"As I said, the magic is strong here," he replied, turning to follow me as I walked toward the mailbox. "There are many things I can do here that you have not seen before. Now, would you care to share this great plan of yours?"

  "Fine," I said, holding my hands up in mock surrender as I knelt down beside the mailbox. "Suit yourself." I pointed to the boundary between my grandmother's house and the road. "Notice the line that borders the property? Whatever magic my grandmother used; Rael and her Demons couldn’t cross it. We would have been able to retreat to there had things turned to shit."

  "Things did turn to shit," Charlie replied, sniffing at the area I was pointing at before looking back up at me. "This is well crafted and designed to be invisible, even I did not realize it was here. I do not understand. If I cannot see it, how could Rael? If you knew she would not be able to cross it, we could have avoided the entire confrontation."

  "The confrontation was going to happen no matter what we did," I replied, leading him to the gate. I unlocked it and swung open the doors, then walked in and opened the garage before heading back for the Jeep. "But I was betting she'd back off once she saw you. As for how she knew it was there, I have no idea. Truth is, I didn’t realize she couldn't cross it until I got out of the Jeep."

  "Then you did not know for sure."

  "It was a safe bet," I replied as Charlie got into the Jeep. I threw my sword into the back and got in after him. "She thinks we shit in her backyard. There's no way she wouldn’t try to do the same."

  "That was a risky assumption," he said as I put the Jeep in gear and drove it through the gates.

  "Look," I said as I pulled into the garage. "The Rael in this world is an asshole. No way she was gonna leave this alone once she knew a human was involved. But she's not stupid. Since she couldn't break the magic threshold she had to confront me in the street. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except she hadn’t planned on you being here either. She thought she was dealing with a simple rogue human cop that used illegal magic but she underestimated what she was really up against. Once you were in the mix, I knew she'd back off. At least for now."

  "That still does not explain how she knew you would be coming here," Charlie said as we got out. "You take too many risks. You forget you are but a human here."

  "That's what I got you for, buddy," I said, reaching down and hugging the big dog. "And I'm not hard to find. Anyone that reads the newspaper would know about Robert's grandmother. Even if they didn’t know what all she was into."

  "Perhaps Rael was correct," he said as he pulled away. "We have gone mad in this place."

  "Could be," I said as I led him into the yard. "You know, I think I kind of like this side of you."

  "Why? Because I am more powerful here?" he asked, shaking his head and watching me.

  "That, too," I said as we walked into the yard. "But I was thinking more of you being a lot more talkative and argumentative. You were much more subdued back home."

  "Back home you were a God," he said, pushing his big nose against me and knocking me off balance and onto the cool grass. "In this place, I do not know what you are."

  "You and me both," I said, laughing as I got up. I brushed myself off as Charlie trotted into the grass. "But maybe now that you're here we can figure that out together." Then I smiled as the Garden Faeries began to gather around him.

  Chapter 3

  I dragged myself out of bed and took a quick shower before heading down to the office. Charlie was still at my grandmother's house. The Garden Faeries had gone ape shit after he arrived and he'd offered to stay and see what else he could find out about this Robert and his grandmother. That worked for me as they sure as hell wouldn't give me the time of day, and let's face it, there were a lot of gaps in my knowledge of this place. It also gave me another day or two to figure out what to do with him when I was out and about. Rael had been right about one thing. It's not every day a Fae Lord hangs out with and takes orders from a human, even if said Fae Lord looks like he is only a dog.

  "Captain wants to see you," Mal said when I walked into his office.

  "No surprise there," I replied, taking a seat in front of his desk. "You brief him on last night?"

  "Yep," he said. "He hit me up before I ever made it through the door. Of course, since the Feds wouldn't let us play, most of what we were doing was just handling calls for service so there really wasn’t that much to talk about. Not to mention that he was listening to the radio traffic."

  "Anything else?" I asked. "Did he say anything about the girl?"

  "As a matter of fact, he did," he replied, chuckling. "You know he gets a daily update and she was booked in under your detainer so it's not like it was a secret. He knew I was only transporting her. Couldn’t tell him much more since you hadn’t turned in the paperwork yet. She's only booked on an open trespass, though. Figured it would throw up too many red flags if I booked her for what she really was. That's about it. Oh, and I gave her the Bible like you said. The rest of her shit is in your office."

  "Perfect," I replied as he handed me her file. "I'll deal with her after I see O'Malley. I'm sure he's getting anxious since I didn’t get to give him a heads up."

  "I'm sure he is," Mal said with a laugh.

  Nothing about Rael. That was a good thing. I figured O'Malley had to have a pretty good idea what had happened, at least where I was concerned. He had access to our encrypted channels and I wouldn’t put it past him to have listened in on the radio traffic. As far as Rael was concerned, I was going to have to let him know she was involved. Just the same, I was hoping she hadn’t mentioned our little meeting to anyone else. To be honest, I was pretty sure she hadn't. I just couldn’t see her admitting to being outsmarted by a mere human and a Fae dog. I made a quick stop at my office to make a phone call and then grabbed a few things before heading out to see the Captain.

  "He's waiting for you," his secretary, Donna, said, pointing to his inner office door.

  "About time you showed up," O'Malley said, shaking his head as I walked in. "When I told you to give the Colonel whatever she needs, I certainly didn’t expect you to terrorize a quarter of the city to do it."

  "Then you should have been more specific," I replied, grinning as I took a seat. Two could play at that game. "Besides, at best it was only an eighth and you know how Demon town loves a good party. I was only trying to keep it lively."

  "You certainly accomplished that," he said, stroking his beard. He nodded toward his desk. "The phone has been ringing off the hook all morning. I'm sure it gave our good citizens great comfort when I explained to them that it was a Federal operation and out of our hands. I know it did me." He leaned back with his hands behind his head. "You got away clean and that's all that matters. Now, tell me what you found out and while you’re at it, who the girl in my lockup is."

  "The girl's a Knight," I replied, settling back. "Brothers and Sisters of the Sword. Caught her staked out behind a house on the mountain. You'll never guess who she was watching."

  "Enlighten me," he said.

  "Rael," I replied. "Best I can figure she's the one that set this whole thing up and called in the Feds."

  "Rael!" he barked, the tattoo around his neck flaring as he straightened up. "How in Zeus' name did you find her?"

  "Feds were circling the house she was at like dogs in heat," I replied, weaving a believable story. I didn’t want to lie to the Captain, but I couldn’t tell him everything. Chances are he'd figure it out anyway. But I knew that this Robert had a lot of autonomy and from reading some of his files it appeared that plausible deniability was a big thing here.

  "Your Colonel Camillus and I were following up on a lead in Demon town. Started seeing Bureau cars all over the place. Wasn’t hard to track them back and see what they were keeping an eye on. We were setting up to see what we could find when we spotted her at the house. A little while later we came across the Knight the Feds had missed in the desert behind the place. I couldn't see a clean way to extract her so I had to improvise. Trust me, I thought about letting her take a shot, but that might have shut down the meeting and I couldn’t just kill her and leave the body. Wind was right so I popped the smoke down the hill so it wouldn’t look like a direct attack. Don’t worry about the magic, either. It's from my personal stores from the old days. No way they can link it to the Department."

  "Hades' beard, Rob," he said before breaking out into a huge fit of laughter. "I swear you're the only guy I know that can create a shitstorm in the city and walk away smelling like mistletoe. You're going to be the death of me yet. But the Sheriff is going to have a shit fit when he finds out the Fallen Angel is involved. At least it explains why she went to the Feds. If she'd gone to him first he'd have told her to pound sand and find another venue. As if that was even possible. We're going to have to see how this plays out. For the moment, we're better off with the Feds running around in circles trying to figure out what happened. What do you plan to do with the girl?"

  "I wanted to talk to you about that," I said, trying to find a way to keep her alive and hoping that was what Gaea had in mind. "We booked her as a Jane Doe for now. But to be honest, we can't charge her officially. Even as cut and dried as violating the banishment laws are, a formal arrest will eventually become public, and I don’t think we want that."

  "I agree," he said, stroking his beard again. "That would not be good. Hmm, I haven’t done a Druidic sacrifice in a while."

  "Not exactly what I had in mind. I'm thinking more like we turn her back over to her people," I said, waiting to see how he'd react. As you would expect, the Knights and the Department didn’t get along. If there was anything they hated more than magical creatures it was the humans that worked with them. Unfortunately, without knowing exactly where they fit into Gaea's plan, I didn’t know what else to do with her.

  "Judas Priest!" he said, wrinkling his brow. "Why in the name of the Otherworld would you want to do that?"

  "Hear me out here," I said, pushing my chair back. "Sure, it'd be easier just to make her disappear. But you know as well as I do that we're going to run into them again. I figure if we return her, they’ll owe us a favor."

  "You've gone soft if you expect them to acknowledge that," he said, tapping his hand on the desk. "What? You think you can change their minds about us? Not gonna happen, Rob. Trust me, I've been dealing with their kind for a lot longer than you can imagine."

  "You won’t get an argument from me there," I agreed. "But I have a feeling about this one. It will also give me a chance to lay eyes on the opposition. Something I don't normally get to do except at the point of a sword. So I want a face to face when I turn her over. If nothing else, they won't know what to make of it. Might make them think twice the next time they are considering crossing the border."

  "You have a feeling about a girl, do you?" he remarked, dropping his elbows onto his desk and clasping his hands together. He started to say more but was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.

  "This better be important," he said as he placed the receiver to his ear. "Fine… put her on." He cupped the handset and told me to stay put. "Ingrid, good to hear from you. How can I help you today?" After a few minutes of uh-huhs, he ended with an "I'll see you then" before turning his attention back to me.

  "That was Agent Schijven, the new SAC at the local Homeland Security office," he said as he hung up the phone. "She wants to come by this afternoon to discuss some issues relating to this secret meeting. Your admirer from the EAB, Special Agent Ferrell, has been recalled to Washington and she's been assigned to liaison with us prior to them sending out his replacement. It looks like they've decided they might want our input on their little operation after all."

  "Sounds like you're gonna be busy," I said.

  "So it appears," he agreed, nodding his head.

  "What about the girl? I hear I can get a message to the Knights through one of the priests at St. Michaels," I said, dropping the name of the church, Ligia, the High Priestess had given me when I called her earlier.

  He was quiet for a minute before reaching down and opening a drawer. He sorted through the inside before closing it and tossed a business card across the desk at me.

  "That would be Father Brook Milotay. He's usually in his office in the afternoons. Don’t make an appointment, just drop in and see him. He'll deny knowing anything about your Knight's order but if anyone can set something up, it's him. Just don’t expect him to tell you anything right away. He'll have to talk to his contacts first. Now, we never had this conversation so get out of here before I change my mind. I've got work to do."

  "Thank you," I said, standing to pick up the card and leave.

  "Rob," he said as I reached the doorway.

  I turned and looked back at him.

  "You're stepping into my world now," he said, rubbing a finger over a tattoo on his arm. "The good Father is more politician than priest. Which means you can’t just kill him if he pisses you off. Try to remember that. I know I don't have to tell you this, but don’t trust him or the Knights. Their code of honor only goes so far. I'm not exactly sure what you're hoping to accomplish. It would be just as easy to drop her off across the border and be done with it if that's your intention. Let me be clear about this, Rob. You're on your own on this one. Be careful. First sign of a trap, take her out and cut your losses. I don't want to have to tell the Sheriff you got yourself killed on some rogue operation over a girl. Are we clear?"

  "Crystal," I replied, before turning and heading into the outer office. I nodded at Donna and then went to my own office to lay low for a while. I don't know what O'Malley thought I was really up to and I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out. Whatever the case, I was probably going to have to be more careful after this. I didn’t need O'Malley thinking that Robert was going rogue and that wasn't going to be easy. The fact was, I only decided to return the girl because I needed intel on the Knights and this was the only option I had available to learn anything from them directly. Frigging Gaea… why couldn’t she just tell me what it was about them that was important so I could just take care of business and get out of this place? Oh, well, one step at a time. It was still too early to visit Father Milotay so I sat down at my desk and started playing Lieutenant. I pulled the stack of papers out of Robert's inbox and got to work.

  I pushed the now empty tray back toward the corner of my desk and sat back. Now I remembered why I'd retired. I'd spent most of the last five hours doing paperwork. Most of which had been bullshit reports to justify my unit's existence and make sure the powers that be knew we were earning our keep. I'd also met with my two sergeants, Mal and Roberto, to discuss what was on their agenda and how we were keeping the forces of evil at bay. The Fae might have found a magical home here, but it didn’t come without a price. Just like in my world, there were those that wanted to take advantage of the system. Throw in the use of magic and otherworldly creatures and you had a recipe for disaster if you didn't keep a lid on it.

  Something O'Malley had said rang true. His was the political world we took direction from. My team didn't just look down the sword at problems, we were the sword, and Robert was the hand that wielded it. The thin blue line here was edged in blood.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t see a way around it. The rules here were different and good and evil weren't so easily defined. But even knowing that didn’t bring me any closer to understanding what Gaea expected me to do here. I grabbed the copy of the file Mal had given me earlier and pushed my chair back to get up. I might not be able to save the world today but that didn't mean I didn’t have things to do.

  Neutral ground? I asked myself as I pulled my Omega police car out of the underground parking lot and headed south toward the Strip. How the hell could anyone consider this place neutral ground? I'd been here long enough to know the answer to that, of course. Where else in the universe would magical creatures like Angels and Demons walk freely on the streets without killing each other at first sight? Not that the occasional skirmish between even the best of them didn’t occur, but it was rare, at least as far as the general population was concerned. What everyone seemed to forget is that the natural state of beings like that was perpetual war. A constant state of conflict that had been going on for millennia, neither race gaining the upper hand, at least not as of yet. Even the Fae were not immune to that condition. The old Gods lust for power had almost consumed them all.

  It was only here in Nevada that the combination of magic and some unknown earthly force I still hadn't figured out created a place outside the magical realms where beings of all races could coexist in any numbers and interact without the bloodlust that seemed so pervasive in their lands, or at least that's the way it seemed. Sure, they were still scrambling over each other for power, but at least they weren't killing one another at every move. Okay, most of them weren't anyway. Unfortunately, the ones that fit in that group were the real problem. Then there were the humans. They were every bit as violent as any magical creature could be. Not that that was different from the ones back home, but this was a place where they threw down tactical nukes whenever they thought they might be losing a war so the stakes seemed to be a tad higher.

  Then again, maybe there was more to it. I mean, wasn't the Robert from this world the same one that ran a PD hit squad that was tasked with taking care of any problems that occurred here before they got out of hand? When you think about it, that meant that this Robert, and by extension, me, actually were saving this world. Now that was a scary thought. Enough of this… I was here on Gaea's dime and no matter what else I thought I might know; she wasn't going to reveal her plans to me until she was ready. That in itself was enough to make my head hurt. All I could do was take one step at a time and try to fumble my way through it until she was ready to drop another clue.

  I continued southbound on the Strip watching the tourists. Like back home, there were crowds of people walking in front of and to and from the big properties. Unlike back home, the scene here was much more interesting. Like Downtown, the Strip abounded with magic. The big hotel facades were animated using magic. Faeries and winged creatures danced above the crowds while Unicorns and Centaurs ran in small fields next to the sidewalks to the tourist's delight. All of this while flying Pixies and other beings advertised the delicacies within each property. Say what you want about the dark side of this place but there was no sign of it here. Not surprising when you consider that there was an entire industrial governmental machine with folks like me that made sure the two sides never met.

 

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