Chapter 14

11:42 AM September 13th 2026

Industrial Park District Near the Port of New York

Oh, this day was going down in history alright! Samantha Wattkins fumed as she carefully navigated her way through the wreckage of roads that remained in the industrial district. All she had wanted to do was work her way through the fucking mountain of paperwork on her desk. She’d been taking the jokes from all the boys in good humor and pretending that she wasn’t bothered at all so that she could trick the coworkers who’d been teasing her about the Tissue Medic commercials into a couple of practice bouts in the training rooms.

“Come on, Samantha.” Agent Alex Parker wheedled from the passenger seat. She was pressed against the door trying to avoid the sharp edges of Sam and her pact item, Gleipnir’s combined auras. “Cheer up.” Sam turned her head to glare flatly at Alex and Alex shrank back against the passenger door of the bureau sedan.

She looked to Gleipnir for help but his normal friendly glow had transmuted to a disapproving dark shadow. Gleipnir, the ribbon – or chain, depending on which translations of the myth one read - which had been used to restrain the Fenrir of ancient days, had been gifted to Sam by her patron Frigg. He, Gleipnir might have been a genderless transforming sentient magical item, but he identified as male, had changed himself into a large needle-like sword shape trailing several feet of a fine razer-sharp braided chain whip from the handle, and hovered protectively in the back seat between Alex and Sam.

“Samantha,” Gleipnir emphasized the first syllable of her name when he addressed Alex, as Sam preferred to be called, Sam. “…is not speaking to you.” Alex gave an annoyed look at Gleipnir. She hated speaking to sentient artifacts. And this particular magical artifact did not like her. It really wasn’t her fault that she’d been called ‘The Next Sam’ and ‘The New Sam’ when she first came through the training programs at the bureau. It wasn’t her fault that ‘Sam’ Wattkins thought she was better than everyone just because she was the daughter of a famous Warlock.

Alex crossed her arms in frustration. Both humans fumed in silence for a few minutes. Gleipnir hovered menacingly making a low-pitched growl or buzz. I hate being partnered with this stuck-up bitch. But Sam Wattkins was undisputedly acknowledged as The Best magical engineer in their office.

So, new agents vied for the chance to be paired with her. Except, she’d somehow managed to strong-arm her way into not being partnered with men anymore. Stupid Gleipnir kept stabbing them for coming on to Sam. The thing was a menace to society.

“You were trying to trick the guys into thinking you weren’t mad at them so you could hurt them while sparing!” The sentence just blurted itself out of Alex’s mouth as if she had no control over it. “So, I volunteered us for this assignment.” She covered her mouth with a gasp as if surprised that she had said it. Alex suspected that it was a skill or effect that Samantha or Gleipnir could cast on others. “Not as if we wouldn’t have been sent anyways with something this big.” She mumbled gloomily.

She and Sam might not get along because Sam was stuck up and Gleipnir felt like Alex’s talent was a threat to his Sam’s position, but Alex needed things to go if not smoothly, then at least without animosity and conflict while she was partnered with Sam. As soon as she could, she’d get transferred somewhere else and she’d have the prestige of having been mentored by The Samantha Wattkins on her record. The two of them just didn’t make it easy.

“I wasn’t going to hurt them…” She looked over to glare at Alex again, but the younger woman just gazed back incredulously. “Not irreparably.” Sam amended indignantly. They went back to silence for a few moments before Gleipnir spoke up again.

“Oh, your God!” He exclaimed ridiculously. Yes. We get it. You were made by multiple Gods. There is empirical evidence that there is more than one God. The junior agent also hated the way that Gleipnir seemed to flaunt his divine origins. “Look at that mess. I think we should park here and hike in.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right Gleip.” Sam replied distractedly. “It will be hella hard to turn around if we need to flee in a hurry.” She navigated over to the other vans, sedans, and armored vehicles, some unmarked and some with the FBI Magic Crimes Division emblem on them. She turned around and parked facing out.

“Should we do something to make sure we aren’t boxed in by latecomers?” Alex piped up petulantly. Sam paused getting out of the vehicle.

“Alex,” She looked at her supposed protégé with confused disgust. “We are non-combatant technicians and engineers. We are the latecomers, and we never block anyone’s route of egress. Do you understand?” Alex gulped and nodded nervously. She’d known that. Hadn’t she known that? “Answer me. Do you understand?”

“Ye...yes.” Then she grabbed the door handle and bailed out of the vehicle as quickly as she could.

“Always giving me the greenhorns fresh out of training.” Sam was muttering as she stood and waited for Gleipnir to exit the car behind her. The older agent looked up as she closed her door and met Alex’s eyes. She was entirely unrepentant about the fact that Alex had heard her. “Did I say something untrue?”

“No.” It was shot back defiantly with Alex’s regular disdain for the Warlock she thought of as a snob.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Ohhh, whatever.” Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Sam held her hands out to the side and spoke to Gleipnir. “Hey Gleip, wanna ride?”

“Don’t mind if I do, Sam.” His tone of voice brightened considerably when chatting with his warlock and he wound his whip chain around Sam’s waist to hang himself from her hip like a sword on a belt. Somehow, the razor-sharp links that would have sliced Alex’s hand off if she touched them, didn’t harm Sam – or her clothing – in the slightest.

Tendrils of envy tried to worm their way into Alex’s irritation with her partner, so she looked around at the scene as a distraction. Focusing on work was probably the way to avoid being irritated with Miss Fancypants. The road was damaged, and the buildings that were a ways into the distance across vast industrial parking lots were cracking with a hole in the wall of at least one.

Even some of the supports for freeway overpasses looked precariously close to collapsing. She scooched about fifteen feet to the right as Samantha rummaged around in the trunk of her assigned vehicle for the tools of their trade. It was still a bright beautiful early fall day. The event had not changed the weather at all from the brilliant clear skies of this morning.

Sam stepped up next to her and began assessing the situation and gestured to Alex to follow her up to the senior agent on the scene. She ran a commentary as she walked, sharing her assessment. However, Alex suspected it was more for Gleipnir’s benefit than for hers.

“Crime scene barrier tape surrounding that vehicle.” The magical engineer glared hard at the mangled van in the center of the tape circle. “Hmm. The magic is active on it. The runes are very bright. Too bright. Like the ambient magic density hasn’t disbursed yet.” She stopped musing as she shifted her gear from one arm to another.

“Hi, Frank.” She pulled the name she needed from her memory. “Sam Wattkins, Magical Engineering Technician, reporting in.” Sam didn’t smile but her face wasn’t unfriendly beneath her businesslike expression. The Senior Agent on the scene was someone she’d worked with before. They were likable and smart enough to admit when they didn’t know what was what and defer to the technicians. “What are we looking at?”

“Sam,” The agent grabbed her hand and shook it. He was middle-aged, with laugh lines and crow's feet that gave him character which was a better look than if he’d been conventionally handsome. “Thank fucking God you are here. I have no idea what I’m looking at.”

“Tell me what data you’ve got. I see from the runes on the barrier tape that the AMD is still up in this area.” Frank shook his head in frank bewilderment.

“Yes. The tape is as close as we could safely get to that vehicle at the epicenter when we arrived.” He pointed to the mangled vehicle which she could see now was some kind of large van or delivery truck. The branding colors looked familiar, but she couldn’t make out any images or writing from this far out. “AMD levels were in the Pink.”

“Pink?!” Alex gave a gasp of disbelieving horror. “We’re too close. We could die.” Gleipnir chuckled as Sam and Frank rolled their eyes.

“Newbie,” He patiently explained to Alex, “we’ve got mobile magic collectors bringing down the ambient magic levels.” But he didn’t waste time seeing if she was mollified by that or not and got right back to business with Sam. “The vehicle, or something in it, is emanating high levels of magic. Whatever it is must be incredibly powerful because arcanes are sustaining at purple on the Prometheus scale even with the magic collectors working at full intake capacity.”

“Oh, shit!” Sam’s exclamation was mild as she examined the vehicle with intellectual fascination.

“Yeah. I’ve requested a consultant from the Museum.” Sam nodded thoughtfully.

“That was a good call.” There wasn’t a need to say which museum. Everyone knew which museum you called for something like this. “We’ll go in when the consultant gets here.”

They needed an expert for something like this. So much power. She could feel the magic radiating from the vehicle even from here. It was a rich, pure magic. The kind a magic user could be tempted to drink into their pores and hold for workings. It was tempting, but it was too much magic. It would twist a person, taint them, and kill them eventually.

“At purple?” Once again Alex squeaked out her surprise and both older agents gave her a flat look.”

“If arcanes are high enough for AMD to hold at purple even with magic collectors, we have to go in.” Sam tried to keep her annoyance in check, but this kid was really trying her patience. “We need to find out what it is and how to contain it before we run out of mobile collection units.” She went back to watching the still vehicle and sensed the ripples and currents of magic coming from it seeking things to join with. “Did you order up a contingent of defense specialist mages? We’re going to have monster formation soon.”

“All my agents are certified to fight monsters,” Frank assured her with his Southern drawl.

“Not like this, Frank.” Sam winced as she heard a siren going off in the distance. At first, she thought it was first responders dealing with the aftermath of a city-wide blackout or under-trained and ill-equipped law enforcement trying to deal with the first of many monsters that they should expect from this event. Instead, the siren grew closer and closer to them and a horrible realization dawned on her.

“Why does that vehicle have sirens on?” Frank grumbled as an armored vehicle with flashing lights pulled up, the emblem of the Magicorps was on its doors. “Is that the consultant? You’d think they’d know better. They’ll have any monsters in hearing range converging on us.”

“I think that was the point.” Alex watched the strange rueful-perturbed look on Sam’s face as it mottled with conflicting emotions. Then she looked at the incoming vehicle speeding over the bumps, cracks, and folded bits of asphalt that they had navigated so painfully slow around on their way here bumping and jumping over those obstacles with ease.

The armored vehicle skidded to a halt and the sirens and lights quit abruptly. Sam was glaring with extreme distaste at the young man who hopped gleefully out of the driver’s seat. He was grinning, a wild gleam in his eyes.

Short brown hair with sun-bleached golden tips, tannish, average looking, in a warlock’s robe that looked like a stylish dark-colored men’s trench coat. Maybe kind of cute? He looked good in nice clothes, a pair of slacks, a dress shirt, and a vest with a long tie and dress shoes. It was like a fictional academic warlock character had leaped out of a TV show and swaggered into real life.

“Hey, Kyle.” Sam waved and smirked at him. She clearly knew him. He stopped in absolute horror. The look of shocked betrayal and disappointment he gave Samantha Wattkins was not lost on any of the agents whose attention had been grabbed by his flashy arrival.

“No. No way.” One slim finger pointed accusingly at Sam. Alex smirked. It looked like she wasn’t the only one to see through her partner’s bullshit. “ You cannot be here.” He looked to the gorgeous autumn sky and shook a fist admonishingly the shouted. “I will not work with her!”

Then he got back in his vehicle and rested his head on the steering wheel in defeat.