Gremlin Night

Gremlin Night
Agents of Sorcery #1
Dale Ivan Smith


Copyright © 2019 by Dale Ivan Smith
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Yocla Designs
Published by Dale Ivan Smith
Portland, Oregon
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.daleivansmith.com
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Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author


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1
Burt the ogre was late. I squatted in heeled boots in a snowy alley in Peoria, calves burning, hair damp, stomach rumbling, all because an ogre crime boss took his sweet time to show up at his own blasted nightclub. Talk about a thoughtless jerk. My life would be so much easier if criminal manifestations kept better time. But that was the supernatural for you, always doing things on its schedule, never mine.
I fought a yawn. It had been a very long day.
The snow fell faster, and I pulled my motorcycle jacket closer around me. From where I crouched, I glimpsed the human bouncer as he paced on the steps outside, parka hood covering his face, wind-milling his arms to keep warm. His breath frosted the night air.
Freezing my behind off while assigned to a stake out wasn’t the worse part of being a sorcerer-agent for the Regulating Union for Normalizing Enchantment. No, the worse part was doing this stakeout solo, because my temporary partner, Nancy Kirk, a Seer, had decided she’d rather stay in the van parked six blocks away, casting her magical sight through binoculars. All because she listened to the Midwest front office when they said we needed to keep a low profile.
We always needed to keep a low profile. But the neo-gnome we’d gotten the tip from said Burt the Ogre was leaving town tonight and headed to Chicago. It would be a lot harder for R.U.N.E. to track him there.
My phone slithered in my jacket pocket. I slipped my hand inside and the phone coiled around my wrist. It was a R.U.N.E.-issue arcane phone. I should have had an ear talker, one of those little jeweled silver dragonling artifacts, but the Midwest division of R.U.N.E. didn’t have any to spare, especially not for someone passing through on a temporary assignment.
So, I was stuck with the arcane phone. I raised my hand. The phone looked like a big ebony bracelet to normal eyes; to mine, it was covered in scales, scales that projected messages before my eyes.
Words glowed in my vision. Get back to the van, Liz. Now.
Nancy and I had already had this conversation. Twice.
Any sign of Burt? I whispered. My words floated in front of me. Nancy would be seeing them in the same way. Arcane phones couldn’t be snooped on, or hacked. They were useful in other ways, too, since they were alive, like all manifestations, but fixed in form, since they were artifacts.
No. You must be freezing, she replied. Get back here.
A Hummer limousine, black and ridiculous, windows tinted excessively dark, drove past the alley and pulled up to the night club’s entrance.
Can’t, I replied. We have action.
You don’t know that! Nancy texted back.
The bouncer nodded at the limo, and spoke into what looked like a CB radio.
The door to the club opened and two big men bounded down the stairs to the limo. One of the men opened the limo’s side door.
A faint purple haze drifted out, almost too faint for me to see. Mana, the raw fuel for magic. With her seer’s eyes, Nancy must have seen it, too, and in more detail.
A female figure covered in tattoos and leather hopped down from the Hummer. Her long blood-red hair was pulled up into a top knot. Even from where I crouched, I could tell something was off about her. Her skull came to a point in the back, and her skin was bone white.
A whorl-kin. A bloodthirsty neo-type manifestation. They were getting more common. Criminal manifestations like Burt used whorl-kin because they had no remorse, they just lived to create fear and cause pain.
I was a sorcerer, so I could see manifestations and magic, while ordinary people only felt their presence, if they noticed them at all.
The whorl-kin scanned the area. I ducked back, my heart racing, just as she turned to face me.
I texted Nancy frantically. Bring the van. It had a lightning staff. That would take care of an ogre and a whorl-kin.
Stay put, she texted back. I’m calling the front office.
I shook my head. That would take far too long, and Burt would be long gone again. No time! I replied. I slipped my hand back in my jacket pocket, and the arcane phone uncoiled and slipped off my wrist.
I risked a look around the corner.
A huge figure in a London Fog overcoat emerged from the limo. Burt loomed over the whorl-kin. He was eight feet tall. He would have been an impressive figure on the basketball court, but the Compact forbid manifestations from playing in human sports leagues, or starring in movies. Exceptions had been made, but they were extremely rare, and usually thanks to some bribes and favor swapping in some of the other organizations in the Hidden.
Burt’s outfit dealt drugs, pimped out the down on their luck, ran gambling rings--all the usual vices. My jaw tightened. Far worse, Burt’s outfit also