Josie sent a letter to Elaine. Once they knew where they should be looking, she could


    throw out a bird and find the real Lich Queen. She wanted to know how this people


    had come up with their bloodsucking and seed planting. After that would come


    something from the Old Testament.


    It might be something the Society would eventually assign them in the course of their


    days. She didn’t want to wait that long.


    The magic books might be part of the same problem. By themselves, she had no


    problem with people arming special forces. Coupled with the torture and potential


    world ending disaster in the mix, she might have to do something about them if she


    got a chance.


    And Jack had given her some ideas to use with his use of the Stargate rings, and Star


    Trek teleporter pads. She thought she could nuke someone if a showdown like that


    happened.


    Elaine’s letter came back while she was thinking. The model stated that the Queen


    was close to them. She couldn’t pinpoint where exactly the menace happened to be.


    “Elaine said the model says our circle is still here,” said Josie. The women started


    vanishing. She frowned. “Now I have to ask her if the circle moved.”


    “Go ahead,” said Jack. “Our bad guys are surrounding the temple. They’ll be trying


    to get up here to stop us from pulling the plug eventually.”


    “You would think they would run,” said Budd. He looked over at the neighboring


    building. He had his bow in hand, arrows on the top of the wall in front of him. Once


    he saw a target, he would grab an arrow and shoot. The move would only take a


    second.


    “Why?,” asked Jack. “No one who has seen us at work lived to tell the tale except


    maybe the one guy Jo punted out of town. That was a good shot. I wonder how much


    those personal shields can take before we crack them.”


    “Make them drop the book if you can,” said Josie. “I killed the one after he dropped


    his.”


    “That’s an important note,” said Jack. “If you wind up fighting some guys throwing


    red beams of death at you, and holding a glowing book, knock the book out of his


    hand. Then you can stab him as much as you want.”


    “Elaine wrote back,” said Josie. “Whatever was going on with those women, the


    source is still here with us. So we have to find it and knock it out of commission


    before the Shemmarians wake it up and sic it on us.”


    She threw out a firebird. It soared across the town. It landed on another building that


    was a cube of gray blocks and no windows. It landed on the roof, and poofed out of


    existence.


    “I can take us over there,” said Josie. “Then we have to break in and do what we got


    to do.”


    “Everyone ready?,” said Jack. He had let his watch recharge as they came up with a


    plan. He had a way to knock down walls at hand.


    “Cover the accesses when we arrive,” said Fass. “Lou, keep an eye on things. As soon


    as they realize we moved, they’ll be swarming that other building to stop us.”


    “There is a force already over there,” said Lou. “They are blocking the ground floor


    doors.”


    “Good thing we’re going in through the roof,” said Jack. He grinned at the assembly.


    They had seen that expression before and it bode an ill will being applied ahead.


    “All right, guys,” said Josie. She wanted to make things interesting for the troops in


    town. She concentrated and flung a bird up for everyone around her, marking the


    combatant dots on the pad as the firebirds streamed into the air like giant fireworks.


    Her group appeared on the other roof as their birds reached it. She made sure that she


    teleported over first to clear the way for them. She only had to hold the area for a


    minute before her birds reached their destination and dragged their passengers after


    them. Fass’s Fighters, and Jack, appeared a second later after she arrived. They went


    on guard, but no one challenged them.


    “They are all disappearing,” reported Lou. “It looks like the town is clearing of


    combatants.”


    “That’s my best friend,” said Jack. He pointed at Josie in her Zatanna persona. “I


    taught her everything she knows.”


    “You couldn’t teach a dog to bite,” said Josie. “Let’s do what we can before they try


    to regroup and stop us.”


    “No doors,” said Fass. “Do we transport down and go in through the doors now that


    the building is empty?”


    “I got it, Eric,” said Jack. “We’ll just have to find inside stairs. Try not to touch


    anything since we still don’t know how all of this works.”


    Jack touched his watch. His giant derelict formed up in his tattered suit. He knelt and


    brought one fist down on the roof. He punched through the stone. He dropped


    through and looked around.


    “Budd, go,” said Fass. “Lou. Cover the entrances. We don’t know how long we have


    before the army gets back. Emily, Cord, clear the top floor and start working your


    way down. Bosk, Cord. Ern, and Tave, hold the roof. Keep an eye out for the enemy.


    Anyone who sets up on the nearby buildings, shoot at them to keep them away from


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.us. Shoot them on the ground if you have to do that. Stick with me, Case. We’re


    going to help search and keep things running smoothly.”


    Josie waited for Fass’s Fighters to break up and start on their tasks. Aviras flew down


    to ride on Jack as he moved through the building. He hadn’t said anything, but he


    hadn’t stayed with Emily.


    Josie let Zatanna go and walked to the hole. She dropped to the next floor. The others


    were already sifting through everything. She followed along slowly. She doubted that


    their problem would be on the top floor, but you never knew.


    It would have been easy to send out a firebird. That would have taken her right to the


    source of their problem. She considered it as she walked down to the staircase at the


    end of the hall. She started down to the ground floor.


    The implanting of the seeds bothered her. What were they for other than control? Did


    they lead to the Lich Queen coming into power? What happened now that they were


    gone?


    Had Jack made them the targets of the Queen’s reprisal by killing her children?


    She foresaw Jack and her going to the capitol of Shemmaria and dealing out some


    rough justice to the government for this. And she didn’t care because all she could


    think was letting the bodies hit the floor.


    She reached the bottom floor. She paused at the layout taking up the entire ground


    floor. She saw Fass making sure his fighters were at the edge of the thing. She


    approved of that.


    There was no need for them to be close while she and Jack tried to figure out what


    was going on with what the Shemmarians had built.


    They had built a pit in the center of the ground floor. A woman lay in the pit. A tree


    had grown out of her naked chest. Marks covered her body. Her mouth had been


    stitched shut. Blood circled her body, inching over the sides of her body. Her eyes


    were closed.


    “I don’t think we can fix her like we did the others,” Josie said. “Just the thing


    growing out of her would kill her as soon as we try to take it out of her with your


    teleporter trick.”


    “I have no idea what we can do,” said Jack. He scratched the back of his head. “I have


    never seen anything like this. Has anybody seen anything like this?”


    “No.” said Fass.


    “There’s the Goblin Tree story, but I don’t know if this is close to that,” said Emily.


    “We need something before she wakes up and tries to kill us,” said Jack.


    Josie punched him in the arm. The last thing they needed was fear of the unknown.


    They had to figure this out and do it in such a way they left nothing for the


    Shemmarians to recover.


    “The story goes that a young maiden was talking to her true love and they decided to


    run away together,” said Emily. “At one point, they were attacked by a tribe of


    goblins. They were separated and the maiden was taken. The lover, a knight and


    adventurer, pursued the goblins. When he caught up with them, they had turned his


    love into a tree. He began to hunt all the tribes down in his grief.”


    “No solutions?,” asked Jack.


    “Not in the story,” said Emily. “He burned the tree down from what the story said.”


    “Which is what we might have to do here,” said Josie. “I would like to meet the guy


    who thought this was a good thing.”


    “You and me both,” said Jack. He frowned at the woman in the pit. “I think we are


    going to need to separate this out into component parts and hope she doesn’t wake up


    and try to kill us with all the dead people outside.”


    “Stop,” said Josie. “Let’s start with a scan to see what we can do. Then we go at the


    weak points to whatever this ritual is. I’m going to close the building up first so we


    have time. Eric, take your guys upstairs. You don’t want to be around for this.”


    “Two of us have to be here in case something goes wrong,” said Fass. “Lou, take a


    station by the exit. Budd, take the others upstairs and guard the approaches.


    Remember you will have to make any of these wizards drop their books before you


    can kill them.”


    “Don’t get killed,” said Budd. He waved at the others to head up the stairs in front of


    him.


    “The witches will protect me,” said Fass.


    “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Jack. He looked around the room. “Go ahead with your


    idea, Jo. Maybe once we learn something about this, we can pick out the weak spots.”


    Josie pulled on Zatanna again. She closed all the doors and any windows with rocks.


    She wanted to fight her way out, not let her enemies rush in while they were trying


    to fix what they had uncovered.


    She called on a book of knowledge and asked for the parts to be evaluated. She


    frowned at the tree process description. It required a lot of blood to grow the tree as


    big as it did. It gave back seeds to put in others with careful harvesting.


    At least they knew why they needed all the women they had bought from the


    Montrose. They had no way of getting back any of the women who had been


    processed. They had extinguished all those lives for this.


    Josie felt her face putting on her mask. Someone would pay for this. The ding of a


    quest enacting filed in her mind to remind her of what she wanted to do. She nodded


    in her fury.


    She was glad the Society agreed with her because she was going to do it whether they


    liked it or not.


    “We can’t do anything for this woman,” said Josie. “This tree will throw seeds out.


    If they get into anything living, they take over, form trees, and give the victims an


    ability to command dead bodies to start working to bring it more victims to take over,


    or infect if they have another seed inside. We are looking at a zombie invasion.”


    “Walking dead?,” said Jack. “I hate that show. Everyone is so stupid.”


    “I like it,” said Josie. “But that’s what we’re looking at if this gets out. We’re all


    going to have to be checked out.”


    “I got it,” said Jack. “How do we deal with this?”


    “We are going to need to burn everything to the ground,” said Josie. “This whole


    town has to be destroyed.”


    “The whole town has to be burned down?,” asked Fass.


    “It has to be taken apart and cleaned,” said Josie. “A seed from one of these trees


    could reproduce and start the potential end of the world. And we might be too late


    getting here and dealing with this.”


    “I got this,” said Jack. “I know exactly how to take everything apart. Get everybody


    back to the quinjet and look them over, Jo. I’ll fix the rest of this.”


    “Are you sure?,” asked Josie.


    “I’ll keep Aviras to protect me,” said Jack. “We are going to add the people behind


    this to the Montrose. Something has to be done.”


    “All right,” said Josie. “I can grab everyone and send us back to the jet.”


    “Be ready to fly out of here if things reach out that far,” said Jack.


    “Don’t do anything stupid,” said Josie. She gestured for Eric and Lou to start up


    before her and get the others ready to go.


    “There are two kinds of people in this world,” said Jack. He didn’t grin at her. “The


    dead and the dying. Go ahead. We will be right behind you.”


    Josie didn’t like that look in his eye. She had seen it in school right before he tried to


    throw the head school bully down the steps in their middle school. She hurried after


    Fass and his helper.


    She had never thought of Jack as someone who got angry easily as they matured, but


    maybe she had been wrong.


    She sent out birds as she ran for the roof. She needed to move the others and check


    them out before Jack did whatever he planned to do. She nodded as the spells caught


    hold and sent the others away one by one. She hoped Eric kept them organized as she


    teleported herself away from the doomed town.