Uriel felt his skin crawling as he considered the words of the technician, his rage not abated, but underneath it he could feel an emotion he’d not felt when dealing with other humans in a long time.

Fear! Something that normally rose only when facing the scrutiny of his masters, or the power of a Beast Emperor, or the very serious attention of beings of the Netherworld...

Someone had done this, but who?

No, multiple someones. There simply couldn’t be any one person who could pull off an operation so large. It just wasn’t possible. Only, how had they all escaped detection?

This was the Church of Light! The most magically secure building in the whole world! Multiple Sages worked out of here! Magically, it was utterly impossible to avoid the attention of all of them!

He grit his teeth despite himself, but he was not looking at the man in front of him as he waved his hand, and invigorating, restorative Light washed across all of the technicians, ameliorating the strain on their souls and prodding them back to consciousness.

“Technician Falsetti, you’re promoted to Special Operations Manager, under my direct supervision. Make up a list of the things that need to be done now, and get started on them immediately. Make up another list of things that need to be started on for my review. If I need further explanations on them, I will contact you.”

“Yes, sir!” the tired technician nodded slowly, his thoughts already moving elsewhere. “Fazotti! Contact HR and get me a secretary up here, I need to start dictating. Paznovvi! Get Schnellhund on the phone! I want as many techs with clean equipment here as they can spare immediately! Favaroppi! Grab three people and make sure every single damn feed from the servers is cut off by cable or signal! If there’s even one of them active within twenty minutes, kiss your ass goodbye!”

The last man went white, grabbed three of his companion technicians, and they almost sprinted away.

Uriel, Archangel of the Synod, one of the most powerful men in the world from both a real and religious standpoint, could only stand there and watch impotently as orders were issued from the man he had just appointed to get things done. It was good to see them moving with energy and purpose, but he was only in the way now, an uncomfortable feeling for him. He was used to being able to do things, but these tasks were not worth his time or energy, and so were delegated to others to take care of.

This technological invasion was completely out of his depth. He could only look on from the sidelines, and hope that the people they had hired to do the job could actually do it...

------

“You are smiling like the cat that ate multiple canaries.” I clinked a glass of Sama’s Girly Sweetness Special #4 to her glass of Briggs’ Intestinal Disaster Whiskey Number Three, and we both took a drink.

“The money is allocated among one hundred and fifty-four separate Sovereign Funds spread across nineteen investment banks and firms who really don’t give a shit where the money came from, all agglomerated under Redshore Mutual Funds, specialists in investing in smaller communities being attacked by littoral raids and opportunistic investing in them.” Sama exhaled, the air seeming to wilt in front of her as she did so. It would burn purple if she lit it up, she had demonstrated it for me! “They are closed to extra investors, but we’ve already received inquiries from certain parties trying to build some influence in smaller communities and rake them over the coals.”

I rolled my eyes and took another drink. ‘Girly Sweetness’ was damn right, and I could feel all the alchemical filters in my blood rumbling as they energetically fought off the effects. “That is so believable. Well done. That issuing bonds in the name of the Church and walking off with the money while saddling them with above-market interest rates was hilarious.”

“I’ve been waiting to do that to them for almost ten years,” Sama huffed. Sparks ignited between her teeth as she put her head back, and the purple flames billowed out of her mouth theatrically. “They hired Schnellhund to rebuild their whole network for them, chop-chop!”

She almost caught me perfectly, but I clamped my mouth shut and swallowed in time to prevent spewing. Still, my laughter couldn’t be held down.

Schnellhund was Coralost’s computer tech subsidiary in Germany and Switzerland. All them Typeless Techies formed one of the most elite groups of computer programmers in the world, outside of Coralost Compound itself!

“And you will be completely above the board with that rebuild, too,” I said with amusement.

“Oh, definitely. Everything going in is going to be so clean it will sparkle! Just knowing the architecture and hardware will be enough if I ever want to go back in. I’ll make sure to leave a trail to some gods-damned Archangel’s computer when I do it, too.” Sama’s heavens-blue eyes flashed. “If they didn’t have to offset all the Dark Mages out there ready to cause havoc, I so would have wandered into all the other branches and wiped them, too!”

“What’re you making out of the Wings?” I inquired knowingly.

“Gave to Fuzzy to break his Eternal Limit for Endure!” Which, since the first set she had knicked had gone to Tremble, was only appropriate. She could and had used a bunch of Naming Karma, too, which was what I was doing with Noble and Zeben, given that so much damn Karma was coming out of the sea for just that purpose.

“The Mick tell you about the special project he asked of our Investigations Division?” Sama asked me knowingly.

I pursed my lips. “No. That’s rather strange.” The boys generally reported all the odd shit up to me.

Sama just nodded. “Pretty personal. It seems we’ve been getting a lot of requests for help from Atlanta.” I frowned at that news, realizing where this was going. “Yeah. He wants to crucify the bastard.”

‘The bastard’ being Lance Blank, son of Reginald Blank, the Good Old Sage of Georgia, head of one of the most powerful Great Families in America. The Atlanta Falcons was his private mercenary group, considered one of the best Family combat teams in the nation.

General Lance Blank was the Sage’s second son, currently overseeing the United States military operations in Atlanta. He was also the twat who had abandoned a team of young Recon Marines in hostile Beast territory to die, after he sold them out to a Hunter Team going after the Seed and magical Plant they’d found.

Red’s Sundrop Fire/Light Seed and Tox’s Sundrop Lily Vine, to be exact!

The fact the team had survived, reported his activities, and absolutely nothing had been done about his conduct was a huge black eye on the honor of the service, but it had all been wiped under the carpet very cleanly. A handful of Marines from Michigan who had been written off weren’t worth gaining the ire of an officer’s Sage of a father over.

“I never went after the guy, but Entitled Young Master just oozes from everything I’ve heard about him. Guys like him, they don’t stop at being a dickwad to just one person,” I growled.

“You’re going to love this. Remember Colonel Harrison?” Sama asked me, pouring herself another one.

Whirrr, click! “The dickwad in Texas who sold out his men?” My eyes narrowed sharply. “Thought he was still Branded and on frontier watch duty there.”

“Oh, he is. He also received a six-figure payment from a fellow about a week before he hired the KIA team. That money came from the Blank Family.”

I closed my eyes and took a long, slow breath. “The Sage?” I finally asked dangerously.

“No sign of his involvement, although I doubt he disapproved or didn’t know about it. Just cleaning off gadflies, you know?” Sama’s voice had that rusty razor edge to it that might just precede a lot of bloodletting. There were no Void Brothers around, so someone had to keep these powerful mages under control. She totally did not get tired of the job.

“Your investigation?” I asked shortly.

“There were various favors done, in terms of educational opportunities, cultivation assets, teachers of kids, promotional eligibility, post-military employment, records cleaned, and outright money paid out, all of it adding up to the tune of about five million dollars. Six different individuals disappeared, too. Covering that all up was not cheap. Once we started to piece it all together, we were actually damn surprised the KIA team lived as long as they did.”

“And now that whole team of nobodies are Archmages stronger than our dear fake General is.” I could feel my eyes flash, as his rank violated the standing tenets of the American Armed Forces, if not official regulations! “Taking revenge the best way. Since he was willing to pay to see them dead, he never forgot about them. Their current power and status have to be giving him ulcers!”

“Sages Blank and Westenbaugh are basically keeping Atlanta from being overrun. The boy’s record as General there is way below what is expected of someone of his rank. He has neither the power nor the expertise at command an officer of his level is expected to have. It looks like his father hurried along his promotions, but there’s no way he’ll advance beyond Brigadier General. It’s not on his official record, but there’s too many people who know what happened. He'll never make it into the upper echelons of the Marines.”

He shouldn’t have even made it to General, so that was no surprise.

“It’s a major city. He shouldn’t even be overseeing it, but I suppose the Sage is responsible for that, too,” I muttered. Withholding support, subtly or otherwise, unless his son was in charge there was just something Families would do. Unstinting support if he was in charge was worth the assignment and promotion to someone, although his son would never advance beyond a regional commander.

It was why Boston was so goddamned adamant that Family members were never allowed into command positions there. It would take no time at all for the command hierarchy to be completely worthless!

“Cronies below him?” I asked knowingly. Put a Family man in command, and lo, watch it happen...

“My contacts in the Marines are hoping the lot of them just fall in battle and die.”

I just closed my eyes and took another deep breath. “There are SO many ways we could address that.”

“I hate to say it, but if I leak the results, all it’s going to do is get more people killed and the matter swept under the rug again, AND we’ll have the Falcons issuing a blood feud on the boys and us.”

“Not afraid of it. But the timing is bad.” Some very malicious thoughts wandered through my head and back out again. “How many other black marks?”

“At least two extremely battered women, probable two rapes and disappearances, a score of rivals either cashiered, demoted, or ostracized, and a number of other annoyances who were promoted into situations that are career dead ends, or who just ended up dead.”

“Were they tied to Venkman?” I asked slowly. The Texan rancher who’d started that whole fiasco had been a Mage, and was still alive last I heard, although he’d lost three of his four sons to the fighting. Since the northern frontier was enforced calm, they’d all been transferred to the Houston area to die on the beaches instead.

“Venkman’s last son has been serving in the Falcons for a good ten years now. He was the only one not at home at the ranch. He was actually looking to transfer to Sage Jones’ Cowboys to be closer to home.” The flamboyant Dallas Rough Riding Sage’s personal team of mercs was often called ‘America’s Team’, and despite that egotistical claim, actually had a good performance history behind it.

“I have a distinct feeling he and General Blank know one another?” I sighed.

“He’s the Falcons’ primary attaché to the Atlanta Shore Guards,” Sama grinned mercilessly, tossing her third one back. Lavender flames billowed softly from her nose.

“How clean is Sage Blank?” I asked slowly, reaching over to pour myself a second. I could probably drink Briggs’ stuff, but only if I wanted to zonk out.

“He’s a ruthless Family head who has burned and buried a lot of business competitors and rivals, but he doesn’t abuse his wealth or position, or have depraved hobbies that we could find. Lance Blank is a black sheep of the Family. It’s probable that part of the reason why he is in Atlanta is because he doesn’t dare try anything underhanded in his father or older brother’s territory.”