The rain had not let up.
It fell in cold, steady sheets over the narrow street, drumming against rusted awnings and pooling in the cracks between the slick, ancient bricks. It slid harmlessly off their dragon-hide cloaks, turned aside by expertly woven Impervius charms, so they stood dry in the downpour with no shimmering shield to give away their position. The rain was the only cover they needed. The only light came from a single flickering gas lamp at the far end of the alley, and its weak glow bled into nothing long before it reached the building across from them.
Sirius stood motionless at the mouth of the alley, water dripping off the rim of his hood, his gaze locked on the door.
Rage burned behind his ribs. Every instinct he'd been born with was telling him to kick down the door and curse anything that moved. He had been that man once, hot-headed and reckless, quick to act and slow to think. Years as an Auror and a Custodian had beaten the habit out of him, one hard lesson at a time, and he leaned on every one of those lessons now. If he lost his head, Lyra would pay for it.
His wife and friends had always teased him on his paranoid obsession on security. But sewing tracking runes into the lining of all four of his children's clothes was, without question, the best decision he had ever made. The dowsing ritual on Mara's map had pulled him through the bayou to this exact spot.
This part of town was the Louisiana answer to Knockturn Alley, only dirtier, darker, and far more deserted.
The building looked like a ruin. Sagging timber, shuttered windows, a heavy door rotting black with damp. It was the kind of place a wizard would walk past without a second glance, which was exactly why the men Odalie had hired had chosen it.
Somewhere behind those walls was his daughter.
The thread of his tracking magic tugged at his chest like an iron hook, dragging him forward. Every fatherly instinct he had was screaming at him to tear the walls down with his bare hands. But the Auror in him counted the entry points, studied the shadows, and checked his grip on his wand.
They had taken his daughter. They had used dark hoodoo in his room. And now they were going to learn why the House of Black and the ICW Custodians were feared across oceans.
Beside him, Mara checked her wand for the third time. Bea, the other Custodian, hadn't said a word since they'd arrived. Behind them, Étienne's men waited in the shadows with their hoods up against the rain, silent and watchful.
Sirius didn't look away from the door as he spoke, his voice low and quiet beneath the rain. "I don't trust them."
"I agree," Mara said quietly, "but the others are still on their way, and we can't wait for them to arrive. They might move Lyra to another location. I scouted the building. There are over fifty of them inside."
"Fifty." Sirius's grip tightened on his wand, his voice flat and cold. "Then I'll go through all fifty of them."
"Captain, might I remind you that we're to keep casualties to a minimum," Mara said. "Bodies mean a bloody paperwork nightmare, and we will never hear the end of it from the Major." (Isaac)
Sirius did not answer right away.
The rain hammered the rooftops. Somewhere inside that sagging building, his child was awake in a place she didn't know, among strangers who had put their hands on her, calling for a father who hadn't come. The thought lodged in his chest like a blade, and it was all he could do to keep his wand arm from shaking.
"I know," he said at last, each word low and clipped, his gaze never leaving the door. "I'll keep it to a minimum. I won't promise they'll enjoy it."
Mara's shoulders eased a fraction.
*****
The first explosion split the night open.
It came from the front of the building, a deep, rolling crack that shook rainwater from the eaves. Shouts followed, then the crackle of curses and the thunder of boots. Étienne's men had begun.
"Now," Sirius said.
The three of them moved. They kept to the shadows along the side of the building, cloaks dark against the wet brick and slipped in through the back while the house turned toward the noise. Inside, the air hit Sirius like a wall.
He had always had a sharp nose, and tonight it was a curse. Every scent in the place came at him at once. Damp rot, old smoke, spilled spirits. Beneath it all lay something worse, thick and sweet and sour, the stink of meat left too long. His eyes watered. His stomach turned.
He breathed through his mouth and pushed on, because the scent also told him where the people were.
Left. Two of them. Close.
He raised a hand. Mara and Bea froze behind him. A second later, two mercenaries jogged past the mouth of the corridor, wands drawn, faces turned toward the fighting.
Sirius's stunner took the first in the back. Bea's hit the second before he could turn. Mara caught the first man's body before it hit the boards and eased it down without a sound.
They kept moving.
Another explosion shook the walls somewhere ahead. Dust rained from the ceiling. A guard stumbled around a corner, too close, and Mara stunned him before he could shout. Another followed, and Bea dropped him. They slid from shadow to shadow, quick and quiet, and every time Sirius's nose said someone's near, one of them was already moving.
Then they passed an open doorway, and Sirius stopped.
The room beyond was a storeroom. Hides hung from the rafters, stretched and drying, their patterns too strange to be ordinary beasts. Crates lined the walls, and through the slats he glimpsed horns, claws, and things he did not want to look at closely. The stench poured out of it, and it explained the smell.
Bea stopped beside him. "Poachers," she murmured, her voice tight with disgust. "On top of everything else."
Sirius said nothing. His jaw tightened.
Then the air changed.
It was a faint thing, a prickle across his skin and a sharp, metallic tang that cut straight through the stench. His nose knew it a half-second before his mind did. Ozone. The hair on his arms rose beneath his sleeves.
"Move!" he barked.
They threw themselves apart. Lightning split the corridor where they had been standing, a crackling white web that snapped around the empty space and left the boards scorched black. The afterimage burned across Sirius's vision as he rolled to his feet, wand up, his heart hammering.
"Well," a deep voice rumbled from the dark, "this is interesting."
A figure stepped out of the storeroom doorway. He was enormous, broad enough to fill the frame, and a mask of yellowed bone covered his face, empty eye sockets staring out at them. Rainwater dripped from the hides draped over his shoulders. In one massive hand, his wand looked like a splinter.
"I bet you people are the ones behind the explosions. A likely distraction—"
They didn't let him finish.
"DEPULSO!" Bea casted.
The man threw up a Protego, and the banishing charm splashed harmlessly against it. Mara's stunner followed the same instant, a red bolt that cracked against the shield and sent ripples across it. He staggered a half-step, grunting.
It was barely a stagger at all.
"Accio!" Bea tried, her wand snapping toward him. The man slid forward a single foot, his boots gouging the floorboards, and then he simply stopped, as though the spell had tugged at a boulder. Mara's flipendo struck him square in the chest. He rocked back one step, rolled his massive shoulders like a man shrugging off a gust of wind, and the bone mask tilted, almost curious.
The two Custodians exchanged a glance. Nothing forceful was going to move him. They are going to need high tier spells. That was going to take time, and time was the one thing they didn't have.
"Captain," Mara said without looking away, her wand never wavering. "Go. We've got him."
Sirius didn't hesitate. The thread in his chest pulled him toward the far end of the corridor, and he slipped past the giant's flank while both Custodians pressed in, their spells forcing the man's shield back and drawing his attention away from Sirius.
He didn't stop. A guard burst out of a side door, and Sirius's stunner dropped him before he could raise his wand. Another opened his mouth to shout, and a second stunner cut it off. He crumpled in a heap. Sirius stepped over both without breaking stride. The thread in his chest pulled harder with every step, and he followed it deeper into the stench and the dark.
*****
Earlier...
Deep inside the secure, windowless backroom of the safehouse, far from the damp, rotting timber of the outer corridors, with little Lyra locked securely away in a separate holding room down the hall, Madam Odalie Delacroix stood in the center of the cracked floorboards, her face an absolute mask of fury.
She hadn't planned on coming to this wretched safehouse tonight. But her head enforcer had returned to the estate frantic, explaining that the third-party mercenaries she had hired to snatch the girl were suddenly giving her men a hard time, refusing to hand over the child without a massive renegotiation.
Standing before her were the mercenaries, their rain-slicked cloaks dripping onto the floor. Their leader, a scarred man with a brutal, unapologetic grin, leaned casually against the doorframe, showing a shocking lack of deference to the most dangerous woman in the bayou.
"More?" Odalie repeated, her voice dropping into a razor-thin, dangerous hiss. "I gave you your retainer upfront, and the remainder was delivered the moment the girl was secured. I already paid you."
The mercenary chuckled, a low, grating sound. "Yeah, you paid us to snatch a gifted little medium kid from a tourist suite. Standard wetwork, standard fee. But nobody said anything about a bonus hazard."
Odalie's jaw tightened. She was immensely wealthy; she could afford a hundred times what she had paid them. But it was the sheer audacity of common thugs trying to squeeze a Delacroix.
"You dare extort me?" Odalie stepped forward, her magic flaring around her fingertips like static electricity. "You take me for a fool? Name your price and then pray I don't skin you alive for your insolence."
The mercenary didn't flinch. In fact, his grin only widened.
"Oh, we know you're rich, Madam. But we also know who the kid really is," the man said, tapping the side of his head. "When we grabbed her from the hotel, we just followed your orders. But we ripped open the hem of her robes to check for wards or tracking charms, and we found the lining. Pure-blood aristocratic work bearing the unmistakable crest of the House of Black."
Odalie froze, the anger in her chest suddenly giving way to a sharp, cold spike of alarm. They knew whose child this was.
The man stepped closer, enjoying every second of her sudden realization.
"We know about the Blacks, Madam," the mercenary sneered, crossing his arms. "Old-world European nobility. Filthy rich, connected to half the high courts across the ocean. But a kid who is both a Black and a high-grade raw medium? Do you have any idea what kind of astronomical fortune she would fetch at an international black-market auction? Far more than your lousy kidnapping fee."
The man leaned in, his voice dropping into a mocking whisper.
"Who knew? You sure were hiding her identity aren't ya?. Because now, the price of your little private project just went up by about ten million galleons, or else we walk out these doors and straight to the nearest portkey to sell her to the highest bidder."
Odalie stared at him, her chest heaving as pure, murderous fury flooded her veins. She had outsmarted MACUSA. She had brought down her sister. She had even bypassed the great House of Black. But she had been outmaneuvered by low-level cutthroats who had stumbled onto a goldmine and torn through the girl's clothes like common thieves.
Before Odalie could raise her wand to incinerate the ungrateful wretch right where he stood, the floor beneath their feet suddenly shuddered.
A deep, rolling roar, like thunder shook the foundations of the safehouse, rattling the oil lamp on the desk and sending dust cascading down from the ceiling.
Shouts echoed from the hallway outside.
Odalie's head snapped toward the heavy wooden door. What was that?
The mercenary leader's grin finally faltered.
He spun toward the door, one hand dropping to his wand, and barked an order to his men. It was the wrong order. Odalie's enforcers had been waiting just outside the room, and they had been waiting for exactly this.
"Take them," Odalie said coldly.
They poured through the doorway with their wands already raised. Hexes lit the room. A mercenary caught a binding curse mid-turn and toppled like a felled tree. Another fired wildly, was disarmed before his spell left his wand, and was slammed face-first into the floor. The scarred leader threw up a shield, barely, and shouted something about the girl.
"Eben," Odalie said.
Her head enforcer's curse shattered the shield. The leader hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster and slid down it, his wand skittering across the boards.
The Mercenaries lay groaning along the walls or sprawled unconscious, and Odalie stepped over the leader's outstretched legs without looking down.
Another explosion rolled through the safehouse, closer this time. Her hired thugs had completely botched the operation, and the intruders were already inside. Panic and fury driving her forward, she bypassed the main hallway and threw open the door to the holding room, determined to grab the child and drag her through the private escape tunnel herself.
"We are moving. Now," Odalie snapped, stepping into the dim room and reaching out to yank the little girl off the bench.
Lyra slowly turned her head.
Odalie froze mid-motion, the breath dying in her throat.
Lyra's eyes weren't her usual silver anymore. They weren't even human. From edge to edge, they were pitch-black voids, swallowing the light of the room. A suffocating, freezing pressure filled the space, smelling of ozone, swamp water, and rotting earth.
Odalie's gaze dropped to the child's throat, and her blood ran cold.
The collar of Lyra's robes hung loose and bare. The heavy, silver-and-bone enchanted suppression necklace, the specific ward Odalie had explicitly ordered the kidnappers to lock around the girl's neck to anchor her raw mediumship, was completely missing.
"Putain de merde!" Odalie hissed, her voice trembling with a sudden, vicious rage. Incompetent, brainless vermin! How in Merlin's name had those thick-skulled idiots ever survived a week as mercenaries? They had forgotten the necklace.
Without that suppression ward to anchor the girl's aura, the terror of the raid had shattered her defenses wide open. Odalie knew the signs all too well. A predatory, high-tier bayou spirit had smelled an unshielded, hyper-powerful vessel and plunged straight inside her.
Before Odalie could even scramble backward to cast a binding seal, Lyra's head snapped back. Her jaw parted, and she let out a sound that wasn't a child's cry, but a concussive, sonic wave of pure spirit-force.
CRACK.
BOOM!
The shockwave tore through the room. Odalie and her enforcers were violently hurled backward off their feet, smashing hard against the stone walls before sliding down into a heap of groaning, ringing limbs.
Odalie gasped for air, clutching her bruised ribs as she scrambled to lift her head. What she saw made her heart skip a beat.
A thick, dark line of blood had begun to well up in the corners of Lyra's black eyes, tracking in crimson streaks down her pale cheeks and dripping steadily off the end of her nose. The four-year-old's tiny body was convulsing violently, trembling under the crushing, hostile weight of an entity far too powerful for a mortal child to host.
No, Odalie thought, a spike of genuine panic overriding her ambition. She's too young. Her vessel can't take a higher-tier entity. If that spirit doesn't get out right now, it's going to burn her alive from the inside out.
"You!" Odalie shrieked at her lead enforcer, her voice cracking with frantic urgency. "Deal with the intruders! I must draw this spirit out before her body gives out!"
The enforcer scrambled to his feet, drawing his wand just as the door at the end of the hall crashed inward.
*****
Down the damp corridor, Sirius's tracking magic pulled him straight to the room. He didn't bother picking locks or checking corners.
Sirius blasted the heavy door off its hinges.
The splinters hadn't even touched the floor before the room erupted in sickly green light. Two enforcers fired twin Killing Curses straight through the dust cloud, followed by a dark, bone-rending hex.
Sirius didn't flinch. He dropped low, sliding beneath the first green bolt as it scorched the stone wall behind him. In one fluid, brutal movement, Sirius came up on one knee and swept his wand downward, invoking, "Fractura!"
The stone floor beneath the two enforcers detonated upward, jagged shards of rock tearing through their shields like shrapnel. As the men stumbled back, bleeding and disoriented, Sirius unleashed a blast. The sheer pressure smashed both wizards back into the stone wall with a sickening crunch, knocking them cold before they hit the ground.
A third enforcer—a massive wizard covered in dark ritual runes—stepped over his fallen comrades, his wand slashing down in a blood-curdling curse. "Sectum—"
"Fulmen!" Sirius roared.
A heavy, crackling whip of dark golden lightning erupted from the tip of Sirius's wand, coiling around the dark wizard's torso like a striking viper. The high-tier spell neutralized the man's core instantly, collapsing him into violent convulsions on the floorboards.
Sirius didn't stop. He pivoted on his heel, his gray eyes glowing with a terrifying, ancient fury as the temperature in the room plunged. A fourth enforcer attempted to cast an Unforgivable from behind a reinforced mahogany desk.
Sirius didn't even bother aiming around it.
"Reducto!"
A blinding beam of blue-white energy exploded from his wand, obliterating the solid desk into flying ash and blasting the enforcer through the drywall behind him.
More enforcers poured in from the side doorways, wands raised, a storm of hexes already leaving their tips.
Sirius dropped to his knees amid the falling ash and drove the tip of his wand into the floor.
"Fulmen."
For one heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the stone lit from beneath. Gold-white lightning burst out of his wand in a spiraling web, racing across the cracked floor in jagged veins, climbing the walls, crawling up the legs of overturned tables. The hexes aimed at him fizzled out in the glare. The air cracked and stank of scorched hair.
The web found every enforcer in the room at once. They jerked rigid, wands clattering from spasming fingers, and dropped one after another, twitching on the boards.
The lightning guttered out around his knees. He stayed there a moment, breathing hard, then rose.
Every one of Odalie's enforcers lay crumpled in the wreckage.
All were still breathing, which was more than they deserved.
Sirius stood amidst the wreckage, his coat swirling around him, his wand tip humming with lethal intent, and his gaze locking onto Odalie.