Brown led him quickly through the camp until they reached a row of tents on the far side of the complex from the forest. Major Grendel stood outside the tent as several MERS members hurried in and out, tossing the contents of the tent on the ground and searching through it all. Ezra looked from the periphery but didn’t see a blue tarp tote bag.
“Redmayne, you need something?” Grendel asked, sounding as angry as she looked. He didn’t take it personally—he would be pissed too if the person he risked life and limb to save turned out to be the bad guy.
“Yeah, is there a blue bag in there made of tarp? Insulated or padded, may be full of tools Simmons would use at the dig site?”
“You hear that in there?” A few shouted affirmatives came from inside the tent. “Find that bag!”
Grendel kicked at the ground at her feet, and Ezra noticed a pile of small bags, magical odds and ends, and various spell components—he switched on his inner vision, and low and behold, he saw the making and remains of charms. Spent charms. He peered closer and saw that the few he recognized were for protection against magic, commonly known as nullifiers. They nullified any magic in the immediate vicinity of the wearer, and were used by mundanes and practitioners alike. They were also expensive to make, and cost a serious amount of money to buy.
Simmons must have depleted a small retirement fund to afford all of those charms.
“That explains how Simmons survived the skull,” Ezra said, letting go of his inner vision and pointing to the pile at Grendel’s feet. “He was probably wearing a fortune in nullifiers. The skull ate the charms’ magic instead of eating Simmons’ aura.”
“Is that what they are?” Grendel grunted. “He was expecting danger of a magical sort then. Too bad he didn’t share with his entire crew.”
“If Simmons and Monica were standing close together when she opened the chest, that might explain how she survived opening it. If she was within a null charm’s radius of effect, even a little bit, then it would have protected her from the initial blast from the skull. Others weren’t so lucky.”
A moment later the cute sergeant who was with Brown that morning in the shower tent came out, shaking his head. “Sir, not in there. No blue bag of any size or kind. Tore the whole tent apart.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Redmayne, what’s with this bag nonsense?”
“Monica said it was his favorite bag; might make sense for him to stash the skull in it.”
“Shit, I remember him carrying that blasted bag when we rescued him and the others. I never thought about it again though—I was too worried about getting out of the storm intact.”
“He probably ditched the bag with the skull when it ate through the last of his charms.”
“Too bad it didn’t eat him.”
“Feel like going on a hike?” Ezra said with a wry smile.
Grendel arched a brow at him and looked toward the forest and the storm circling overhead. At this distance the thunder wasn’t so loud, but it was a near-constant background noise, like the rumble of trucks on a highway.
“Sergeants Brown and Owens, get a susvee fueled and loaded. We move out in ten.”
“Sir!” Brown saluted and tore off into camp, and the cute guy who had to be Owens followed him.
“I don’t think the skull is more than a couple miles into the forest; we can probably walk it?” Ezra said.
Grendel shook her head vehemently. “The second we get under the edge of that storm, it’s impassable on foot. We’re as likely to get lost and die from exposure as Simmons is in there.As it is, we’ll probably run over his frozen corpse trying to find the artifact.”
Ezra looked over the top of the tents toward the storm. A flash of blue lightning arced across the sky. “Huh.” He shrugged. “I’ll get ready. Ten minutes?”
“I’ll send Sergeant Brown to pull you outta your tent in five.”
“He’d like that, I bet,” Ezra replied innocently. He left for his tent before Grendel’s glare could incinerate him on the spot.
Ezra
Snow lashedat the windshield of the Small Unit Support Vehicle, the susvee’s wide tracks keeping it atop the snow as they went deeper into the forest. The local flora leaned toward dense pine and evergreens, interspersed with thick birch tree groves and wide swathes of bog and hidden marshes beneath tall grasses that would trap the unwary and unprepared. The logging road was so old as to be considered a deer trail at some points, the susvee snapping saplings and forcing its way through the narrower junctions. The storm was so powerful that any sign of the rescue team’s passage only a few days before was impossible to see.
Brown drove, Ezra in the back with Sergeant Chase Owens, Grendel in the front passenger seat, and all three of them looked out the windows hoping for some sign of Simmons. The windows were continually fogging up and Ezra wiped at the glass, trying to see past the condensation but not having much luck—the conditions outside were atrocious and visibility was down to three feet, tops. He would see trees only as they brushedby them, then the scenery would swallow them back up into a wall of white.
They were using the onboard sonar and infrared, along with satellite mapping and the strongest GPS devices MERS had at hand, all of it bolstered with spells and charms embedded in the hull of the susvee. Ezra was very glad to have experience with sorting through complicated spell work or his inner vision would be blinded by the spells in the vehicle.
“What kind of snowmobile did he steal?” Ezra had to raise his voice a bit to be heard over the howling of the wind and the occasional crash of thunder.
“A single seater. The gas tank isn’t big enough to get him anywhere if he tries finding the skull. Not to mention I don’t think he has much chance out here without navigation.” It was Brown who answered, all but shouting over his shoulder through the din of the storm.
