Mark Teppo - Heartland

The strike squad had split into two teams of three, and they moved in tight triangular formations. They were dressed in nondescript clothes: muted colors, some jackets, some sweaters-nothing that would seem like a shared uniform among them, but the sort of outfits that afforded places to hide guns. On that front, they were unified: compact machine guns. Heckler amp; Koch MP5s. I recognized the weapon's distinctive rattling burp as one of the assassins opened fire. Chips of stone cracked off the pillar I was hiding behind.

The Chorus filled my eyes, and I saw silver motes dancing over a glowing outline of the church's layout. The first team was in the central aisle, scattering for cover among the wooden pews; the second trio was in the rear of the church, sheltered by the pillars at the back. They were going to flank us along the outer wall. Father Cristobel was on my left, closer to the main altar.

I heard the whirling sound of his rosary, and he grunted as he cast the heavy end. Lit by his magick, it curved in a long arc from behind his hidden position. The glass beads separated, an elastic line of fire stretching across the church, and the spiked ball clipped the edge of a pew. Someone cried out and the snake of glassine fire whipped back.

First blood for us. The Chorus marked the cut on the man's shoulder with a glittering line, and they vibrated in my fingers. While they weren't the same group of souls I had before Portland, there was emotional memory there. A resonance of their predecessors. Angels of vengeance, singing a song of violence.

I moved toward the back of the church, leaping between pillars in random hops. When I was close to the narrow shrines with the glass and the candles, I lifted one of the stubs of wax with the Chorus, infused it with my Will, and flipped it toward the center of the church. The candle, a squat block of wax with a tiny flame, morphed into a ball of fire as the energized Chorus realized my spell. The makeshift fireball bounced across the pews, scattering a trail of fire, and exploded with a dull pop a few rows over from the assassins. I threw two more in quick succession, giving little thought to where they landed. Just as long as they were noisy and bright.

Tiny noisemakers, distractions meant to afford me some cover as I sprinted for the back.

The trio at the rear heard me coming, as I wasn't making any effort to be silent, and the point man thought he was going to surprise me. He was stationed on the far side of the last pillar, waiting for me to run right into him. He thought I would hesitate when I saw him, that little moment of surprise that would make me freeze. He was the one who froze though, transfixed by the sight of the Chorus rising off my head and shoulders like a rampant phoenix, by the fire burning on my knuckles. I grabbed the barrel of his gun with one hand, and his throat with the other. I squeezed, and when he opened his mouth to scream, I could see the light of my fire at the back of his throat.

The other two started firing as the first gunman and I wrestled with his gun. Getting close and twisting him around, I felt him twitch and jerk as he took the brunt of their fusillade. Something raked my left shoulder and side, leaving tracks that burned. My hand shifted on his weapon as his grip loosened, forcing his arm away from his body, and I got a finger inside the trigger guard. I squeezed, firing the gun. The shots were wild, but the others scattered anyway, seeking cover behind the pillars.

The gunman leaned against me, gasping like an asphyxiating fish. Smoke leaked from his mouth and nostrils, and when he coughed, blood spattered my coat. He should be dead, Nicols whispered, his homicide experience providing commentary. Multiple hits at close range from 9mm ammunition. The Chorus was already in the gunman's throat, but they refused to go any deeper. There was something wrong, something buried in him that the Chorus didn't want to touch.

I had read the assassins wrong, assuming the light coming from them was being thrown off by their overly active Wills. But the glow wasn't the concentrated gleam of actualized Will, it was stemming from a hard knot in their chests.

I fired a couple more bursts from the pistol to keep the others at bay while I struggled to hold the wounded gunman upright. His eyes were glazing over, and each time his mouth flopped open, blood ran out, streaming down his chin. Definitely mortal wounds, so why wasn't he dead? Why wasn't his soul disassociating from his flesh?

Slightly more worryingly, why didn't the Chorus want it?

My finger brushed something hard on his chest. Some sort of raised shape, and as I was trying to discern what it was, a metal canister rattled across the floor at our feet.

Flashbang, Nicols noted, the only one in my head with the requisite experience.

I ducked, pulling the gasping gunman with me. The inner wall of the church bumped against my back and I buried my face against his bloody chest. Even with my eyes shut, the world went white as the flash grenade went off. Sound vanished in an imploding thump, and the ground moved sideways as my internal gyroscope was beaten back and forth by each successive burst of the grenade. Sound and fury, leaving me with nothing. The chapel wall kept me from completely falling, and I slid to the ground, the dying gunman sprawling across me. My head and neck were splashed with hot blood, and I couldn't see or hear anything.

The Chorus wasn't affected by the flash grenade, and they tracked the other two assassins. They also spotted the thin strands of etheric energy rising off each man. Anchors. The filaments, like spider silk fluttering in the wind, trailed behind them, back through the wall of the church to their magi controller outside.

The Chorus roared down my arm, through the metal of the pistol, and kissed the remaining bullets in the gun. Linguae ignis, was the thought I had, but I couldn't recall the conscious decision to use that spell. The Chorus moved anyway, following a definite course of action. Popping across the tips of the bullets, they laid their trap. Seven, they reported.

More than enough, I thought. My wrist moved, and the gun left my hand. It was like throwing a coin into a bottomless well: I let go, and it vanished; I never heard it hit bottom.

The Chorus swirled down into my chest, building a thunderhead of energy. Lightning streaked off their cloud, and the charge rejuvenated my stunned flesh. Like getting zapped with a car battery. Everything felt a little more alive. Everything became a little sharper.

I could hear a little now, and some of the flashes of light in my vision weren't retinal burns.

The other two gunmen approached. Keeping their distance, their weapons raised and ready. While they weren't magi-they didn't have any magick of their own-they were familiar with the occult practices, a familiarity that kept their fear mostly in check. Still, the sight of their buddy, who was vomiting more and more blood as he tried to get up, was starting to fracture their resolve. An animalistic thread of terror twisted in the gut of one, a familiar taste the Chorus read easily, and the other was a dense mass of chaotic thought. Some of it concerned the thread connecting him and his master.

The pair got close enough, and the Chorus darted out-a tongue of flame-and touched the pistol I had thrown. Their fire ignited the magick on the bullets, and the gun exploded.

When the gunmen reacted, I shoved the not-dead man off me and rolled forward, grabbing the foot of the thinking assassin. The Chorus found a nerve cluster in his ankle, and unleashed a furious lightning bolt from their energy cloud. The psychic energy pulse went up his leg, found his spine, raced up his back like a rocket launching, and exploded out the top of his head. His nervous system short-circuited, he dropped like a sack of rocks.