Jim Butcher - Changes

Or a wizard.

“All right,” I said. The night was growing cold. My breath steamed in the air as I spoke. “Take these. Drink half of ’em. Save the rest.” I passed out test tubes filled with light blue liquid to Martin and Susan.

“What is it?” Susan asked.

“A parachute,” I said. “Technically a flight potion but I watered it down. It should get us to the valley floor safely.”

Martin eyed his tube, and then me.

“Harry,” Susan began. “The last time I drank one of your potions, it became . . . awkward.”

I rolled my eyes. “Drop into a roll at the end.” Then I drank away half of my potion and stepped off the edge of the cliff.

Flight is a difficult thing for a wizard to pull off. Everyone’s magic works a little differently, and that means that, when it comes to flying, the only way to manage it is by trial and error. And, since flying generally means moving very quickly, a long way above the ground, would-be aeromancers tended to cut their careers (and lives) short at the first error.

Flying is hard—but falling is easy.

I dropped down, accelerating for a second, then maintaining a pace of somewhere around fifteen miles an hour. It didn’t take long to hit the desert floor, and I dropped into a roll to spread out the impact energy. I stood up, dusting myself off. Susan and Martin landed nearby and also rose.

“Nice,” Susan said. She bounced up in the air experimentally, and smiled when her descent was slowed. “Very cool. Then we drink more to climb out?”

“Should make that slope a piece of cake,” I said. “But we’ll need to move fast. Potion will last us maybe twenty minutes.”

Susan nodded, adjusting the straps on the small pack she wore. “Got it.”

“Get close to me,” I said. “I can’t veil all three of us unless we’re all within arm’s reach.”

They did, and after a few seconds of focus and concentration, I brought up a veil around us that should hide us from view and disperse our heat signature as well. It wouldn’t be perfect. We’d still show up on a night-vision scope, to one degree or another. I was counting on the fact that men guarding a building that isolated could not possibly deal with problems on a regular basis. They’d have a very comfortable, reliable routine, which was exactly the sort of thing to take the edge off a sentry’s wariness. That’s just human nature.

I beckoned, and the three of us began approaching the facility. There was no fluttering from shadow to shadow, or camouflage face paint. The veiling spell took care of that. We just walked over the uneven ground and focused on staying close together. That part may have been more fun if Martin weren’t there.

We got to within thirty yards of the fence, and I paused. I lifted my staff, pointed it at the first sentry camera, and whispered, “ Hexus. ”

I wasn’t used to holding something as demanding as a veil in one hand while performing another working with the other—even such an easy spell as a technology hex. For a second, I thought I’d lose the veil, but then it stabilized again. The lights on the camera had gone out.

We moved around the perimeter while I hexed the other two cameras into useless junk, but just as I’d taken down camera number three, Susan gripped my arm and pointed. The foot patrol was moving by on their sweep.

“The dog will get our scent,” Susan said.

Martin drew a short pistol from beneath his jacket, and screwed a silencer to its end.

“No,” I half growled. I fished in the pocket of my duster and found the second potion I’d made while preparing for the trip. It was in a delicate, round globe of glass about as thick as a piece of paper. I flipped the globe toward the path of the oncoming dog and heard it break with a little crackle.

The two patrolmen and the dog went by the area where I’d left my surprise, and the dog snuffled the new scent with thorough interest. At a jerk of the lead, the dog hurried to catch up to the guards, and all three of them went by without so much as glancing at us.

“Dog’ll have his senses of smell and hearing back in the morning,” I murmured. “These guys are just doing a job. We aren’t going to kill them for that.”

Martin looked nonplussed. He kept the pistol in his hand.

We circled around to where the fence met the canyon wall, opposite the large parking lot. Susan got out a pair of wire cutters. She opened them and prepared to cut through when Martin snatched her wrist, preventing her from touching the fence. “Electricity,” he whispered. “Dresden.”

I grunted. Now that he’d pointed it out, I thought I could feel it, too—the almost inaudible hum of current on the move, making the hairs on my arms stand up. Hexing something with a microchip in it is simple. Impeding the flow of electricity through a conductive material is considerably more difficult. I pitched my best hex at the wiring where it connected to a power line and was rewarded with the sudden scent of burned rubber. Martin reached out and touched the fence with the back of his hand. No electricity burned him.

“All right,” Susan whispered, as she began clipping us a way in, cutting a wire only when the gusting wind reached a crescendo and covered the sound of the clippers at work, then waiting for the next gust. “Where’s that distraction?”

I winked at her, lifted my blasting rod, thrust it between links of fence in front of us, and aimed carefully. Then I checked the tower guard, to be sure he was looking away, and whispered, “ Fuego , fuego , fuego , fuego. ”

Tiny spheres of sullen red light flickered out across the compound and into the parking lot opposite. My aim had been good. The little spheres hissed and melted their way through the rear quarter panel of several vehicles and burned on into the fuel tanks beneath.

The results were predictable. A gas tank explosion isn’t as loud as an actual bomb going off, but when you’re standing a few yards away from it, it could be hard to tell. There were several hollow booming sounds, and light blazed up from the cars that had been hit as flames roared up and consumed them.

The guard in the tower started screaming into a radio, but apparently could get no reply. No surprise. The second camera had been positioned atop his tower, and the hex that took it out probably got his radio, too. While he was busy, Susan, Martin, and I slipped through the opening in the fence and made our way into the shadows at the base of one of the portable storage units.

A car, parked between two flaming vehicles, went up with another whump of ignition, and it got even brighter. A few seconds later, red lights started to flash at several points around the facility, and a warning klaxon began to sound. The giant metal door to the interior of the facility began to roll upward, just like a garage door.

The two patrollers and their temporarily handi-capable German shepherd came running out first, and were followed, in a moment, by nearly a dozen other guys in the same uniforms, or at least in portions of them. It looked like some of them had hopped out of bed and tossed on whatever they could reach. Several were dragging fire extinguishers, as if they were going to be useful against fires that large. Good luck with that, boys.

The moment the last of them was past our position and staring agog at the burning automobiles, I hurried forward, putting everything I had into the veil, trusting that Martin and Susan would stay close. They did. We went through the big garage door and down a long ramp into the facility.

“Go ahead,” Martin said. He hurried to a control panel on the wall and whipped out some kind of multitool. “I’ll shut the door.”

“As long as we can get it open on the way out,” I muttered.