“Hey, Sama, you get a notification from anyone?” Briggs asked across to her as they maneuvered the newest engine model for their Overland series Special Transport into place. No chains needed, of course. The massive Ancient could have handled the whole weight himself without effort... and honestly, so could have Sama.

“Adriana in New York just remarked to me that the Coligistroni heir just mentioned something about that upstart witch in Texas going to get hers at a cocktail party,” Sama grunted, as they wrestled the engine onto the settings. Long blonde hair snaked out with a life of its own, holding onto various screws and clamps and things, and began to insert and twist enough to lock the engine block in place.

“Ah, that’s that Air Element model who’s so into you?” he smiled knowingly, and she winked at him. Despite the Cursemark that seemed to be ravaging the side of her face, as far as he was concerned, it only made the rest of her all the hotter, especially when her lips curled and he caught sight of her double canines...

“Yeah.” Her eyes glittered for a second. “You?”

“Someone just posted a black mission on Those Boards, and it was picked up by Killdeer’s team in Chicago.”

Her eyes flickered like someone bringing up Visual File information, even as she nodded, they both released in tandem, and grabbed at their wrenches to tighten everything down properly. Her hair didn’t have the strength to do much more than set the stuff, although it was remarkably good at taking such things apart...

Sama did a handstand, inverted, somehow kicked the chains from the tackle around one leg, and just hung there upside down, face down low as she worked on the low bolts. “Huh. He’s one of them special people who think being willing to do anything makes him awesome.”

“I think I’m gonna hack that very special server they think is so secure and find out what is going on.”

“Oh, please,” Sama said from down below. “You are a no-magic brute of a caveman who can only think with his fists. Actually being smart enough to out-finagle our teams of super-intelligent mages who set up this Very Special Site for Black Operations for the Morally Challenged is simply not possible for a mundane primitive like you. Go home.”

His smile was a terrifying grimace, if anyone else were there to see it, his pale violet eyes intense enough to make said mages retreat at the death awaiting there. “I should have cracked their goddamn Source Code and downloaded everything as it happens a long time ago, instead of just monitoring it,” he agreed with her unspoken criticism. “Sorry.”

Her chuckle came from below as he admired the length of her long legs. “You were just trying not to make more work for us. You aren’t a Paladin, we both know it, and you don’t have a mean streak.” Her foot came out and despite her not being able to see him, bopped him directly on top of the head and his stiff black mane of hair. “You’re a builder and a defender. You go a-conquering to make a better future, not because you want more power and responsibility.” Her toe came precisely down to his nose. “But we ain’t got no goddamn Void Brothers here to take care of the grim work, Fuzzy.”

He sighed, grabbing her foot and giving her booted shin a kiss. “You are such a tireless Hag about this shit, you know.”

He saw her finish up in his tremblesense, her other leg tensing, and with totally inhuman strength and an awesome showing of leg and ass and waist, she drew herself up backwards, her leg rotating in his massive hands to sit there at full extension, her other foot still wrapped in the block and tackle’s chain.

Her heavens-blue eyes were very large, and as murderously intent as ever. “It is good that you know someone with a mean streak who enjoys beating on things that think they are bigger than she is!” she purred, and gave him That Smile, all eight canines showing, and his heart, as always, flip-flopped to see it.

“Making work for my Hag is kind of the opposite of what I should be doing,” he murmured, pulling her towards him by her steel pillar of a leg. A single jerk, and her other foot was free of the chain, no leverage issues as he brought her in closer. Her long legs wrapped around his big chest with casual ease, leaving him perfectly placed to put his head in under her chin and inhale the wild yet restrained violent scent emanating from the solid steel of her Null.

Sama closed her eyes and put her chin on his head, feeling the streaming ticklishness of his Source blowing past her, a fire that never went out, running nails that could score steel up and down his thick neck and upper back, their ki sparking and sliding invisibly around one another, always testing, always meshing.

“If she’s really a Power of Ten gamer mage, Fuzzy, all this shit we’ve been doing is just about to explode. It ain’t like you ain’t gonna have a shit-ton more work on the builder side. Someone we both know has to make sure arseholes don’t tear it all down.” She gave his head a kiss, ignoring the fact his mane could be favorably likened to steel wire. More fuzzy!

“Then let’s show our sincerity, and a bit of our pull.” He lifted his head, and she promptly began nibbling on his broad, flat nose. “That kind works too!” he growled, pulling her head down lower, and letting himself get lost in eight canines savoring his tongue and lips in response.

------

Up-and-coming hot mages can be such idiots at times, Killdeer reflected, his smile cold and knowing as their black SUV coasted to a stop on a side street in Bunyantown.

It was the dark of night, 2 AM, and nobody was around or up to see them. Their Sound Mage, Ingrid, tilted her head at a look from him. She’d kept the noise of the engine down to nothing, so nobody had heard them arrive, and nobody would hear any sounds of a fight, or hear them leave.

A quick-in, quick-out, a snatch-and-grab, and that hot chick who thought she was going to make so much money without cutting in the Families was going to learn how the world really worked. Sure, they might be competent enough to protect themselves, sort of, and certainly they’d have a lot of people watching out for them right now, knowing the money that was at stake, but could they guard everyone?

No, no, they couldn’t.

That KIA team that ‘Lady Fae’ had hooked up with had a long and complete Hunter history, and amusingly enough they all came from the same area, up here in Bunyantown on the Saginaw Bay. It hadn’t taken much digging to find out their next-of-kin and their addresses, let alone that they came from families with Novices at best, and mostly non-magical at all.

Just poor trash trying to fight against the system and claim what wasn’t theirs without paying the gatekeepers properly.

No, no, the best way to work was simply to do it in the true heart of the system, be willing to do the same work to better yourself, but get paid very, very well to do it. That girl and her bunch of squib Adept Hunters was going to be caught between so many hands angry that she was making money without allowing them to take it from her, and soon she was going to end up with next to nothing for her effrontery.

Maybe they’d let her keep a tithe of it after they gave her a lesson in helplessness, maybe she’d just be their effective slave for the rest of her life, or they might throw her on a table and take everything they wanted out of her pretty little head, and throw the empty remnants in a hole somewhere.

It wasn’t his business to care. He’d just get paid to do what he was doing.

“Let’s go,” he murmured, Ingrid making sure everyone heard who needed to, and nobody heard who didn’t need to. The doors to the car opened silently, and his team spilled out.

They looked around once carefully, but this was a civilian neighborhood, built around the Spell School right over there, and what magic they felt was Novice-Class at best, sedate and untroubled. It was the dark of night, deep inside safe territory, and unless a Blue Lake Crayfish Swarm suddenly decided to come up out of the Bay, there was nothing to threaten them, so people slept soundly.

The home was a classic city townhouse of wood and brick, with a small yard. His targets were the two women living there, a mother and daughter, the latter Awakened and a Novice about to graduate Spell School and make her way to a local Magic College or something, most likely.

Taking them down would be effortless. They’d literally never wake up until they were somewhere else, never even seeing who had taken them.

Slender, hard-eyed Croswell went up the steps, the wood firming under his tread, generating no sound. He’d just warp the door out of their way, then restore it when they left, leaving no trace of what happened.

Several things happened at the same second.

First, a lot of magic arose around them at the same instant... and it was all Mage-Class!

Second, Croswell went flying backwards as if something had punched him, his inadvertent cry as he hurled past their heads tracked as they instinctively turned... just as a wall of spiked stone rose from the ground behind them and he crashed into it, his screams becoming a gurgle as he was impaled straight through.

The sidewalk sprouted spikes and folded upwards like two closing jaws, slamming shut on Ingrid as she screamed, her bones shattering.

Fahrmad lit up with Fire, pulling power, looking around wildly for their attackers. The sky seemed to fall on him, smashing him to the ground, and at the exact same moment, four exquisitely arced Windblades came scything in as he was fighting the Void Magic off with everything and slid right through him. Killdeer even thought he might have survived, until the horrified expression on Fahrmad’s face presaged the way his body fell part in all directions under the air pressure.

Killdeer brought up his Poison as fast as he could. If he was going to die, he’d wipe out this entire city block, turning all the air into venom that would kill every single living thing with a hundred yards!

The branches of the old maple in the front yard grabbed him and hauled him into the air as he shouted, wrenching, twisting, and turning him over. Light glowed from a hole below him that had opened in the center of the tree’s trunk, one lined with backward-facing wooden teeth, and he started to scream as he and his Poison were stuffed unceremoniously down that hole.

---

There were multiple crunches as the leader of the team of mages was pulped and chewed on within the tree, its trunk and bark pulsing rhythmically as he was disposed of. What Poison was generated the reinforced tree’s sap absorbed and digested handily, the orifice in the middle of its trunk closing smoothly and leaving no sign it was ever there.

Three old men and a woman came out of the shadows above and around the area. Air and Earth magic had muted the sounds they made, or they had simply hidden in the Void and no sounds had carried to the intruders’ Sound Mage.

The oldest of them, rather bent and weathered, and with a deep scar bisecting one eye that even Healing Magic had been unable to restore, came down out of the sky using Void Magic, the older woman with Air Magic about her and tiny misting wings fluttering at her heels doing the same.

“So this is a Chicago snatch team,” huffed portly Bierlien, making sure the Plant-user was dead before sending his slab of spiked stone back into the street and throwing down a plastic sheet, rolling the body and its blood onto it with another wave of Earth Magic.

“The intelligence on them was good. You know that’s why it was this easy,” hissed the scrawny Polonski, the old Plant-user’s eyes still fixed on the tree receiving a nutritious and untraceable meal of Poison Mage.

“They came into the town of the Wolverine Hunters, and thought they’d get away scot-free?” Emelia Schwartz spat. “Do they think our reputation is for show?”

“You know the type, dear. ‘Fighting people isn’t like fighting Beasts’,” her husband Oscar, the one-eyed Void Magic wielder, scoffed coldly.

“Yeah. Humans die so much easier,” she agreed, reaching out to hold her husband’s hand. “But going against the family of some Hunters...” Emelia cursed, glancing at the door to the house of the two women who’d been the first targets of this team.

There was a quiet flicker from Bierlien’s phone as he stepped over to the quartered Fire Mage, tossing down another roll of plastic to take the disassembled body and organs without batting an eye. He was the youngest of the four there, and mostly did demolition and construction work now, but there was no hesitation at all in his eyes as the pieces of the dead mage were callously tossed together and bundled up.

He looked at the message. “Sarah’s team took out the other group.” He waved at old Polonski. “Remember that Briggs kid said he wanted the heads intact. Something about the dead telling tales.”

The old man just grunted, squinting a bit, and the maple tree quivered, before a slit in it opened up and it spat out the silently-screaming, sap and blood-covered head of Killdeer onto the lawn. “Head,” he said acidly, then paused. “Hey, think the kid will let us help out when he finds out who’s behind this?”

All four of the Wolverine Hunters looked at one another. “I’ll let him know we’re available,” growled Oscar, as all of them nodded slowly.

Send kidnappers into their territory and not expect a response? Who did those fuckers think the Wolverine Hunters were? It didn’t matter if a Family was behind all this, they’d still do what they needed to do, just so that some other goddamn Family wouldn’t pull this in the future!