Chapter Five
Focus was, by all appearances, a simple philanthropic organization. They were mainly focused (pun not intended) on conservation efforts, trying to save the rainforest and the pandas and all other kinds of warm and fuzzy things.
They were also wizards.
Wizards, like skinchangers, were born with a degree of magic, though theirs was dramatically different, and infinitely more terrifying. I could shapeshift, heal rapidly, and basically can take on just about anyone in a one-on-one fight, because… well. I can shift my body however I want, pretty much, and can make my muscles insanely dense, and can rearrange the carbon in my skin to something like organic diamond if I have enough time.
Wizards could slap me down without barely a thought.
They were able to control the elements: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. From what I knew about them, some of them could influence minds. A wizard who knew what he was doing could level a city block in a few minutes. They could cause earthquakes, rain fire down, create tornadoes, and bring forth freaking tsunamis if they so desired. If a wizard felt like it, he could make any terrorist attack look like a mild disagreement.
The three unarmed people who had attacked Blackstone were wizards. I had suspected that they might be, because they were the only thing I can think of that could take on twelve armed men without firing a shot, or being shot in return. Even I’d be likely to get hit if I fought a dozen professionals. Those three didn’t have a scratch. And it’s no wonder why they didn’t carry guns; they were weapons. A single candle, to a wizard who could use fire magic, is enough to incinerate a small building. Air wizards always had access to their medium, and earth wizards didn’t need to do much to start an earthquake. I doubted that they used any water magic, considering that they were in the desert, but… well, the human body is mostly water. Do the math.
If my instincts were right, and I had been through enough to trust them, then it wasn’t just three wizards who had attacked Blackstone; it was three wizards who worked for Focus who had attacked Blackstone in order to cover up a message inquiring about how to dispose of tens of thousands of bodies.
They were certainly capable of creating that many.
My family… didn’t like wizards very much. Wizards and skinchangers knew of each other, but we basically kept to ourselves. We left them to their own devices, and tried to live quietly, in peace. My grandfather had had a run-in with one who almost killed him—something about a disagreement over a woman, if he told it right—and had hated them ever since. My dad had inherited the old prejudice, and so did my brothers.
I didn’t particularly care one way or the other. My brothers were too busy pretending to be Bigfoot to screw with people to learn much about the world. I was really the only one in the family who used my abilities for profit. They all worked regular, honest jobs, salt of the earth kind of people. They made a hell of a construction crew, though.
But I’d seen things in my line of work. I’d seen people get hurt, seen the evidence of violence often enough to hate it.
And Focus, up till now, stood against it.
Though they looked like a regular old non-profit, they weren’t. They were responsible for saving thousands of lives—probably millions, actually. I knew that Focus had been around for centuries, in one form or another, and they had always stood for humanity. When a natural disaster struck, they sent people to mitigate the damage. Half the time, when a hurricane looks like it’s about to hit the East Coast before suddenly changing its path and heading out to sea? I’d bet dollars to donuts that Focus is responsible.
From what I knew, they also were the people who had kept the polar ice caps from melting all the way. And violent despots were mysteriously killed in the war-torn areas of Africa from time to time, usually in freak accidents involving fire. Hell, California might have fallen into the Pacific if it weren’t for them, for all I knew.
Focus helped people, at the end of the day.
So why now? Why plan to kill thousands of people? They could certainly do it if they decided to, but it didn’t make any damn sense.
I didn’t understand it. They were good people, or so I had learned over the years.
I sat in my hotel room, trying to puzzle things out. I stared out the window, considering what I knew, what I had learned, and what I was going to do.
Why Focus wanted to do these things didn’t matter, I decided. Either they had decided to go from philanthropy to world domination without anyone realizing it, or there was a separate faction gaining who knows how much support within the organization. I didn’t know if I was about to go up against all of Focus or just a few insane members of it, but someone had to do something.
And, at the moment, it looked like that someone was going to be me.
I went to the mini bar, and pulled out several tiny bottles of liquor. I twisted off the tops one by one, and drank swiftly without bothering to look at the labels.
God. Wizards.
When I finished my drinks, I dumped the empty bottles in the garbage can. Then I gathered up my things, went to the front desk, and checked out.
I had work to do.