"a.s.sets, Mr. Resnick, must always be covered." Albright gave me a tired smile and took a sip from his mug. I couldn't help but notice the fat bags camped out under his eyes and the smattering of blood on his shirt.

"You don't look so good, dean."

He waved his hand, dismissing the thought. "I'll be alright, son, but thank you for the concern. We really dodged a bullet last night. We owe you and Adept Nelson a huge debt of grat.i.tude. If you hadn't been on your game..."

I leaned forward in my seat. It seemed like Albright had the wrong idea. "Sir, Jules and I just stumbled into those soldiers. If Rei and Dante hadn't been around, we'd have both been toast. And it was Monique and that Susan Collins girl who thought to evacuate all the dorms. And how about you, sir? You managed that frameshift under fire."

Albright looked grave. He turned to look out his window.

"Initiate, none of the faculty cast that spell."

"But-"

"Didn't you think it odd that the explosives went off the instant the frameshift ended? Following a shift, a mage's Ki is left unbalanced. His spellcasting ability is stymied. Initiate, the goal of that shift was to snare us like hogs and send us off to slaughter."

My eyes widened. That could mean only one thing.

"There was another mage."

"Exactly. A mage talented enough penetrate all of Elliot's defenses and distort s.p.a.ce and time."

"Sir..." I fidgeted in my seat. "Automatic weapons? Hit squads? Explosives? I'm feeling a bit out of the loop, here. What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

Dean Albright nodded. "All in good time, initiate. But first things first. I want to hear everything that happened from the top. Jules and Dante have already been debriefed. Give me your version of events."

I sank down into my chair. It was standard procedure, but I didn't care to relive it. I told Albright how Jules and I had been leaving the forest after I messed up the spell. I described the six men we saw, how I had made the diversion, how Jules managed to set off the fire alarm, and how Rei showed up to handle the two men who escaped. I told him how Dante and I went for help and found Simon's body, and how Rei had arrived in the nick of time. He nodded as I spoke, took some notes, and asked a bunch of questions about the ACT device Jules and I had seen. Then he followed up with questions about the gunmen. Did their Spanish have an accent? Did it look like someone was in charge? I didn't think I was of much help. The last night was a blur.

Finishing up, Albright kicked back from his desk and checked his watch.

"Good enough. They should be here soon anyway."

"Who, sir?"

"The DEA reps."

Before I could ask why, the phone rang and Albright told Ms. Strouse to have everyone sent to the conference room. As he put on his jacket, he turned to me. "Initiate, I'm sorry that we've been keeping you all in the dark, but there was good reason for it. We'll bring you up to speed now, I promise."

We walked down the hall into Elliot's boardroom. At the table sat all of Lambda (minus f.u.kimura and Rei) and two men from the DEA. I gulped. It was the same two from the hospital, and they had brought a friend. It was the man in the black fatigues.

Jules waved. "Conas ata tu, Dieter?"

"Ta me go maith," I replied.

Jules looked mortified. She was trying to teach me Gaelic as part of the Grand Dieter Improvement Project, but right now I was feeling a bit scatterbrained. I must have murdered the reply. I took my seat and sagged. I really needed to grab some sleep. One of the two investigators was fumbling with the projector screen as Ms. Strouse went around the table offering coffee and tea. The investigator looked at Albright and shrugged.

"Wrong adapter. Do you have a memory stick?" he asked.

"You know, John," the second DEA man said with a smirk, "scrying pools may not be able to run PowerPoint, but they don't crash either."

As Albright went over to help, I took the moment to check out the alguacil. His face was a weatherworn map of a life spent outdoors, but like with Albright, I couldn't figure his age. His compact build had none of the girth men often piled on with the years, but his eyes looked older. He still had all of his hair, and he wore it in a precise cut that screamed military. The scar stretching from the alguacil's collar to his ear was his most p.r.o.nounced feature. You only got scars like that when a wound didn't heal right. (You know, like when you have floss for st.i.tches and whisky for antibiotics.) I pondered out a few scenarios. None of them were nice. And the guy felt wrong too. I willed open my Sight but couldn't sense an aura. That baffled me. Even animals had auras. (Sure, it was mostly hungry-hungry-hungry, s.e.x-s.e.x-s.e.x, but there was always something for me to read.) Jules had stated unequivocally that every living creature produced an aura. It's a natural byproduct of their emotions. Figuring I was messing up, I decided to probe deeper. I flexed my Sight, sacrificing my hearing and smell. I pushed so hard that my normal vision began to break down, leaving only dark outlines behind. I figured if I couldn't see this man's aura, I could at least take a peek at his Ki.

Your Ki is an amorphous ball of mana swirling around your core. Normally, the haze of your aura shrouds it, but Jules had managed to show me hers. She had meditated for a straight hour to clear her mind of emotions, and with her aura suppressed, she had told me to activate my Sight. Time swept by without me knowing. Thirty minutes later, Jules slapped me out of my stupor. She accused me of spending the past half-hour ogling her b.o.o.bs. I didn't want to offend Jules (or her respectable bosom), but it was her Ki that I'd found so fantastic. It was like the Milky Way on a cold, clear night. I got lost in it. I wanted to get lost in it. But that certainly wasn't the case now...

As the alguacil's form slipped away the little b.u.g.g.e.r took shape. My smile melted faster than it formed. There was something wrong with this man's Ki. A sleek black spindle was jabbing deep into its core. It raked through the swirling mana. Sheared it. Broke its flow. My head throbbed from the exertion, but I wanted to know more. Careful to maintain my focus, I traced the single black spindle up towards his neck. I didn't understand what I was seeing; but I knew something other was there, something that most definitely didn't belong. And then I found the its source. A bundle of thin black spindles clung tightly to his neck. Tiny little spider legs. Crackling. Twisting. Twitching. Their motions were like fracturing ice. They chilled me to my core.

The image distorted as the outline of the alguacil's hand rose to scratch his nose. The man made a subtle gesture in my direction, and before I even knew it was happening, I tumbled backwards onto the floor. My normal vision returned, dancing full of stars. Red-faced, I disentangled myself from the chair.

"Sorry. I, um, slipped," I said to the circle of stares.

The alguacil was biting back a smile.

I frowned back at him.

"Totally uninsurable," Jules remarked to Monique.

Dean Albright cleared his throat. "Let's get started, shall we?"

Catching his drift, I found my chair.

"First off, everything said in this room is confidential. As per DOMA Code 925, talking to any unauthorized personnel about these proceedings is grounds for dismissal from this inst.i.tute and imprisonment. Second, I have asked Mr. Masterson to take this from the top. Some of you know the score, but others...others are still trying to find their feet."

If I could have turned any redder I would have.

"Right, then." The man named Masterson stood up to start his presentation. With a click of the keyboard, an image of North America overlaid with the ley network appeared onscreen. So Masterson knew keyboard shortcuts. That placed him somewhere between 20 and 50 years old. "My name is Agent John Masterson, and this is my weft-partner, Ralph Collins." I sat up in my chair. Weft? As in weft-pair? "Some of you may know Ralph's daughter, Susan Collins. She is Iota squad's current captain. And last, but not least, the dour looking man over there is Gaston Spinoza of the Alguacil."

Gaston Spinoza of the Alguacil nodded, dourly.

"As most of you know, the North American Ley Network is a complex set of channels filled to the brim with mana. These channels prefer to travel in straight lines, but various geological formations influence their paths. Let's break down the big ones." Agent Masterson fumbled for his laser pointer. "First, there's the Great Eastern Flow, which rises out the Gulf of Mexico near Tallaha.s.see, runs northward through Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City-pa.s.ses below the ground where we stand-and then on to Boston proper where it returns to the ocean floor. Second, we have the Great Mississippi Flow. This flow starts off as two branches near Chicago and Minneapolis, which then merge into one near St. Louis. Nice power center there; love to visit it some day. The flow then chases straight down the Mississippi through Memphis, Jackson, and New Orleans where it dives into the Gulf.

"It is estimated that these two great flows account for well over 80% of the mana present in North America. There is no major flow on the West Coast. There are many theories as to why this is the state of affairs, but nothing close to a consensus. In general, we can state that mana and bioma.s.s are strongly correlated. We need only look at the tremendous but incredibly unstable flows in the Brazilian and African rainforests along with the severe mana droughts observed in the Sahara and Arabian deserts to observe the extremes of this trend."

Masterson flipped to the next slide. It was t.i.tled: "North America c. 2000."

The same white dots covered this map. I reconfirmed that most of the white dots were at the sites of large cities. This Map was colored, but it looked different from the map in Albright's office. Only Mexico and Central America were red on this map. The Mississippi River States were shaded black. Southern Florida was colored silver. The rest of North America was saturated in blue.

"I'm sure you all are very familiar with this map," Masterson continued. "DOMA North America's holdings are highlighted blue. DOMA Mexico's are in red. Your grade school teachers probably had you color it in. This map represents the state-of-affairs as of last year. It is no longer accurate."

The other members of Lambda looked at one another in confusion. I smiled. It was nice not being alone in the dark.

"What I am about to reveal is cla.s.sified. Leaking this information to the Conscious Community of North America would result in ma.s.s panic. Normally the DEA would never dream of revealing this type of information to novices, but Command has authorized us to make an exception in your case. Trainees, I want to be crystal on this. I don't want to see any of you hung at high noon. If you can't keep your mouth shut then get out of this room." As if to emphasize the point, Masterson glanced over at the alguacil. Satisfied that we were scared s.h.i.tless, he continued. "Four years ago, a group of mages under the leadership of one Diego Carrera, exploiting the instability caused by the Mexican Government's decades long war on drugs, successfully executed a coup d'etat against DOMA's sister agency in Mexico."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sadie interjected. "What are you talking about? Diego Carrera was elected Counselor General four years ago. There wasn't any coup."

"And that is what the Department believed as well, Ms. Thompson. That was until one of our attaches at the NSA processed this image."

Masterson advanced to the next slide: "Color-Corrected Managram - Mexico City and Surrounding Area - August 31st." A blue haze of color with its epicenter around Mexico City stretched throughout most of the country. The shape kinda reminded me of a hurricane.

"My G.o.d," Monique exclaimed. "That's a Parisot cloud."

Masterson nodded. "Very good, Ms. Rice. As to be expected of the winner of the Cerberus Grant."

"A Pari-what?" Roster asked.

"A Parisot cloud," Monique replied. "It was a technique developed by Jean Parisot, the father of modern PsyOps. He invented it during the Siege of Rhodes. Chancellor Eikhorn mentioned it, remember? The cloud confounds everyone inside its radius. It alters a single belief, no matter how strongly held. But to be honest, the technique is a relic. You need a ma.s.sive nexus of power to generate it, over a month to prepare the array, and all that effort only changes a single belief. Worse still, it affects everyone inside, friend and foe alike, and it only lasts a week."

I scratched my hair. "If it's so lousy, why did Parisot bother casting it the first place? Eikhorn made it sound like Parisot turned the tide of the battle."

All the heads in the room turned in unison. It was as though I'd asked for the sum of two plus two.

To my surprise, it was Alguacil Spinoza who answered my question. His voice was rich with a heavy Spanish accent. "Parisot applied 1 Timothy 2:5: 'For there is one G.o.d, and one mediator also between G.o.d and men, the man Jesus Christ.' The Christians bore their faith like armor and spent their lives for the glory of their Lord. The Moslems, their prophet cast down upon them, quaked before the awesome might of the Cross and fled...for a week."

"Anyway," Masterson said, "Carrera employed his own Parisot cloud on August 31st. At the time, he and his disciples were in charge of maintaining DOMA Mexico's leynodes. Under the guise of a grand beautification project for Mexico's cathedrals, the group prepared multiple spell nexi in secret. They unleashed the cloud two days prior to the election of the new Councilor General. Carrera's two rivals were contesting the Mexican CG post evenly. Carrera was a distant third. Two days later, Carrera won handily."

"How?" asked Lambda in unison.

Agent Masterson went red, but Spinoza was there to help him out: "For there are two men who shared the same bed, and their names are Councilors Rojas and Sanchez." He shrugged. "Perfectly legal, mind you. A Parisot cloud can only change an established belief. In this case, the established belief was that Councilors Rojas and Sanchez of Mexico's Department of Mana Affairs were happily married, upstanding members of the Conscious community. No one outside the Conscious community had ever even heard of Councilors Rojas or Sanchez. Thus, the Imperiti of Mexico remained unaffected. Since no innocent minds were harmed, none of the Tenets were broken."

"Oh, snap," Roster said. "That dude plays a slick game."

"That was just the start," said Masterson clicking to the next slide. "Using his new found power, Councilor General Carrera moved quickly. He and his a.s.sociates established a corporation called Talmax. The objective of this ent.i.ty was to consolidate the lucrative drug trade, and establish a base of wealth with which to solidify their power. Dissenters were eliminated. Government officials were glam-"

"Unproven," Spinoza interjected. "It is the duty of the regional DOMA to investigate and report such incidents to the ICE. DOMA Mexico has reported no such incidents."

"Or he had them killed," Masterson added.

"Base murder is the jurisdiction of the Imperiti courts," Spinoza retorted. "It is not punishable under the Tenets."

"We did nothing?" Monique asked, outraged.

Collins, who had remained quiet up till now, slammed his fist down on the table.

"You know the rules, Ms. Rice. The DEA could only watch from the other side of the border. The pacts clearly stipulate that the DOMA of one region cannot interfere in the affairs of another region without the express permission of said ent.i.ty."

No one else raised an objection. We all knew this mess had nearly gotten Susan Collins killed.

"Right then," Masterson said, readjusting his tie. He looked a little red in the face himself. "After Talmax solidified its hold on the drug trade, all was quiet for nearly two years. We continued to monitor the situation from across the border, but remained unable to intervene. Rumors swirled that Talmax was reinvesting its profits into an intensive R&D program-a program that was in direct violation of the Tenets-but since DOMA Mexico was under the same management, they were happy to turn a blind eye."

"Again, not proven," Spinoza said with a shrug.

Masterson ignored him. "The fruits of this R&D project became apparent last spring." He flashed through a series of images. Brutal gangland killings: Men and women found dead in cars, homes, and offices. One showed the bodies of four DEA agents in singed yellow windbreakers...another of a man sweating blood.

I was standing before I realized it, my hands had clenched tightly at my sides. "ACT," I whispered. "You mean they were developing artificial conduits. Those burns...I know those burns."

"Que bueno, Mr. Resnick," Spinoza said in his heavy Spanish accent. He turned to Collins. "This is the one, yes? He and the sucia managed it?"

Collins nodded.

"Excuse me. The what?"

Spinoza shrugged.

"Dieter," Jules whispered. "Sit do-"

"Take it back," I boomed.

"Cajones too. You found a good one, Ralph." Spinoza bowed slightly. "I apologize, Mr. Resnick. I was unaware you cared for it."

That did it. I kicked away my chair. "Alright f.u.c.knuts, how about I give your scar a mate?"

"Enough, Dieter," Monique ordered. "Sit. Now."

I scowled at her, but Monique's interruption had given me a moment's pause. What the heck was I doing? Wasn't this exactly what Rei asked me not to do? I bit into my cheek and retrieved my chair. Stupid empowered females. Things must have been so much simpler back in the day. Get a nice big tree trunk and clobber your foes. I tried to lock my eyes on the projector screen, but I couldn't help but see Jules miming deep, relaxing breaths.

"ACT," Masterson continued. "Artificial Conduit Technology. Constructed of an unknown material, ACT functions as the magical equivalent of steroids, enhancing a user's casting speed, accuracy, and potency. The devices we've encountered so far have shown numerous enchantments...including a frustrating tendency to self-destruct when removed from a user's neck. To date, not a single device has been captured intact. As a result, we cannot prove to the International Council on Evocation that a frame breach has occurred."

Surprised, Sadie said, "Hold the telephono, you mean a breach can actually occur?"

"Yes, breaches of the frame are theoretically possible. However, that question is well above your pay grade, apprentice. Such matters lie strictly within the purview of the Council."

I frowned. The ICE was a black box to me. To evoke meant to summon or draw out. In fairy tales, an evoker was a type of mage who could call forth spirits or beings from beyond the normal plane of existence. Was that even possible? I thought back to Chancellor Eikhorn's speech and a brand new ulcer got its wings.

"Let's get back on topic," Masterson requested. "Using ACT devices, Talmax has been able to secure a foothold across the West Coast of the United States. Their agents have infiltrated Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The initial engagements have gone badly. DEA forces are outnumbered, and more importantly, outgunned."

Roster raised his hand. "Mr. Masterson, how can that be possible? DOMA Mexico is d.i.n.ky compared to us."

"That's a fair question, apprentice. Let's take a step back. As you all know, only mages rated Tier 3 or above can obtain admission to the other three DOMA academies. The bar for Elliot is set higher. Only Tier 4's and above may gain admission here. Yet despite the Tier 4 cutoff, only a small proportion of Elliot students will ever be capable of combat activities. Most mages are talented in fields such as scrying, evoking, enchanting, or alchemy. This is nothing to be upset about. We all love potions. But what's an alchemist going to do in the middle of a castout? Throw a beaker?"

Albright cleared his throat.

"Pardon me, Joe, but you're a bit of an exception. The point is, we don't hand out the t.i.tle of battlemage lightly. You need to get special training in an IKM squad and pa.s.s all the skills tests before we even think of letting you walk around with a badge. That gives us about ten to fifteen new DEA recruits each year. We don't do this out of some sort of sn.o.bbery. If we accepted lower ranked mages into the service, we'd just be signing their death warrants. Most supernatural ent.i.ties would just overpower them outright. But these ACT devices Talmax has developed; they're game changers. Now, even the lowliest pract.i.tioner can pose a serious threat to a fully trained DEA agent. For instance, based on Ms. Bathory's report, the individual that she and Mr. Resnick encountered was a mere Tier 2 mage."

Dante sat up in his seat. His face was cut up, and his arm was in a sling, but he looked pretty good for a guy who had just jumped out of a second story window. "Pardon me, sir, but if I recall my magic theory correctly, a pureblooded Nostophoros is supposed to be able to fight a Tier 6 mage evenly."

Spinoza chuckled. "Is that the number the textbooks are spouting?"

"Please, Dante," Sadie chimed in. "Everyone knows the Pures are the same as the rest of the born vampires. They've just got bigger egos."

Spinoza's expression darkened. "I've got a few dead mates that would beg you different, little one."

Dean Albright leaned forward and eyed him.

The alguacil threw up his hands in surrender.

Agent Masterson cleared his throat (he seemed to do that a lot). "Mr. Dante, Tier 6 is our best estimate. But it's only that, an estimate. It's not like the leadership goes around picking fights, now do they? But the Nostophoros menace is not our concern today. Talmax has quite of few Tier 4-plus mages. Try to imagine what an ACT device looks like in the hands of a true professional."

I scratched my head. To me, everyone seemed sufficiently deadly. What was the difference if they were holding one stick of dynamite or ten? I'd get splattered either way.

"Ralph, shall we switch to strategic now?"