially at Mach two."

"That's bullshit," I said.

Annabelle put her arms around me. "You smell nice." Then we were flying. I saw the glowing dome over Shannonburg, then Annabelle brought us in for a landing by everyone else.

"That was pretty amazing," I admitted. "I like flying, better than folding."

"If you decide to give yourself lessons, watch your ass. Sorcerers can fly too," Kyle warned.

"Ten-four," I nodded. "What's the deal here?"

"Shield. I don't know if Kevin is in there or not," Kyle said. "Persephone tried coming down on it, got the shit zapped out of her."

I looked over where Kyle had indicated. There was one woman who looked like she had stuck her finger in a light socket. "Can we punch a hole in it?"

"Yeah, we can try," Kyle nodded. "You know that smell after a lightning storm?"

"The ozone? Sure"

"Try to key on that," Kyle said.

"Point your hands thataway," Annabelle pointed to the glowing wall. "Think lightning."

To my surprise, a lightning bolt flew from my right hand and struck the wall. It was narrow, about the width of my pinky, but I was shooting lightning, damnit.

Of course, Kyle had to show me up by letting loose with a massive ball of blue plasma. When his ball hit the shield, it dissipated. "Fuck," Kyle muttered.

A massive lightning bolt came from inside the sphere and hit the top of the dome. It let out a zapping sound like you'd hear in a mad scientist's laboratory. "That's Kevin," Kyle said.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"We've fought sorcerers before. They can cast lightning, but not even masters can throw a bolt like that."

Dozens of smaller bolts joined the massive burst going into the sky. The lightning wasn't going all the way up, it was hitting the inside of the dome itself. "Why are they focusing like that?"

"They're trying to open a portal," a woman's voice drew our attention to her stepping out of a portal herself.

"That's an awful lot of power for a simple portal, Paula," Natasha said.

"Maybe it's a tunnel, then," I offered. The geometry of the dome suggests that they are trying to take everything inside with them. It's more than just a dome..."

"It's a cookie cutter," Paula finished. "They've prepped the space for translocation."

"Not very well," Natasha said. "They were having trouble stabilizing the edges of the dome. If they are trying to take the town with them, it's going to land hard."

They continued their discussion without me. I was seeing something on the inside of the barrier, it was a woman. "Look! She's trying to escape!"

Everybody followed me to the wall. The woman was joined by another, then by a dozen more. They tried going through the wall, and there was nothing we could do to help them. "We should try lightning, with more people," I said.

"If we punch through, we'll vaporize them," Kyle said.

"Let's try somewhere else," I said. "We can't just leave them in there!"

"Watch out!" Kyle said.

I stepped out the way just in time to avoid the lighting coming through the wall of the portal. I could hear Kevin telling the women to run through the hole. It started as a trickle and then they came in droves. Dozens of women running for their lives through a lightning hole in a bizarre energy wall. I'd shit if I was totally clueless about magic.

"You're brave and stupid," Kyle told Kevin as he stepped through the hole.

"Says the man with children of his own," Kevin snapped. "I was told five thousand souls here."

"Go and find the rest." Kyle took a place beside Kevin and let loose with lightning of his own to hold the hole open. "I've got this."

Kevin vanished into the darkness, and the only thing I could really do was direct the escapees away from the barrier. I lost count at a hundred, a hundred out of five thousand. There was no way they'd all escape, the odds were not in their favor.

I saw lightning down the road, and Kevin was flying backwards toward the barrier. He ran into Kyle and they both tumbled through the hole. The hole closed up, Kevin and Kyle laying on the ground, Kevin singed and his clothes gone. Despite the situation, all I could think of naked Kevin was 'Yummy.'

Kevin stood up and started running toward the barrier. "We've got to go back!" He just bounced off the wall and landed right where he had just gotten up from.

The barrier was pulsing now. Bright rings came up from the ground and went into the sky. Then there was a loud bang and everything just vanished. A blast of air hit me from behind, almost knocking us into the giant hole that that had been created. Nature abhors a vacuum. I looked back to where Kevin was, now surrounded by a blanket. Shit.

"Translocation," Natasha said. "I've done it on a large scale, but never like this. There must be ten square miles gone."

"Ten round miles," Annabelle snickered. "How would you do something like that? The amount of energy it took must be enormous."

"We can't really measure the energy a wizard puts out," Natasha said. "There were sorcerers in there too, how many?"

"At least a hundred," Kevin said with a shrug. "Thirty or so less now. I do hope those hostages are okay."

Thirty or so less. He vaporized their sorry asses. I hope they suffered.

"Me too," Kyle gave Kevin a pat on the shoulder. "Let's go get you some clothes."

No clothes. Please, no clothes. I sighed. That wasn't going to happen.

"Yes, let's," Annabelle smiled. "I'd hate to traumatize those poor women more by knocking you down and sexing you up, Kevin."

Stay out, Annabelle, that's my job. Maybe not.

"What would your husband say to that?" Kevin asked Annabelle.

"You heard I was married, they didn't tell you if it was a man or not, did they?" Annabelle asked. "Only one Kevin running around."

"I do not need to hear this from my daughter," Kyle sighed.

***

More busses and trucks started appearing just an hour later. Whatever group that Kyle and his family were attached to, they were fast. Food and supplies flowed in, and eventually a temporary camp was set up to help the survivors of the Shannonburg debacle. When other women started to trickle in from the woods I paired up with one of Kyle's daughters, Persephone, to help in the search. We came across scumbags too. They were armed and thought they were big with guns, but they weren't prepared to go up against women who could disarm them in a millisecond. We led them away from the camp, so we could keep them separate from the women who would probably cut their balls off given the chance.

I watched Kevin Brown vanish into a linear fold with a sigh. One of the great disappointments in my life was going to be knowing that piece of meat was going somewhere else.

"Stop drooling," Janne gave me a pat on the shoulder. "That's already taken."

"Yeah, but just once... What's on your mind, Janne?"

"Well, I've got a problem. As soon as the smell of this shitstorm percolates to the top, I'm going to be lucky to just be out of a job. I want to get a head start on the job hunt."

"I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do now. Kyle might need a counterintelligence specialist. I'm not doing any hiring until I figure out what Declan left behind."

"Do you have a recommendation as to what to do with the scumbags? I can't really arrest them for being around here, we didn't actually catch them doing anything. A DA would laugh me out of their office if I asked them to press charges, but they're guilty as sin, the blonde Russian woman assures me of that."

"Let me talk to Kyle." I walked over to where Natasha and Kyle were giving Nadia and Shehzadi their ruling on their failures.

"...furthermore, you do not continue to call someone a liar after I personally vouch for them!" Natasha said. "Hi, Heather."

"Hi."

"What do you think would be a good punishment for your little friends here?" Natasha asked. "Normally when a guardian abandons their post we excommunicate them. They are mothers of your children, however, so I ask you."

"You know, I could use a couple more guards at my home in Los Angeles. I'm sure they would happily volunteer for that as opposed to counting snowflakes in Alaska. This wouldn't be slave labor, mind you, I'll pay a fair wage and provide the benefits."

"We resigned," Shehzadi said.

"You may have resigned from the club, but you swore an oath to the clan," Natasha countered. "The second you realized you were pregnant you should have asked the clan for your replacements! Those sorcerers just killed a man to get a Child of the Sphere!"

"We can defend ourselves," Shehzadi said. "Gaia will protect the children."

"Shezzy do shut up now," Nadia said.

"What is she going to do?" Shehzadi demanded.

"Gaia can hold you to your word," Natasha said. "You agreed as surrogates to either stay with the primary and help raise the children or allow adoption. That was a conscious choice, sleeping with Heather, Nadia. Shehzadi! You asked!"

"Maybe they took off because their feelings were hurt by me going out with Declan," I offered. "Having sex in a bathroom stall, making plans to break your word to me, to Kimberly."

Shehzadi paled. "You heard that?"

"Yes, I did. In any case I would like you to come to Los Angeles. Stay with each other but close to me so that I can watch them grow up. Or you can leave, go out into the cold."

"And hope that sorcerers or dark witches don't find you," Natasha finished.

"Take a minute. I need to talk to Kyle here," I waved them aside.

"What's up?" Kyle asked.

"The scumbag slavers. Janne can't arrest them because this debacle can't be exposed to the public eye. We can't let them go, because, scumbags."

"Let them make a run for it," Kyle said. "They broke the laws of man and are getting off on the technicality. They'll get sorted out sooner rather than later."

My mind flashed back to the restaurant, the things that my nightmares were afraid of. "Revengers," I whispered.

"That's right," Kyle nodded.

"All right, I can work with that." Janne was patiently waiting for me where I left her. "Looks exciting."

"Nadia and Shehzadi? Not anymore. Let the scumbags go. Gaia will deal with them in her own way."

"Then why didn't she deal with them before?"

"She doesn't intervene in normal human history. Those men, whoever they are, wherever they came from, were normal. When they were arrested and subsequently let go on this technicality, they got marked. From the stories I've been told, the bodies won't even be found."

"Oh, really?" Janne gave me a look of disbelief.

"Look, you've studied your law, right?" Janne nodded. "Bet you've studied your history as well?"

"What's the point, Heather?"

"How do you think people evolved into a civilization before there was law?"

"I'm intrigued. Go on"

"Before there was law, there was crime. Men stealing things, men preying on the weak, et cetera. We got from there to here with a little help. Before there was man's law, there were still crimes of conscience. Revengers prosecuted those criminals, probably in very public ways. That's where we get our legends of vampires and werewolves, the creatures of the night."

"I've had more than one bad guy get away on a technicality and subsequently evade any follow-up investigation," Janne admitted. "So which is it, vampires or werewolves?"

"The thing your worst nightmare monster is afraid of," I whispered.

"Oh."

***

Janne picked out a bus and directed the prisoners into it. She didn't share her plan, I didn't want to know. When she returned three hours later, she told me that she had dropped them off in the city, what happened to them now out of her hands. She also had picked up a tail, Carla McCauley and Ai Ming had followed her back.

Carla wanted to know what was going to happen to the women and the children that had escaped. While Janne was gone I had formulated an idea and was getting ready to make some calls. A couple of years back, I had been auditing the books of an investment firm called Weyerhauser-Stein. They had a property on their books labeled 'Sunshineville,' and it was dragging down their net worth. I knew that the investment packet was actually a town, a private one.

I called the firm, letting them know I was the accountant that had audited their books and asking them if the Sunshineville packet was still controlled by their firm. I was immediately patched through to the Executive Officer of the firm, Samson Holt, and he gave me the rundown on the full situation. Sunshineville had been a dream of one of their clients. When the speed limits were dropped on the superhighway that connected most of the major arteries in California, this man had come to them with an idea.

Since the city of L.A. was so congested, he wanted them to gamble on the fact that some of the high-income families would buy homes far out from the city, but were easily accessible via the superhighway. They had agreed and a purchase of ten thousand acres of land was made in an area northeast of Los Angeles. They ponied up another twenty million to have base infrastructure laid and some model homes to be built.

Then an economic downturn hit and nobody wanted to buy new, pricey houses until the economy started looking better. So the firm was stuck with a huge parcel of land that they still couldn't get rid of. In the hopes that they might get rid of it someday, they had hired a private security force to guard the structures that had already been put into place. I asked Samson if I could take a look, and he hedged for a moment. I told him that I was genuinely interested in the entire property and I needed to see if it met my specifications. He agreed to have an agent at the gates at eight hours Pacific time and we hung up.

I caught Carla and Ai in the refugee camp talking to four women who were the appointed leaders of the group. I waited patiently until I was noticed and invited into the circle. I was recognized and thanked for my part in the rescue of some of the women in the forest and then introduced myself. I presented my preliminary idea to them and let the conversation commence. Some of the arguments were heated. They had just escaped from one supposedly safe place to be shifted to another, and the women were not pleased.

A break was called, the women going back to their group to rest after a really shitty day. Carla caught up with me on the way back to what was left of the FBI staging area. She asked me if I was serious in my plan and I told her that I would pay every dollar I could to let those women feel a sense of security. She let me go, not sure what to think of my offer, telling me that she wanted to come with me when I made the inspection. I gave her a simple question: 'If I prick you, will you bleed?'

Carla initially thought it was a sexual reference and was getting ready to give me a verbal lashing when she stopped. My hidden question was whether or not she was a natural immortal. She told me that she wasn't, and I gave her a sigh. I was due at the entrance to the estate in ten hours, something that we could make if we hurried.

I said my goodbyes to what was left of the Andrews entourage with a promise to fill them in on my plan as it progressed. Nadia and Shehzadi were all too happy to drive us out of the camp and to the airport. Carla, having her connections, managed to charter us a flight to California. We talked about a lot of things, but not the little humping session we had enjoyed in my bed. She managed to catch a nap, leaving me to my thoughts for the rest of the flight.

On the way from the plane to the car, Carla told me that my facial bruising had cleared up. I immediately took to examining my face in a compact mirror after we got in the car. When we made it to my house in Beverly Hills, I was so preoccupied with my healed face that I forgot to extend an invitation to them to come into the house. It was a good thing that Celina was there to greet us, or Carla might have gotten the fright of her life.

Nadia and Shehzadi were greeted with suspicion and treated like outsiders by the security force that Morena had assigned to me. I told the security to stop behaving like children, and my order gave them a bit of relief. I went to shower and change, offering Carla some of my clothes but not my company in the shower. I needed to think.

Carla was at the entrance to the bathroom, fully naked, when I emerged. I gently told her that while I appreciated the thought, nothing else was going to happen between us. She took it in stride, giving me a kiss on the cheek before she went to wash. Nadia and Shehzadi were in the kitchen eating a salad by themselves over in the corner. They were obviously the outsiders of the assembled, and probably were being treated by lepers because they had taken off in the middle of assignment. While that error might have been forgiven by the club, they weren't welcome by my guards, who were obviously magic-using guardians.