Before Kinara and Venika took Shaw to Varüus’kiel to prepare for the Wild Hunt and Rei got to work, I decided that I needed to have a few more words with him. This time, though, for the sake of brevity, I magically ensured that he was compelled to not only answer all questions asked honestly, but that he would only provide the answers. I didn’t really care to hear any more of his racial slurs or hateful rhetoric before every damn question he answered, not that it did anything about the hatred burning in his eyes.

First, we needed to know what orders he had given, and to whom, regarding the Changed in general and our group in particular, including how he had contacted them to issue orders. I figured that this would make Rei’s job faster and easier. I thanked the Danu for my Yseil’dhraí memory since I had to commit it all to memory to help Rei with the task ahead of him.

I also needed to know some things about how Shaw normally contacted the Minister of Defense so Rei could be convincing when he made that call. We needed to know small things like how he usually addressed him and his tone, as well as whether they used any code phrases or anything similar to confirm their identities when making unscheduled contact. Spy agencies are paranoid as hell, and for good reason, since they usually have so many skeletons in their closets.

It was a good idea to look into things like that because there were indeed code phrases involved, and Shaw and the Minister weren’t exactly buddies. In fact, I would classify Shaw as more of a minion with similar ideals. They didn’t speak to one another outside of work-related ‘national security’ issues, and the only reason that Shaw ever called the minister directly was for the occasional progress reports or when they were extremely screwed.

Once I finished pumping Shaw for the information we needed, Venika and Kinara took him back to Varüus’kiel to get ready for the Wild Hunt and keep an eye on him, as I had asked. Meanwhile, I started helping Rei to change some orders and policies regarding the Changed in general and us in particular. The first part was as easy as sending updated orders through the CSIS and DCA email lists, but it still took Rei over an hour to contact everyone whom Shaw had given personal orders to, rescind those orders, and order them to cease current operations against the Changed.

In a couple of cases, Rei had to get Shaw’s secretary to send people in the building to his office for a personal talk, and I had to place a concealment spell on the rest of us while he did so. He did a pretty good job of it, too. Since it was fairly obvious to anyone that Shaw hated non-humans and was all too happy to order and enact their brutal orders against the Changed, Rei played the role of a very convincing pissed off Shaw who wasn’t happy about these new orders from the top and had no choice but to go along with them. Acting so pissed off not only sold the act, but it also ensured that those people who were called to the Director’s office were eager to leave again as soon as possible.

While I was helping Rei with the off-site contact information so he could do his thing as Shaw, I had Daenyss and Salem contacting every media and news agency (local, provincial, and federal) that they could find with online searches. Then, in the unlikely event that the newshounds wouldn’t take the bait and things fell through, I teleported to the warehouse in Vancouver to collect the tiny artificed stealth drone that Grell had made, and to let Grell and Whisper know the plan and to keep an eye on the drone footage. I also had Lilith and her girls consulting with Daenyss and doing something for me as well.

Now it was time to contact the Minister of Defense so we could set up the main event, which meant calling him directly. It was far from the usual procedure for Shaw to do that; he only did so when there was either a major situation or an opportunity that the Minister needed to know about. So, we stayed as quiet as we could to not give ourselves away, and so I could listen to the conversation with my sharp, elven ears, as Rei opened the conversation with a simple, “It’s Shaw, Sir.”

Since this kind of direct contact was highly unusual, I wasn’t surprised to hear the voice on the other end of the call immediately respond, “Bryan, how’s the weather over there?” That was a code phrase asking why he was calling and where the situation or opportunity was. If it was good news (for them), Shaw would respond that it was clear and sunny and give the location of the opportunity in question.

Rei, however, responded with the other option as he said, “There’s a major storm here in Ottawa.”

That got the Minister’s immediate attention, and his tone sounded very serious as he asked, “What’s the situation?”

“Sir, I had a visit earlier from that Fae bitch, Taelya, and her freak show.” Rei’s teeth were clenched, and he didn’t look or sound happy about talking about me, himself, and the others that way, but he needed to sell the act, and his anger would probably help with that as much as the words themselves. He took a deep breath before adding, “They just appeared in my office out of thin air, and they want your head. They wanted to know where my orders came from. I’ve put them on the wrong trail for now, but it won’t be long before they put two and two together and decide to come after you.”

“Shit,” the Minister cursed.

“You should leave your office, Sir,” Rei encouraged in Shaw’s voice. “Don’t go home, or anywhere else that you usually frequent. I’ve arranged a private jet for you; it has no obvious ties to either you or the agency. It will be waiting at the airport, along with trusted agents who will take you to a safehouse when you get to where you’re going. When you arrive at the airport, go to gate seven. An agent will be waiting for you; he will be wearing a red baseball cap and will greet you as ‘Joe’ and act like the two of you are old friends. Good luck, Sir. I need to leave as well, before they decide to come back for me.”

With that, Rei disconnected the call and let out a long sigh as he shifted back to his male Kitsune form. As soon as he finished doing so, I kissed him for being willing to do such a distasteful thing as pretending to be that loathsome man and looking and sounding like him. “You did a great job, Honey. So, do you think he’ll take the bait?”

“I can’t be sure,” he replied with a shrug. “It sounded like he was frantically doing something in the background, though, while I was giving him those bogus instructions, and he was breathing heavily, so maybe he was panicking and getting ready to flee the Capitol.”

It was barely a few minutes later that Lilith informed me, “The address, aerial map, and photo of this ‘Minister’ that Daenyss found on her phone proved fruitful, my Goddess. Four of my girls are currently keeping themselves invisible and watching the location’s exits for any sign of the man… Oh, that was fast indeed.”

“Has one of them spotted him?” I queried.

The Succubus matriarch nodded as she replied, “Yes, my Goddess, or at least someone who looks very like the man in the photo. From the way that he just ran out the front door of the building, it would seem that he was in a hurry. I will have Jezebel follow him, and the others will continue to watch the exits for now, just in case.”

That was good. I didn’t want to lose that asshole if he decided to run on his own instead of sticking to the plan. Speaking of the plan, though, I had to ask Lilith, “And how is Chalise’s task proceeding?”

“She has flown to this airport you told us about, using the directions that Daenyss gave her, and is waiting near the main entrance, as you requested. We can teleport to her location at any time,” Lilith reported.

Well, it seemed like everything was going to plan, so far at least. After quickly casting an invisibility spell on both me and my companions, I teleported us all to Chalise’s location, not far from the airport entrance. Sure, I probably could have just had Jezebel nab the Minister and bring him back to Varüus’kiel for an interrogation and the Wild Hunt, but that would do very little to help my goals in general. No, I wanted some transparency, to expose whatever his game was to the public. I had a plan for that, and now I just needed to wait for the players to arrive.

The representatives of various media outlets arrived first, as I was hoping, most of them waiting in small groups near the airport entrance for the guest of honor to arrive. We had informed the media first, after all, and I had Daenyss and Salem drop information about the Minister of Defense using the email address that Whisper had used for spreading the information about the black sites, and to clear the names of people linked to Pegasus Entertainment. The information that I had them drop indicated that the Minister of Defense had ordered the capture, torture, and deaths of Canadian citizens, including children.

Those hints of incriminating information had probably done a very good job of getting their attention, especially since it seemed that he was already under fire from the opposition in Parliament for the CSIS server breach and the initial formation of the DCA without going through proper government procedures. When I had Salem and Daenyss include the ‘inside information’ that said Minister was planning to leave the city through this very airport before he could be exposed, it was no wonder that the newshounds had jumped on this opportunity. They never could resist the lure of a juicy government scandal.

When the guest of honor finally did arrive, he wasn’t dressed in a manner consistent with his position. In fact, he was wearing a black baseball cap, sunglasses, and an old bomber jacket to try to conceal his identity. I was only certain that it was him because Jezebel was still tailing him. She loyally pointed him out to me by informing me of his presence as he crossed the parking lot and let me see through her eyes.

Once he had pushed past a group of reporters and was nearly at the airport’s main entrance, I summoned a blustering wind to blow off his hat. Then, I quickly cast a force field spell between him and the airport entrance, preventing him from fleeing inside and getting lost in the crowd. Only once he was pressing against the barrier, trying to get through it, did I shout, “Hey! Isn’t that the Minister of Defense?!”

The present members of the press descended upon him like a swarm of locusts, even as he turned and tried to back away, only to be stopped short by my barrier spell. A flurry of questions bombarded him as every camera in the area was suddenly pointed at him. Just to be thorough, I released the stealth drone as well, which floated away and turned invisible to the naked eye, showing that Whisper or Grell was monitoring it as I’d asked.

The scene was already frantic as I cast the truth spell on my target, one that would ensure that he answered all questions truthfully and was unable to say anything else. It turned to pure chaos, though, once I dropped the glamours that were making me and my entourage look like just another group of eager reporters and projected my voice over the barrage of questions already being asked to say, “Well, isn’t this convenient? I have some questions for Mr. Fergusson as well.”

I wasn’t about to call him by his title to his face or in front of these reporters, not after how he was abusing his position to launch a crusade against my people. Cameras whipped toward me as my words rang out, and people realized who I was. Fergusson attempted to use the opportunity to get away by pushing back through the crowd of reporters, but Nishalle put a stop to that.

My sister appeared from his shadow before he could inject himself into the crowd, blocking his path and shoving him backward. “Nuh-uh, Asshole, you’re not running away from this,” she hissed as he backed away from her in terror. “People have questions, and you’re going to tell the truth.”

I silently thanked my sister since I was trying to keep enough distance between me and the press to avoid turning a good portion of them into drooling idiots from my aura. Then I took advantage of the cameras being focused on me as I called out, “My first question, Mr. Fergusson, is who ordered the assassination attempts on me and Robyn Reyes?”

Heads and cameras turned back toward the politician so fast that I would be surprised if nobody had gotten whiplash. The moment that he replied, “I did,” shocked murmurs spread through the crowd of reporters. Not surprising since he had just admitted to ordering the assassination of not just me, but also a popular pop star and human rights activist on camera, and some of these were live feeds.

The reporters fired other questions at him, mostly about the black sites, whether the information about the atrocities that they had performed there was true, and about the witch hunt for anyone associated with Pegasus Entertainment. He confirmed the truth of all of it, though he didn’t look very happy about it, and admitted that he had given those orders as well when asked. The answers were honest, and ones that I already knew he would give, but he gave no more information than what was asked for.

Technically, he had given those orders to his underling, Shaw, but I wanted to know if it was truly him or if somebody else, like the Prime Minister, was behind it all. Was Fergusson just another convenient patsy? Had somebody else been giving him those orders to pass on? So, I decided to ask more directly. “Was it just you, or was someone else giving you those orders?”

“It was someone else,” he admitted, even as he continued to back away from my sister and pressed against my barrier spell, hoping to find a way out of his current situation.

“Who? And what are you getting out of this?” I pressed.

“He called himself Z…” Fergusson’s reply was cut short by his own scream as a lightning bolt manifested from what was a mostly clear, blue sky. Even if the sky had been overcast, my sense of Nature told me that that lightning was anything but natural. Not to mention that it had struck Fergusson dead on when he was standing right outside of a building, and there was a large crowd of people close by.

“Real fucking subtle, Zeus!” I shouted at the sky in general, not caring at the moment about not swearing. This was a damn good time to swear, and it wasn’t like Venika was here to chastise me this time. I was deeply regretting not putting a dome-shaped barrier over this little shotgun press conference instead of just blocking the door.

“Rei, see what you can do for him,” I whispered to my Kitsune fiancé as I readied spells for defense. “No letting him off easy, use your Resurrection prayer if you have to, he has a debt to pay to our people.”

I didn’t think that any Gods would risk appearing in person with so many mortals and cameras around, but I hadn’t exactly expected Zeus to blatantly strike someone down in full view of those same people and cameras either. However, this did answer the question about who was responsible for my problems with the DCA, and it made a certain amount of sense that Zeus was using them to stir the pot and work against the peace that I was fighting for.

While I was brooding and preparing for an attack, including summoning a force field dome large enough to cover everyone gathered here outside the airport’s entrance, my protectors closed ranks around me, Salem, and Daenyss. Nishalle, Pete, Lissany, Harley, and Lilith formed a defensive circle around us, along with Jezebel and three others from Lilith’s brood. Chalise and another of Lilith’s daughters materialized to flank Rei as she approached the now extra crispy politician.

He wasn’t moving, not even twitching from the massive jolt of electricity that had just taken him down. Rei bent down beside him, feeling for a pulse, but frowned at what she found. Then, still in the view of the reporters and any cameras that hadn’t been fried by proximity to such a large burst of electricity, the Kitsune priest cast what I immediately recognized as his Resurrection prayer.

Rei had used that prayer a few times since we returned to the real world from the game, mostly during the attack of Tiamat’s dragons and when Ares and company had set up that ambush for us in my old stomping grounds. The prayer couldn’t bring just anyone back to life; there were limits to it. Firstly, the person had to be recently deceased, like no more than ten minutes. Their soul also had to be still lingering around and not sent to an afterlife or hell yet, but with Rei being a Spirit Shepherd, that was easy enough for him to manage.

He used the spell sparingly, though, since it usually took a lot of mana and physical energy. Once Zeus’s patsy was back in the land of the living, Chalise and her sister started working on healing the worst of the electrical burns and other injuries he had received. Not all of them, though, just the worst of them. Any wounds and minor burns that were left would remind Fergusson of his stupidity in dealing with Zeus and company when we finished getting the information that we wanted from him and put him through the Wild Hunt.

All the time that Rei and the pair of Succubae were doing their thing, my force field dome was being bombarded by lightning strikes from the blue yonder. Zeus really wanted Fergusson to stay dead and had thrown any attempts at subtlety right out the window, leading to a gaggle of terrified reporters and cameramen. I had put a lot of mana into that dome, though, and Zeus’s efforts weren’t getting him anywhere.

“Do not worry, folks,” I called out in the most reassuring tone that I could. “Zeus could keep pounding on this dome all day and not get through; that’s the difference between those of us who have true believers and those who don’t. He’s also a coward who attacks from the shadows and would never dare show his face here. He and his entire cabal of assholes, who want worship and don’t deserve it, couldn’t put a dent in my defenses.”

Yes, I was taunting him and those who sided with him, but I was getting pretty sick of their shit, especially now that I knew that they were behind most of our troubles since we got out of the game and back to the real world. They were even behind all this shit with the DCA and probably were pushing similar agendas in other countries as well. Not that it takes much of a push to get humanity to hate and fear anyone who is even remotely different.

I casually drew and spoke the sigils for a portal spell back to Varüus’kiel, near the lakeside and with a nice view of the Moon Palace. Then I called out over the sound of lightning crashing against the dome. “If he’s stabilized, let’s get that asshole to Varüus’kiel and finish interrogating him. We’ll take these reporters and camera jockeys as well. They’ll be safe there, and I can return them here later, but we’ll need to make sure they don’t snoop or touch anything they shouldn’t. Photos and video clips are fine, but they all need a tour guide, and no entering restricted areas.”

I started ushering everyone through the portal, but I was the last to leave, along with my protectors. As I stepped through the portal and dispelled the protective dome behind me while I allowed the portal to close, Daenyss inquired, “Are you sure that taunting Zeus and those like him is a wise idea, Mistress?”

“Probably not, but that attempt to silence Fergusson through such blatant means likely violates one of the laws that the Gods are supposed to be following. This will make it easier for Danu and the other Gods on our side to take action against him, especially if he’s too mad at me to think clearly,” I replied with a shrug.

“We didn’t need to resurrect Fergusson, though, Sis. I claimed his soul when I gave him that shove earlier, so Rei could have just sent him off to my hell so I could interrogate him there,” Nishalle countered.

“True,” I admitted, “but there were good reasons to do so. First, doing so and healing him with those cameras rolling, shows what we are capable of, and that we value life, to the world at large. Also, after the suffering that his orders have put our people through, they deserve some sort of closure and to see him punished while he still lives. Finally, having Fergusson still alive and here in my Domain, where Zeus and company can’t reach him, is bound to piss off Zeus.”

Pete sighed and shook his head as he quietly offered his two cents. “Still, I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Tae. What if he hasn’t pushed their laws enough for the other Gods to crack down on him, or he’s in hiding and they can’t find him? What if you’ve pissed him off enough that he takes this as a reason to try to take you off the board himself?”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” I told them with a smile. “If the other Gods are unable or unwilling to make a move against him now, he will make an attempt on our lives, and especially mine, as soon as he thinks we’re out of the public eye and no longer in my domain. That means that we can choose the time and location to benefit us. Zeus is the leader of the faction that wants us all dead, so maybe it’s time that we take the fight to him…”

“And cut the head off the snake,” Lissany finished with a grin.