Giantfall Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  GIANTFALL

  (Book One of the Secret Magent series)

  by F. A. Bentley

  Kindle Edition / Copyright March 2017 F. A. Bentley

  Cover Art by Yoly Cortez

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork is prohibited without the express written consent of the author.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents occurring herein are solely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed solely for the reader’s personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the place it was purchased from and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of F. A.Bentley and other e-authors everywhere.

  For Charles Locke, sorcerous secret agent, no mission is ever easy. But when an average job nearly gets him killed, Charles finds himself neck deep in trouble with Norse supernaturals, shadowy manipulators, and even his own agency. With wand in hand, and a dubious she-devil’s aide, Charles Locke prepares himself to beat all odds. Or die trying.

  This is the first volume in the Secret Magent series; a short novel.

  Contents

  GIANTFALL

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I could already tell it was going to be a hectic night when Henry Dunkirk pulled the car up to the museum. Everything looked prim, proper, and quiet, but I didn’t develop a nose for trouble over the years for nothing.

  “Make sure we’re not seen, Mr. Dunkirk, I’d rather not have a well positioned sniper ruin my favorite overcoat,” I said.

  Henry however, let out a sigh as he stepped out of the car.

  “Come on Charles. Nobody’s aiming to put a bullet through that square jawed, pointed chinned, handsome head of yours. They’re patronizing us and you know it,” Henry muttered, “I just can’t believe the big wigs at NT would reduce us to bloody guard duty.”

  I shook my head and drew my wand. It was made of a stark white branch no more than a foot and an inch long. It had a no nonsense grip and a minimum of gaudy runes carved into it. I felt the thrum of its power the moment I tightened my grip around it.

  “If Nine Towers thinks there’s going to be a ‘terrorist’ attack at the Oslo Museum of Viking Ships, then surely goodness Mr. Dunkirk, they would not waste our talents on probably-nots.”

  “Talents like ours?” Henry seethed. “We’re as good as dead to them, otherwise they wouldn’t throw us into suicide missions every other week. We’re warlocks need I remind you.”

  I offered the Scotsman a lopsided smile. Unlike my black head of hair, Henry’s red mop stood out even in the dark of night. If anyone was going to get picked off by marksmen it’d be him, no questions asked. “Trust that NT thinks there’s something suitably dangerous inside just waiting to kill us, Henry.”

  The conversation died as I opened the museum door. Onward past the exhibitions we shadowed each other, taking turns running up and keeping an eye out for attacks. It didn’t take long to locate just the sort of trouble Nine Towers wanted us to find. I had my back to a baroque stairwell when I first heard it. Henry was crouching behind a lovingly restored longboat.

  Steady chanting filled the air, softly at first, growing louder by the moment. The syllables were not the usual magical fair. They were stilted, and half the voices chanted at specifically off tempo intervals. Worse, peering into the darkness I caught the glint of moonlight shining off of metal. It seemed as though we’d get a fight after all.

  “Situation?” mouthed Henry as I broke from cover and took position next to him.

  “Not many people know it, Mr. Dunkirk, but places full of old world artifacts are usually protected by wards to stop rogue wizards or angry giants stomping the place flat. Hell, most of them can even fizzle out tech used with an intent to destroy. Trucks, bombs, the sort. What we have here is a disenchantment spell. And that means...”

  “We go in staffs bloody blazing,” Henry eagerly finished, gripping his staff hard enough that his knuckles whitened.

  I nodded once before readying my wand and drawing my handgun from it’s holster.

  All hell broke loose as we opened fire. Steady chants turned to cries of surprise, and no sooner had we gunned down the nearest chanters than rifle fire erupted from the gallery.

  I dove away from the long ship as it got riddled with bullet holes, and crouched behind a display of Viking armor before the gunmen tracked me to my new location. Being a warlock for so long though, you get used to constantly being outnumbered. I’ve yet to get over the tediousness of it though.

  Henry began flanking the second he saw me pinned. He might whine a little more than is proper for a gentleman, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t know how to kill a man. The gunners didn’t even realize he was there until I heard him rattle off a hateful incantation, and baleful green fire incinerated them.

  “Charles,” Henry called out, as I shot a gunman running towards cover in the gallery.

  I drew in a breath, nodding my thanks to Henry. “We need to focus on the last of the chanters. Even as they are now they could still finish the ritual.”

  “With pleasure,” Henry eagerly replied.

  As one we broke from the stone wall, Henry blasting a gout of green fire past a Longship and flushing out another group of black clad gunmen. The second they were out in the open, I did what I was best at. I raised my wand and carefully spoke a word of power, putting a focused shard of arcana into the center mass of each one. None stirred from where they fell. />
  “Just two chanters behind the exhibit. Quickly now,” I told Henry.

  Henry grinned in response. “You should make your magic more flash--”

  A bolt of seething black slammed into Henry, cutting off his words and blowing him twenty feet backwards. Two boots thudded down before the statue of a Norse Jarl, and the clatter of chainmail rang in my ears.

  “Agents of the Nine Towers, just as he said there would be,” spoke the figure.

  He couldn’t have been more than three and a half feet tall, skin knobbed and green. Just like the gunners, looking back. They were all short. A putrid staff was held in one hand, and a rusty dagger in the other. His voice was gnarled and struggled to speak the words in English.

  “Goblin,” I spat.

  “Vettir!” He roared in reply, raising his dagger and snarling an incantation.

  Scorching pain thrilled up my hand before I had time to put a bullet in between his eyes. With a grunt I released hold of my gun, the metal handle seething red with the supernatural heat of the spell.

  Seeing his chance, the Goblin pointed his staff at me and uttered another hateful word. A seething mass of pitch black magic narrowly missed me as I leaped to the side. I landed with enough grace to propel myself into a dead sprint towards the mage, wand poised.

  Surprise shone in the Goblin’s eyes as he swung his crimson knife in a deadly arc. Ducking just in time to merely feel the back draft of flaming magic as it arced over my head, I whispered a word of power, and swung my wand at him.

  From the tip of my wand grew a slender, pale protrusion much like a mist, before solidifying into a hard violet blade. The staff the Vetti had positioned between me and his vitals would normally have been thick enough to stop even a well sharpened sword.

  Normally.

  A thin red slash, the gurgling sound of important organs being sliced, and the Vetti sorcerer fell. Quite dead.

  “Henry,” I called out, catching his hobbled movement from the corner of my eye.

  “Quickly now,” he gasped, leaning against the side of the stairwell.

  I turned to finish off the last of the ritual chanters, just in time to feel the enchantment clinging to the museum shudder, and then dissipate. My heart stopped. Not so much because the ward fell, but because I noticed the walls of the gallery were lined with explosives. Lots and lots of C4 to be specific.

  A gurgling laughter filled the hall, as a diminutive Vetti hag stepped out from behind the central statue. In her hands she held a suitcase filled with wires. A detonator already primed.

  “For Vettiheim,” she said, and activated the detonation sequence.

  Time was of the essence, but how to possibly escape the explosion? Just as I felt the hair on the back of my neck bristle at the thought of certain death, I saw it.

  “Henry,” I shouted, grasping him by the front of his jacket and tossing him to an elevator door. A singular, infernal beeping became many as the explosives synchronized.

  I slammed my fist against the button that called the elevator, and felt my adrenaline surge as the door opened immediately. No sooner had I mashed the basement button than the explosives went off.

  We were both knocked clean off our feet, rocking back and forth in the elevator’s wire before something gave, and the wire snapped. We feel a floor and a half before coming to a complete stop. Ground floor. Literally.

  In the dim glare of emergency lights, I let out a sigh of relief as I felt the vigor drain out of me. Alive. Just barely.

  I was unable to hide the anger from my voice. “Damnation. If we’d only been here five minutes earlier we’d have had them all dead and wrapped up with a pretty pink bow for NT to handle. We’re lucky to be alive.”

  Henry let out weak, soppy laughter, “No Charles. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  As my eyes adjusted to the dark I understood what Henry meant. He was bleeding from an immense hole in his stomach. The sorcerer’s black ball wasn’t force magic but a projectile meant to pierce. I swore underneath my breath.

  “Make them pay,” Henry struggled to say, before closing his eyes for the last time.

  I shook my head and clasped his bloody hand in mine, “I will.”

  Chapter 2

  I walked in the shadow of the blocky skyscrapers of Oslo. I’d always liked the winter time more than the spring, but I think Norway’s capital took its wintertime too seriously. All the snow and frigid clime however couldn’t take away from the people’s warmth.

  Not to wax poetic, but I had yet to see a street that wasn’t populated by packed groups of Mundanes happily going about their lives, or talking about the explosion at the museum.

  I swallowed an oncoming snort of contempt. Ignorance is bliss.

  Crossing the street, I finally caught sight of what I had been looking for. OPERAHUSET read the sign. The Opera House. It didn’t take long before I located my contact too. Easy to find didn’t make him a pleasant man to deal with.

  Though I suppose ‘man’ isn’t the proper term to use.

  Looking as innocent as a new born babe, I approached the illegitimate child of a merchant’s stall and a jewelry cart. It was painted a sickly blue-grey, looked more than a little well worn, and was manned by what can only be described as a beard that had grown a face.

  “Good day good day,” spoke the bearded man jovially. “Might I interest you in a silver ring? Perhaps a golden necklace for the missus?”

  “Gold and silver is fine, but do you do any work with Meteoric Iron?” I spoke the code phrase.

  The change was instantaneous. The man’s smile evaporated and he replied in a huff, “Where’s Harry?”

  “Complications. He did not survive. What information do you have for me on this one Lodri?”

  Lodri was four feet and two inches short. He was wide and stocky and he blended in excellently with Mundane society. This is why Nine Towers loved him so much. Easy to convince people that he was a man with a medical condition and an aversion to exercise, instead of a mythical Dwarf.

  Unlike Lodri though, the Scottish accent Dwarves had in movies was pure fiction. “Not much information really,” he replied in his baritone voice. “The museum was a Locus, your instincts were right on that one, but it didn’t belong to any Norse God. It’s a Jotun Locus.”

  Human beings liked to think themselves past masters of the world. Too adult and too self assured in the hard sciences to believe in fairy tales. A convenient lie, there to keep minds ordered and confidence high. Gods? Monsters? Magic? Nonsense.

  Unfortunately, just because something should not exist rarely stops that something from existing and existing comfortably. Scandinavia had a lot of somethings thriving just out of eyesight and under noses.

  “How do these magical hot spots work here in Norway, Lodri?” I asked.

  Lodri’s pinprick irises focused on me. “Just like what you’re used to. You’d be surprised the sort of similarities Sidhe and Vanir magic has with Aesir enchanting, warlock.”

  Nine Towers initially thought that if someone was targeting the museum, that it’d be because there was something valuable to one of the Norse Gods there. The Aesir, as they like to call themselves.

  If what Lodri said was true though, then the Norse Gods, for once, were not the target of subtle trickery. Jotun; the Giants. They were the real victims here, but why?

  “You seem fairly cool headed despite the layer of hair, master Dwarf,” I said, the shadow of a smile tugging at my lips, “That means you’ve already received word from upstairs. What’s the job?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Human,” Lodri shot back. “Your mission is to find the head of this serpent and cut it off. Whoever planned the attack on the museum is setting things into motion. And it’s very inconvenient for business as usual. Do you understand my meaning?”

  “Probably why they want me going ahead despite the danger to my precious life.”

  Lodri furrowed his brows in a humorless stare, “You are to receive a few trinkets to aide you. From N
ine Towers. You’re welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I said in a voice as devoid of thankfulness as I could manage.

  Lodri ignored me with a master’s skill, his chubby hand relinquishing a dense weighty stone on the jewelry cart’s table like pocket change. “First, this rune stone. Dwarf make. That rune in the middle means protection. It can stop anything from a bullet to a bolt of lightning. Does not work well against sustained harm.”

  The rune stone fit firmly in the palm of my hand, and as I gripped my fingers around it, I felt the thrum of potent power welling within. They certainly don’t make them like they used to. I wonder how much gold Nine Towers threw at Lodri for it.

  “Much obliged,” I said, tucking the stone into my breast pocket.

  “And you’ll have this hammer too. Here.”

  I nodded thankfully as I took the hammer in my hand. I say hammer, but it was actually smaller than the rune stone. A tiny affair made of brass or something very similar. I gave the Dwarf a searching look.

  “It’s not the harm. It’s the noise it makes. It’s had enough sound packed into it to simulate a hit from heavy ordinance. Hit something with it and a hundred years of air raid sirens and fire alarms all come blasting out in a fraction of a second. Sound magic,” Lodri said.

  He must have made it himself to be that proud.

  “Tumultumancy. Sound magic indeed. It’s a very fine weapon, I’ll put it to good use.”

  Lodri snorted anew. “You’d better. That’s all, Locke. You may go.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Oh? Usually my gracious benefactors are specific in the ways I go about these missions. Are you telling me, master Dwarf, that I am officially unleashed upon the foes of Nine Towers? License to kill? Ends justifying means?”

  The Dwarf nodded solemnly, “If it’s not the Giants hassling the Gods, then it’s the Gods hassling the Giants. I guarantee it. Find the Aesir. Hunt down any leads you come across. I’ll be in touch,” He handed me a card regarding an Aesir representative or another, and then shut his jewelry cart up.