P. Stormcrow

“Okay, I admit it. I did not see this coming.” Finn’s breaths came as stuttered puffs while she trudged along in the forest. The little trail they followed had already disappeared a ways back. 

“Which part?” Jackson’s longer legs afforded him an easier time with avoiding fallen branches and knotted roots.

“He didn’t seem the type to hide in the woods,” she muttered under her breath, her forehead furrowing in concentration. She had expected a remote motel, something small and run down maybe but not in the middle of butt fuck nowhere The only thought that kept her going was the idea of bringing this to a close and returning home to her bottle of—

Well, fuck. She was out.

“His mother is a witch,” her partner reminded her. “And it sounded like he’s part of the coven himself.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t agree with them. I mean, he’s trying to style himself as a technomancer.” It had grown dark here beneath the roof woven by the canopy. The day’s dying light filtered through in weak streaks. They were running out of time and she did not fancy being caught out here at night. Nevermind that Sunny seemed to have no problem camping out here.

“A techno-what?” Jackson halted to jerk his head back to stare at her.

Finn looked up in surprise. “A technomancer? Someone that tries to apply magic to technology?” Was there a term she had heard that he had never at last? When he gave her a blank look, she shrugged. “I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy as a kid.”

“That explains it.” Jackson continued taking the lead. In the dying light, she couldn’t tell if it was a grin or a smirk on his lips.

“Explains what?”

Jackson chuckled. “Your adaptability. You’ve taken to this much better than most rookies.”

The compliment threw her off more than she cared to admit, and gratitude welled in her for the fact that he wouldn’t make out her blush. Or that was what she chose not to believe, as she gave him a nonchalant shrug.

A hoot froze her in her tracks and she looked to her partner in alarm, but he shook his head. “Just an owl.” A smirk. Yes, that was a smirk.

“Fucking woods,” Finn muttered under her breath. “I thought they only come out at night.”

“Some are diurnal but even the nocturnal ones get active at dusk.”

She gave him a deadpan stare before she resumed the hike. “You knew that but not technomancy.”

“Trivia night at O’Doul’s. You should pop by sometime.”

Finn recalled the strange Irish pub Jackson had brought her to celebrate the closing of their first case and found it hard to believe they would run such a thing as trivia night. Its patrons didn’t seem the type that would take part in a group game like that, and that alone stopped her from rejecting the offer outright. But before she could decide if she was better off spending the evening with her familiar companions, her bottles, Jackson signaled for a stop.

“Get ready,” he mouthed without a sound.

She nodded her understanding but remained still otherwise. There was no hope they would both sneak up on Sunny undetected given how clumsy they both were outdoors, and he’d have put up wards for that purpose, anyway. Their only saving grace was that Sunny wouldn’t be able to move any faster than they could, not unless he could fly.

He couldn’t fly, right?

Jackson snapped on his general warding bracelet, but to her surprise, he next pulled out a gun and a torch, though he did not switch on the latter yet. She hastened to do the same, putting on her own before she took out her weapon and held it steady in front, ready.

They still had about a quarter of a Klick to cover, but they moved slower now to minimize the sound they made. But soon he paused, sniffed the air and broke into a run.

Here we go again. 

Finn switched her flashlight on and followed, abandoning stealth altogether. She didn’t have her partner’s nose, but her skin pricked as the certainty that there was someone ahead gave her more confidence than she had earlier.

There was no light from Sunny’s camp, but Finn soon smelled the remains of a fire in the air. “FBI,” she called out.

“Sunny, we don’t want to shoot you,” Jackson added. “You can’t outrun a bullet.”

A shadowed figure moved between two trees, confirming both of their instincts. Finn signaled to Jackson the direction she planned to take, and he nodded in agreement. 

“Sunny, we know what you did, what you are trying to do.”

“Yeah? So what?”

While Jackson kept him distracted, she circled around, hoping their conversation would distract Sunny from the crunch of dry leaves beneath her boots. 

“Working to break a fundamental law of the universe is not a good idea. Come in from the cold and we’ll see what we can do.”

Sunny laughed, but the sound held a manic edge that chilled her to the bones. “That’s what they say to all the greats before they make their breakthroughs!”

Fuckity fuck fuck.

“Your ma’s worried about you,” Jackson switched tact, but only a bitter chuckle met his words. 

And she had thought the boy as meek. That might be due to the spell he had cast on them. She usually was a better judge of character than that. Then again, she hadn’t seen how nasty Kaden was beneath the facade he assumed at the beginning of their relationship.

Now was so not the time.

“That bitch told you where I would be, didn’t she?”

“She just wants to see you safe.”

“Safe? What kind of mother rats out her own son to the Feds?” Sunny stood there, his lanky figure hidden in a heavy waterproof jacket. But she still made out his stiff, wide stance.

Closer. If she took a run and leaped right now, she could tackle him to the ground and disable him. She prepared to launch herself forward.

Sunny spun around, a sadistic grin on his lips, a weird rig of goggles mounted to a helmet covering the rest of his face. In his hands, he held a familiar looking stick.

“No!” Jackson screamed from behind, but his voice sounded too far away.

There was no warning as he threw the flashbang. The weapon arced in the air. Finn’s instincts kicked in. She squeezed her eyes shut, ducked her head and pulled her own jacket over, dropping to the ground.

She heard it land with a dull thud on the forest carpet.

No thundering bang. 

No blinding light.

Was it a dud?

She waited.

Nothing.

Did Sunny bluffed them?

Shit.

She was wasting precious seconds.

No sound.

An animal howled in the distance.

She summoned her courage and looked up at last. The grenade laid inert, inches from her.

Footsteps neared and kicked at the dirt, punting the thing away. Hands grabbed her shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Jackson. She blinked up at him, a halo revealing the panic on his face.

“I’m… I’m fine.” What the hell happened? She pushed herself up, sweeping her sidearm and her torch off the ground. Not bothering to dust herself off, she shone her own light everywhere. “Where’s Sunny?”

For once, confusion clouded his features. “I’m… not sure.”

He couldn’t have gone far. Finn brought her flashlight around, but there was no trace of their suspect anywhere. It made no sense. 

A sudden blood-curdling scream pierced the air to their left. She exchanged a wide-eyed glance with her partner and ran in the direction. Jackson followed at her feet, so close he almost crashed into her as she skid to a stop.

Sunny shimmered into view, but this was no peaceful reveal. He writhed and shrieked as he tried to tug the goggles off his face. “It burns! Take it off. Take it off!” He yanked and scratched to no avail while the thing smoked. Red, hot runes glowed across the casing and cracks appeared on the lens. 

“I’ll pin him down. You get it off him.” Jackson jumped to action, wrestling the younger man who spasmed with pain.

Finn fell to the dirt beside him and reached for the helmet. She helped at the heat, but gritted her teeth. Ah. Sunny couldn’t rip it off because of the buckle caught. She tried to grab it, but Sunny’s limited thrashing made it a lot harder. At last, she had no choice but to shift, placing his head and pinning him between her knees. Sucking in a breath, she released the clasp and wrench the whole getup away.

The skin beneath the goggles was red and angry. Blisters had already formed with the threat of more coming. But when Sunny opened his eyes with a whimper of pain, they were clear and focused. Finn breathed a sigh and Jackson fell on his ass, the three of them panting in the air.

It was over.

***

By the time they got back in touch with Agent Olsen, the office had already come out of lockdown. Finn wondered how they knew, but she had been too exhausted and relieved to ask.

The relief was short-lived, however. As soon as they returned, Finn found herself swept up in the world of interviews and reports. 

Boxes of confiscated gadgets surrounded her desk, all inert, but everyone in the office still gave her a wide berth, afraid any of them would explode any second now. She glanced at Dr. Jensen’s report, stacked on top of Dr. Laurent’s psych eval. She wasn’t sure if protocol dictated that she should have access to those files, but without a judge, jury or court, the realm of should and should-not’s seemed to have blurred since the arrest. 

What she knew was that Sunny had no intentions of hurting them. He had modified the flashbang with magic to trigger another version of a don’t-see-me spell. And it had worked. The goggles, on the other hand, sporting an additional ability to visualize magic, were what doomed him in the end. 

“Hey, how are those reports coming?”

Finn almost jumped out of his seat, but swiveled her chair one-eighty to face her partner, who grinned from ear to ear. Of course he did. He had to write his own account, but as the more junior agent, she was the one that had to compile and fill out more of the details.

“Ha. Ha.” She rolled her eyes and turned back towards the desk to straighten the stack of papers. Her typewriter and she were becoming really good friends.

Jackson swung around to catch her attention. “Want to tag along with me to deliver our disgruntled ex-employee his sentence?”

It had come out that Sunny had worked in one of Inguz Tech’s many R and D departments, but they had let him go last month. That explained his attempt to frame the conglomerate. It did make Finn wonder just what projects Sunny has been working on there, but to their surprise, he remained tight lipped on it.

“I thought we were letting him off with a warning, like Lacey. First strike and all.” She cocked her head to one side and winced at her neck’s stiffness.

“Nopes. Can’t. He ran up to the end. You see how angry he was still in our interview with him.”

Finn sighed. She felt for Edith be most, especially as Sunny continued to blame his mother for turning him in. “So what is the sentence?” How she hated that there was no court to deal with this aftermath.

Jackson lifted his arm higher, and that was when Finn saw the carrier he was holding for the first time. Inside, a gray tabby raised its head with the languid grace of any feline, then resettled.

“A cat?” She blinked at Jackson, puzzled 

“Yups.”

“Sunny is getting… a pet?”

“Exactly. And he’ll have to take care of ol’sour puss here for the rest of his time. And if he outlives the old girl, he will get another replacement… he’s stuck as a lifelong cat owner you know.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why the fuck a cat?”

“So glad you asked!” Jackson set the carrier down at the edge of the desk and patted it with fondness. “They’re actually fantastic nulls that suck magic from people they are bond to. Plus, they are the bane of technology. Just think. Every time Sunny tries to focus, Journey here will be walking across his keyboard.”

“I thought cats were witches’ best friends! Familiars or something.” Floored, Finn stared at the kitten while her brain tried to process what he had just explained.

“Sort of. More like the high powered one uses cats to temper their power level so they wouldn’t explode their homes by accident. Someone like Sunny? This will put a big limit on any magical capabilities he has.”

That made way more sense than it had any right. She eyed the animal in a new light. It was a much kinder sentence than she had expected and eased her discomfort a little at their organization being judge, jury, and executioner all at the same time.

“Well? Coming?”

Finn grabbed her jacket and rose from her office chair. It beat writing more reports.