Chapter 10: Dimensional Heist & Hostage Extraction
The air in the back room of Rainbor’s candy stall tasted of sugar, ozone, and tension. Jan traced a finger through a fine dusting of pink salt on the wooden counter. Godfrey lay at her feet, chin on his paws, watching a stray jellybean as if it were prey.
“They’ve been in there forty-eight hours,” Bethany said, her voice flat. She’d swapped her pink spikes for the severe charcoal suit, her Golden Wand tech subtly humming. A schematic of a bland industrial building in the Pullman district hovered above her antique-looking phone. “Thermal scans show two human signatures in the central chamber. Life signs are stable but showing elevated stress biomarkers. The place is a tech nest. Motion sensors, energy grid, automated sentry guns. Non-lethal, probably. They want them alive and talkative.”
“So we go in loud,” Stacy said, checking the slide on her 9mm with a practiced, efficient motion. Her athletic body was coiled tight under a black tactical shirt. “Create a diversion, hit hard, extract.”
“And if they move the prisoners the second the alarms trip?” Fatima countered, her arms crossed. She wore dark, practical clothing, her expression stern. “A frontal assault is what they expect. From us, or from the Wands. We need to be a ghost.”
“A very noisy ghost elsewhere,” Jan said, looking up. Her eyes found Aaron and Rainbor near the stall’s curtained entrance. “Boom Boom’s people are ready?”
Aaron nodded, his ink-stained fingers tapping a rhythm on his thigh. “The Order of the Glorious Kaboom loves a deadline. They’ve woven a distraction spell into the old train yards south of the Consortium facility. When it pops, it’ll look and feel like a massive, contained gas main explosion. Heat, light, sound, the works. Every sensor for half a mile will scream.”
“Good,” Jan said. “That’s our opening. While they’re looking at the pretty lights, we’re already inside.” She turned to Jules, who was leaning against a shelf of crystalline lollipops, looking for all the world like a therapist about to begin a session. “Jules. You’re on point for entry. Their defenses are tech. Their guards are human. Humans have… psychology.”
A slow, knowing smile spread across Julia Nash’s full lips. “Disruption of focus. Amplification of latent impulse. I have some very effective hexes for overwhelming the limbic system.” She adjusted the strap of her handbag, which undoubtedly contained more than just lipstick.
“Vivian,” Jan said, her voice softening slightly. The half-succubus hovered near the back, her vibrant red hair seeming to drink the low light. “We need a path cleared that doesn’t leave bodies. Can you feed without… permanent damage?”
Vivian tucked a strand of hair behind a pointed ear, her movements timid. “The Green Moon techniques help. I can siphon, leave them weak, disoriented. Asleep. It’s… it’s hungry work, though.” Her eyes, a shade too dark, flickered with a mix of apprehension and latent hunger.
“Then you get first course,” Jan said. “Stacy, you’re her shadow. Anything Vivian can’t handle, you put down. Non-lethally, if you can.”
Stacy gave a sharp nod. “Tasers and rubber rounds loaded. I’ll play nice until they don’t.”
“Fatima and I will go with Aaron and Rainbor,” Jan continued. “The Davenport key needs to be unraveled and scattered now. The Consortium poking at our reporters means they’re getting close to figuring out what it really is. We do the dispersal ritual at the same time as the extraction. Two birds, one very chaotic stone.”
“Coordinate timing via the pendants,” Fatima said, holding up her smooth green stone. “Three chimes for diversion start. Five for extract. One long pulse for abort.”
The group murmured agreement. The plan was flimsy, a house of cards in a hurricane, but it was all they had. The Veil was gone. The Consortium was in the open. The rules were being written in real time, and the ink was blood and desire.
The industrial park was a graveyard of ambition. Warehouses with shattered windows stood sentinel under the jaundiced glow of sodium vapor lights. The Consortium facility was the newest building, a featureless gray cube that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
Jan, Fatima, Aaron, and Rainbor were a quarter-mile away, hidden in the skeletal remains of a shipping container. Before them, on a bed of black velvet, lay the Davenport artifact. To a mundane eye, it was a convoluted, ugly piece of abstract brass sculpture, the kind a corrupt city council might commission. To Jan’s senses, it throbbed like a sick heart, a nexus of potential doors that should never be unlocked.
Aaron was chanting softly, his ink-stained fingers drawing shimmering silver symbols in the air around the artifact. Each sigil hung for a moment before sinking into the brass, making it vibrate with a low, dissonant hum. Rainbor stood guard, his massive orc frame a comforting wall of muscle, a polished ax held loosely at his side. He stared at the gray cube with open contempt.
“They build without soul,” he rumbled. “All angles and fear. No candy.”
Jan’s pendant warmed against her chest. Three distinct pulses. The diversion was live.
A second later, the southern sky ignited. A silent, furious bloom of white-hot light swelled, followed by a shockwave of sound that hit them in the chest—a deep, crumping thud that had nothing to do with natural explosives. The ground trembled. Car alarms in distant lots began a synchronized wail. The lights in the gray cube flickered, then stabilized as backup systems engaged.
“Go,” Jan breathed.
Inside the facility, the world was sterile silence and blinking LEDs. The explosion registered as a minor seismic event and a power flux on a dozen monitors. A technician adjusted his headset. “Secondary grid active. Probable industrial accident at the railyard. No threat signature.”
He didn’t see the shadow detach itself from the ventilation duct in the ceiling of his corridor. It flowed down like black smoke, resolving into the form of Vivian Chace. Her demonic nature shimmered around her—a suggestion of leathery wings, a glint of fang, eyes like smoldering coals. The Power of Exposure, the innate awe at a Green Moon initiate’s naked form, was something she’d learned to mimic and twist into a more targeted hunger.
The technician turned, a question on his lips. It died when he saw her. His eyes widened, not with fear at first, but with a stunning, incomprehensible desire. She was gorgeous, terrible, and she smelled of every secret lust he’d ever buried. His mouth went dry.
Vivian was on him before he could scream. Her hand, cool and gentle, cupped his cheek. “Shhh,” she whispered, and her lips met his.
It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of consumption. As her mouth moved over his, she drew the vital energy from him—not just the sexual surge, which was potent and sweet, but the simple, burning fuel of his life force. He shuddered, a moan trapped in his throat, his hands coming up to clutch at her arms weakly. He felt a dizzying, euphoric rush, followed by a swift, sucking emptiness. His knees buckled. She held him up, drinking deeply, until his eyes rolled back and he went limp, breathing in shallow pants, asleep.
She lowered him to the floor, a string of saliva connecting her lip to his. A faint, healthy flush colored her pale skin. “One,” she whispered to the empty hall.
Stacy dropped soundlessly from the same duct, her boots making no sound on the tile. She checked the man’s pulse. “Alive. Clean.” She gave Vivian a brief, professional nod. “Next junction, two guards. Ready?”
Vivian nodded, the shadowy aura around her intensifying with the fresh feeding. “I’m… ready.”
They moved like ghost and guardian. At the next corner, two guards in sleek body armor stood alert, stun batons crackling in their hands. They never saw Vivian. She simply stepped into their field of view, and the raw, supernatural magnetism of her presence hit them like a physical blow.
The first guard sucked in a sharp breath, his baton dipping. “What the hell—”
Vivian’s gaze locked with his. She let a fraction of her power slide over him, a psychic caress that pinpointed his deepest, most forbidden craving. For him, it was a memory of his high school girlfriend, the one he’d lost. Vivian’s features shimmered, softening, echoing that lost girl’s smile.
He took an unsteady step forward, mesmerized.
His partner, a woman with a severe haircut, shook her head violently. “Fuck, it’s a psychic attack! Snap out of it!” She raised her baton, aiming at Vivian.
Stacy’s taser prongs hit her in the side of the neck a moment later. Fifty thousand volts arced through her. The woman convulsed, a strangled gasp escaping her, and collapsed in a twitching heap.
The male guard didn’t even notice. He was within Vivian’s reach. She closed the distance, her hand sliding down his armored chest to the groin guard. With unnatural strength, she ripped the polymer cup aside. He was already hard, his erection straining against his trousers. A whimper escaped him.
“I need more,” Vivian murmured, her voice now layered with a seductive, demonic echo. She unzipped him, freeing his cock. She didn’t bother with preamble. Dropping to her knees, she took the entire length into her mouth in one smooth, deep-throating motion.
He cried out, a sound of shock and unbearable pleasure. His hands flew to her head, tangling in her red hair. She bobbed fiercely, her mouth a hot, wet vacuum of sensation. But she wasn’t just sucking his cock; she was draining him. He could feel the orgasm building, a torrent ready to break, but with it came a chilling weakness, a lightheadedness that threatened to pull him into a void. He came in a violent, shuddering rush, jets of cum down her throat. As he did, Vivian swallowed, drawing the last of his energy out with his seed.
He slumped against the wall, unconscious before his body hit the floor, a damp stain spreading on his trousers.
Vivian stood, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dim light. “Two. Three.”
Stacy had already dragged the tasered guard into a side room. “Clear. Jules’s turn.”
They reached a heavy security door. A keypad glowed beside it. Jules stepped forward, as calm as if entering her therapy suite. She placed a palm flat against the cold metal. She closed her sultry hazel eyes.
Her magic wasn’t about brute force. It was about resonance. She sought the emotional frequency of the guards on the other side—boredom, low-grade anxiety, the simmering resentment of night shift work. She found it, tuned her own power to it, and then twisted the dial.
On the other side of the door, in a small monitoring station, two guards watched a bank of screens. Suddenly, the air grew thick and warm. A familiar, tantalizing scent filled the room—their individual, perfect fantasy scents. For one, it was lavender and clean sweat. For the other, vanilla and ozone.
A wave of sheer, unadulterated lust, amplified a hundredfold by a master of the Stable Mind, crashed over them. Rational thought dissolved. The guard on the left turned to his partner, a woman he’d never particularly liked. Right now, she was the most beautiful, necessary thing he’d ever seen. He grabbed her, crushing his mouth to hers. She responded with equal ferocity, hands clawing at his uniform, buttons flying.
They didn’t fuck so much as attack each other. He bent her over the console, yanking her pants down. She was already soaking wet. He drove into her from behind with a guttural shout, pounding into her with a frantic, mindless rhythm. She screamed, her nails digging into the cheap laminate, her climax ripped from her almost instantly by the enchanted compulsion. He followed seconds later, grunting, pumping into her. But the magic didn’t allow for satiation. The need rebounded, hotter, more desperate.
He pulled out, spinning her around. She dropped to her knees, taking his already-hardening cock back into her mouth, gagging on it as he face-fucked her with abandon. The room filled with the sounds of slapping flesh, choked moans, and the electronic hum of the equipment they were ruining with their fluids.
Jules felt the peak of the feedback loop through the door. She gave a slight, satisfied nod to Stacy. “Their higher brain functions are offline. They’ll be occupied for the next twenty minutes. The door will be unmonitored.”
Stacy used a handheld device from Bethany’s bag on the keypad. It sparked, and the door slid open with a hiss. The scene inside was one of raw, compulsive debauchery. The two guards were a tangled, grunting mess on the floor now, him on his back, her riding him wildly, her breasts bouncing, both of them covered in a sheen of sweat and other fluids.
“Jesus,” Stacy muttered, stepping over them without a second glance.
Vivian paused, looking at the raw sexual energy with a pang of sharp hunger, but Stacy pulled her along. “We’re on a clock. Feed later.”
Jan felt the five pulses through her pendant. The extract team was in. She looked at Aaron. “Now. Do it.”
Aaron’s chanting reached a crescendo. The silver symbols now covered the Davenport artifact like a glowing net. Rainbor lifted his ax, not to strike, but to channel. A low, earthy green light emanated from the orc, stabilizing the volatile magic.
“Scatter,” Aaron commanded, his voice ringing with the power of the Fair Bargain.
The brass sculpture didn’t break. It unfolded. Layers of metaphysical reality peeled away from it like an infinite onion. Each layer, a possible door to a screaming void or a burning hellscape, shimmered in the air for a fraction of a second. Then, with a sound like shattering crystal, each layer shot off into a different direction—up into the stars, down into the earth, sideways into dimensions without names. The artifact itself dissolved into motes of harmless light that faded on the night wind.
A profound silence followed, broken only by the distant sirens from the diversion.
Jan let out a shaky breath. “It’s gone.”
Her pendant vibrated again. One long, continuous pulse.
Abort.
Deep in the facility, Fatima’s team found the central chamber. It was a surgical theater of cold steel. Kent and Leanne were strapped to reclining chairs, a grotesque headset of needles hovering just above Kent’s temple. A man in a flawlessly tailored suit—James Murphy—stood observing a screen, a look of mild disappointment on his face.
“Neural mapping at seventy percent,” a technician said. “Resistance is collapsing.”
Murphy nodded. “Proceed to full extraction. We’ll have all their contacts, all their fears, every name they’ve ever heard.”
He never saw Jules step into the doorway behind him, her power already weaving a new, targeted hex. This one wasn’t about pleasure. It was about memory. About the specific, traumatic memory of the most shameful, humiliating moment of James Murphy’s life—a memory she plucked from his own psyche and amplified into a blinding, debilitating feedback loop.
Murphy gasped, staggering. The screen in front of him vanished, replaced by the unbearable, vivid replay of his own past failure, his own deepest cowardice. He clutched his head, a strangled cry escaping him.
Stacy and Vivian moved in. Stacy tasered the technician. Vivian, with terrifying speed, drained a guard who rushed in from a side door, leaving him a gasping heap.
Fatima went to the chairs. She tore the needle headset from above Kent and began unbuckling Leanne. The reporter’s eyes were wide with terror and disorientation.
“We’re getting you out,” Fatima said, her voice firm.
“The other one,” Leanne rasped, her eyes darting to Kent. “They were in his head… they made him see…”
Kent was murmuring, caught between realities. “The mole… the mole was missing…”
Jan’s voice came through the pendant, tight with urgency. “We’re blown! A silent alarm on the artifact dispersal! Golden Wands are picking up Consortium reinforcements inbound. Six vehicles, two minutes out. Get to the extraction point now!”
Fatima slung Kent’s arm over her shoulder. Stacy grabbed Leanne. They fled the chamber, leaving Murphy on his knees, screaming silently into the palms of his hands, trapped in a prison of his own making.
They burst out of a side emergency exit into the alley where Bethany waited, a nondescript van idling. Liam was at the wheel, his face set in a grim line. “All aboard, quick now!”
They shoved the dazed reporters into the back. Jan, Aaron, and Rainbor came sprinting from the other direction, Godfrey loping beside them. They piled in. Tires squealed as Liam pulled away, melting into the maze of streets just as black sedans with opaque windows screeched to a halt in front of the facility.
In the back of the van, surrounded by panting, exhausted magic-users, Kent slowly focused his eyes. He saw Jan, her fiery hair messy, a smudge of soot on her cheek. He saw the massive orc, the beautiful woman with shadow-stained hands, the therapist adjusting her blouse.
He looked at Leanne, then back at Jan. His voice was a dry croak. “The pancakes… at the diner on Western… they’re actually really shitty.”
Jan stared at him for a second, then let out a wild, helpless laugh that was halfway to a sob. “We’ll get you better pancakes, Kent. I promise.”
The van sped into the Chicago night, the rescued and the rescuers wounded but alive, the artifact safely undone, and the cold, silent war with the Consortium now blazing into the open.
The van sped into the Chicago night, the rescued and the rescuers wounded but alive, the artifact safely undone, and the cold, silent war with the Consortium now blazing into the open. Liam navigated the side streets with a landscaper’s precision, his eyes constantly flicking to the mirrors. The adrenaline began to recede, leaving a hollow, shaking quiet in its wake.
Leanne groaned, pushing herself upright on the van’s carpeted floor. Her eyes, adjusting to the dim interior light, landed first on the enormous, green-skinned figure taking up two seats. She blinked, stared, then blinked again. “Okay,” she mumbled, her voice raspy from disuse and screaming. “Did I get hit on the head? Are you an ogre or something?”
Rainbor turned his heavy head towards her. A low, rumbling sound emanated from his chest—it was a laugh. “Orc,” he corrected gently. He reached into a pocket of his rugged trousers and pulled out a slightly crumpled Hershey’s bar. “You look like you need sugar. Here.”
She accepted the chocolate, her fingers trembling. She unwrapped it and took a small bite. “An orc with a sweet tooth. I like it.” She said it with such earnest, shell-shocked acceptance that another rumble of amusement passed through him.
Kent watched the exchange from his own slumped position, his mind still feeling scoured and raw. The phantom sensations of the simulation—Jan’s mouth, Julia’s heat—clung to him like a sickly sweat. He focused on the real people around him, anchoring himself in the now. “I didn’t tell them anything,” he said, his voice firmer than he expected. He looked at Jan, then at Fatima and Stacy. “Nothing useful. Nothing I’m pretty sure they didn’t already have from watching us.”
Jan met his gaze and gave a single, slow nod. Fatima’s stern expression softened a fraction. Stacy just holstered her pistol with a definitive click, a gesture of satisfaction.
Liam chuckled from the driver’s seat, his Scottish accent warm in the tense space. “Aye, well. They can keep their shitty pancakes, then.”
Kent managed a weak smile at that. He let his eyes travel the van’s interior. Jan, Godfrey now curled in her lap. Fatima. Jules, calmly reapplying lipstick. Vivian, who seemed to be glowing faintly from within. Stacy, all coiled vigilance. And two men he didn’t recognize: the one with ink-stained hands who hadn’t spoken, and the driver.
“You two,” Kent said, nodding toward Aaron and Liam. “Also wizards?”
Aaron remained silent, his gaze fixed on the passing city lights, his stained fingers laced together. Liam answered, his tone easy. “Landscaper.”
“Is there an Order of the Landscaper?” Kent asked, the reporter’s instinct pushing through the fog.
Liam laughed again, a rich, genuine sound. “No. I’m just dating a sorceress.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes finding Bethany, who gave him a small, tired smile. “And I’m loving every second of it, chaos and all.”
Jan leaned forward, her playful mask gone, replaced by a gentle solemnity. “We really can’t say much more than what you two already knew. The Davenport Case is settled. Permanently. The decision to not tell people… it isn’t personal.”
Fatima interjected, her voice carrying the weight of studied doctrine. “Our Order superiors want everything kept quiet for as long as possible. The Veil is gone. That universal force that made normal people forget magic, forget seeing beings like Rainbor… it doesn’t work anymore. When people find out too much, bad things happen.”
Leanne, sucking on the chocolate, nodded slowly. “The Consortium is one of the bad things.”
“Those pricks knew even before the Veil dropped,” Jan said, a flash of anger in her eyes. “There’s always been people who knew. Most took up magic themselves. Some just became allies. And some… they saw weird things happening and decided they didn’t like it.”
“Unfortunately,” Fatima added, her gaze sharp, “the ones who don’t like it always tend to come from power and money. They have the means to do something about it. To build gray cubes and design headfuls of needles.”
Leanne looked between them, the chocolate forgotten in her hand. “But if magic—or the Consortium—is that dangerous, shouldn’t people know? Isn’t ignorance more dangerous?”
Aaron finally spoke, his voice quiet but clear, the voice of a negotiator assessing an impossible deal. “All the Orders are trying to figure that out. How to negotiate a new world where the Veil is gone. How to do it without the mundane going to war with the magical. It’s… a work in progress.”
Jan sighed, running a hand through her short red hair. “I think magic is weird and wonderful. I want people to share it all. But it’s not just my call.”
A different kind of tension entered the van then. Leanne’s cheeks flushed a deep pink. She looked at Jan, then away, at the floor. “Back at your apartment. That first time we met you. You… you hexed us. You made me and Kent…” She couldn’t finish.
Jan’s smile returned, small and understanding. “My magic mostly amplifies whatever is already there and removes inhibitions. It doesn’t create desire from nothing.” Her eyes flicked to Kent, who held her gaze, his own face carefully neutral. “Anything that happened between you two was something you both already wanted. Hell, I’d guess it wasn’t the first time you’d fucked, just the first time you let yourselves do it without a dozen reasons not to.”
The profound blush on Leanne’s face was all the confirmation anyone needed. Kent didn’t deny it; he just watched the streetlights streak by, his jaw tight.
“What do we do now?” Kent asked, changing the subject, grasping for practicality. “Our careers are probably finished. Our apartments will be watched. We’re loose ends.”
Jan nodded. “Maybe, maybe not. But right now, you need to disappear. Let things blow over. The best place for that is the Dark Market.”
Liam took a sharp turn, heading toward the river. The familiar, crumbling skyline of the docks approached.
“Try not to stare down there,” Jan advised, her tone shifting to one of protective caution. “There are people weirder than Rainbor.”
Rainbor nodded in solemn agreement, offering Leanne another Hershey’s bar from his seemingly endless supply.
“People,” Jan finished, as Liam slowed the van near a chain-link fence that seemed to hum with a low, discordant energy, “no matter what sort of people, really don’t like being stared at.” The engine idled, and the chaotic, humming threshold of the Dark Market awaited them just beyond the veil of normal perception.