It was close to the peak of the moon’s path through the night sky when Saffir felt it was truly safe to come down from his high perch.  Sensing that paladin had shaken him; he wasn’t ready to deal with divine magic just yet.  Perhaps in a few years, once he was safely back on Nemesis – ha, now there was an unusual thought – he would be, but now?  No.

It didn’t help that he kept seeing Jaspis in his mind’s eye when he’d trapped the Blue Prince in this time – and how tanned the man was.  Even for a Nemesian, Saffir was considered dark from all the starlight that bathed his skin these days.  But now Jaspis had gone beyond that, to a colour nearly as dark as this world’s people were!

Either the older man had been wearing an illusion – and if so, why not conceal his clan marking or his rather distinctive hair? – or he’d been on Earth far longer than Saffir had. “Something is not right here,” he growled as he turned down an alley.

The scrape of a boot heel against pavement was the only warning Saffir got before a creature almost as pale as he was lunged for him.

It was more than enough for his Nemesis-honed senses.

As its arms closed around him, Saffir vanished from sight, only to reappear a moment later a few metres away.  The creature – no, a human male! – stumbled and landed on his face.  Saffir arched a navy brow.  “Tch. You call that an attack?” he asked him.

Another scrape; Saffir pivoted on his heel and threw a second assailant into the wall.  “Pathetic, the both of you,” he sneered as they unsteadily got to their feet.  Now that he had time to sense them out further, he realised that they weren’t human at all – no, they were something in a human guise—

Dark metaphorical fangs sank into his magical probe, and Saffir cried out, startled., hastily yanking back on his power.  Whatever they were had a bite to it.  The first one, which had been moving stiffly, hissed at him.  “Why don’t you just lay down and die, Blue Prince?”

Saffir’s eyes widened – they had been sent for him?  His first instinct was to blame Jaspis, but Jaspis truly preferred to fight his own battles.  So who?

The first creature hissed and lunged for him, and Saffir yelled, letting a blue burst of energy fly at it, knocking it completely out of the alley before turning to the second one, ducking under its grab and driving a sharp elbow into its gut, then teleporting another few feet down the alley before it could regain the air it had lost.

 

Harry Dresden was not having a great day, which was not improved in the least bit by a man flying out of an alley as he walked past, narrowly missing him.  “… must be Tuesday,” he muttered, turning into the alley.

It really wasn’t a good day at all.  A very familiar blue-haired man had just elbow-slammed another man, and then vanished from underneath it only to reappear a few feet further down the alley, leaving his assailant to fall to the ground, gasping for breath.

“… I must be on candid camera or something,” Harry muttered, bringing his staff to bear. “Hey, is this a private party or can I come too?”

Startled, both men looked at him; the nameless man’s eyes widened.  “Oh, shit,” he breathed.  “Alisaunder!  It’s Dresden!”

Saffir took advantage of his opponent’s distraction to fire off a ball of blue energy into his back, throwing him to the ground with a howl of pain.

“It’s so nice to be recognized,” said Harry, approaching the now-fallen man and pinning him with a well-placed foot. “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on here?”

Saffir was breathing heavily and looking angry.  “They attacked me is what’s going on here – no, you don’t!”  He vanished, only to reappear again with ‘Alisaunder’ in what looked like a painful lock.

“Oooh, that’s gotta hurt,” said Harry, restraining the smile he felt. He turned his attention to the man under his foot. “You may or may not have a legitimate beef with Little Boy Blue over here, but this is my city, and when you start shit in my city, it tends to irk me a little.”

Alisaunder snarled, and threw Saffir off of him.  To his surprise, the Blue Prince caught himself in mid-air and stayed there.  “Bad move,” Saffir murmured, that blue glow shimmering around his hand again as he raised it, palm towards the other man.

Thrusting his staff out, Harry growled “Forzare!”. The runes on his staff flared to life as a burst of invisible force rocketed outward at Alisaunder.

The blue glow died as Alisaunder was blasted back and hit a wall hard.  Saffir blinked.  “Interesting… does the spoken word make it invisible?” he wondered as he touched down lightly, crouching down by the fallen man.  “He’s out,” he reported a moment later.

“I’m not sure I follow,” replied Harry, raising an eyebrow. “It’s just a spell.” He turned his attention back to the still-pinned man. “Since your little buddy is currently out of it, you’re the lucky one who gets to tell me what you all are doing here. Won’t that be fun.”

“Good luck with that, Dresden,” he spat.  “I’ll tell you nothing!”

Saffir smiled slightly.  “Mr Dresden, what would you say if I told you the man under your foot wasn’t human?”

“I’d say ‘another day, another freak’.” He proceeded to shove the point of his staff in the pinned man’s face and sent just enough will into it to make the runes glow. “Sorry, didn’t quite catch that. What did you say?”

The man didn’t answer, snarling angrily.  Barely audible were the words, “Lying fortune-teller…”

“Fortune-teller? What’s he talking about?”

Saffir’s eyes widened, and he peered down at the pinned man.  “This fortune-teller… was he in a cloak that hid his face?  Possibly with a crystal ball and levitating?”

“What, are we being assailed by inhuman carnies now or something?”

Saffir ignored him, staring into the nameless man’s face.  “Tell me!” he demanded, sounding angry now.

Perhaps there was something in Saffir’s voice that convinced, him, or maybe his murderous expression.  Whatever it was, the nameless man paled and began to babble about the cloaked figure that had appeared to him and his brother, trading them an easy meal – two hookers who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time – for the death of the Blue Prince.

“That’s all I needed to hear,” said Harry, shaking his head sadly. “Forzare.” The runes flared with energy as a much stronger force blast removed the vampire’s head.

Saffir muttered something, approaching the unconscious Alisaunder.  He regarded the man dispassionately for a moment, then crouched down to one side of him and coolly slit his throat, avoiding the spray of blood.  There was something dark about his anger as he turned to face Harry, snarling, “Wiseman…”

Harry looked down at the now-dead vampires, shaking his head a bit.

Then he socked Saffir in the face.

The Blue Prince stumbled backwards, absolutely stunned.  “What the hell!?” he sputtered, one hand covering his eye protectively now.

“You’ve come a long way to get here, I’ve head,” said Harry, not meeting his eyes.

“I told you that,” he growled, glaring at the older man.

“I had a very strange visitor not long ago,” he continued, “who told me a great many things. After trying to sneak into my home. Such a nice girl, you’d never have expected it.”

A girl?  Nice?  Who… no, it couldn’t be… “And did your visitor have a name?” Saffir demanded.

“Called herself Lapis. We had a nice little chat… your highness.”

The Blue Prince groaned, leaning back against the wall.  “This is the last thing I need,” he muttered in his native language.

This time, Harry couldn’t stop himself from grinning a little. He did not enjoy watching Saffir squirm, nope, not at all.

One cold blue eye focused on Harry.  “Just how much did she tell you?”

“She let slip exactly how far you came to get here.”

Saffir was far from slow.  “I don’t think she let you know the exact distance travelled,” he replied coolly, “though I will allow she may have let slip the method.”

“I should probably warn you that the local wizards tend to… frown upon that sort of thing,” said Harry, starting to pace.  “Lucky for you, I have a problem with authority.”

“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.  When it isn’t Sailor Pluto it’s the local powers that be.”  Part of that sentence, oddly enough, had been in English.  “Define ‘frown upon’.”

Harry responded by running one finger across his throat in a throat-slitting motion, completely with accompanying sound effect.  “The wizards here have laws against certain things, and mucking with time is one of them.”

“Capital punishment.  I assume there’s no warnings for first-time offenders.”  Saffir smiled in private amusement.  “I wonder if they know about her…”

“Warnings. Ahahahah. You’re a funny guy. Would I be incorrect in assuming that this her is the girl I spoke to?”

“Yes,” Saffir replied with a mysterious smile.

“The way she sounded, she didn’t follow you alone.”

“I was referring to neither of the Darkstar siblings,” Saffir told him.  “I’ve already had one encounter with Jaspis.”

“So you’ve mentioned. This situation is certainly… snowballing a little.”

“That’s an understatement.”  Saffir gestured to the bodies.  “Someone else followed me back here.  I need to find Jaspis and make him restore my power.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. How do you plan on doing that, hm?”

“I don’t know.  But I’ll need to find a way to do it fast, before someone in your city dies.”

“Change of subject: So why would this Wiseguy send vampires after you?”

“The Wiseman,” Saffir said calmly, “is my brother’s advisor.  And I now have proof that he’s trying to kill me.  We shouldn’t discuss this here.”

Harry mulled this over for a moment. “Fair enough.”

The Blue Prince hesitated a second.  “We might want to discuss this with your policewoman friend.  With the Wiseman involved, all bets are off, and she might get caught in the crossfire.”

That caught Harry’s attention. “I’ll send her a few words on your behalf. Meanwhile, you lay low. Got a way I can contact you?”

“None,” Saffir admitted.  “I’ve only been here for a little over twenty-four hours”

“Can you meet us at the tavern, tomorrow evening?”

Saffir nodded.  “That I can.”

“Good.” Harry reached into his pocket and flicked a business card at the Prince. “You can contact me there.” And with that, he turned and walked away.

Seconds later, Saffir flickered and vanished, retreating again to the roof tops.

 

—‡—‡—‡—

 

Jaspis was using his tracking spell and illusions to follow the blonde policewoman, curious to see just what her connection to the Blue Prince was, when his senses picked up a droid, of all things.  His immediate reaction was to suspect the Blue Prince had decided to get her out of the way, but he realised within seconds that not only did this droid not have the presence of the ones Saffir created, Saffir hadn’t learned how to create droids until he was twenty-one.

And the Saffir he’d trapped in the twentieth century was nineteen.

“Scheiße,” he breathed, completely forgetting the cop and focusing his attention on the droid.  He spotted it just as it lunged for her.  “Vorsicht!” he yelled, forgetting completely that he was trying to keep a low profile for the time being as he drew his sword from its illusion-concealed sheath, catching the droid’s blade-arm on it.

The force of the blow nearly drove him to his knees before he caught himself enough to shove back against the quasi-human monster, dropping his illusion as he did so.  Catching the energy he’d fuelled into said illusion, he channelled it through his sword and pushed against the droid once more, forcing it off-balance.  He leapt back and swung his sword, shouting, “Kathetos!” to unleash the energy stored within the blade.

To his utter amazement, the droid turned his attack back on him; Hastily, Jaspis brought his sword into a guarding position and cried, “Aspída!”  His reflected attack splashed against his hastily constructed shield, and Jaspis swore viciously.

Murphy, fortunately for Jaspis, took the droid’s sudden appearance in stride. She stepped back, took careful aim, and fired at one of the thing’s eyes. This is a new one…

It howled in pain and stumbled back, but didn’t seem to be dying despite the bullet to the brain pan.  The man snarled something in a language similar to the one Saffir had spoken in from time to time and lunged forward, bringing his sword up to engage the droid again.  Unfortunately, he seemed to have forgotten that the creature had two blade-arms.  One parried his sword, while the other lanced into his side.

His reflexes, however, were fast.  Before he could be cut fatally, he vanished, re-appearing next to Murphy and falling to his knees.  “Scheiße!”

Murphy muttered something derogatory about civilians and moved in front of him, firing steadily on the thing. Nothing she did seemed to have any impact, though she placed the bullets as precisely as she could. She swore, and shifted her aim to the knee-joints. If she took out a leg, it would have to fall, hurt or not.

“The crystal!” gasped the man beside her, forcing himself to his feet.  “Aim for the crystal!”

Sure enough, it was wearing a crystal-like pendant that remained oddly still for the rapid movements it had been making.

“Right,” she murmured, took aim, and shot. And swore again when the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Murph ejected the spent clip, shoved another in, aimed, and fired, shattering the crystal.

The man loosed a sigh of relief as the droid shrieked, shaded to grey, and collapsed into dust.  “So it is a power source.  Good to know.”  He shrugged off his cape and began ripping it apart, clearly intending to bandage his still-bleeding wound.

Murphy holstered the gun, and turned to glare at her would-be rescuer. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

He winced as he wound the cloth tightly around his abdomen with practised ease.  “We were never able to figure out if the crystals powered the droids or not.”

“Good to know,” she said, consciously echoing him. “What the hell is a droid and why was it doing its best to kill you?”

“Golem, essentially.”  He grunted as he tied off the makeshift bandage, sheathing his sword as he added, “And I’m not sure.  I mean, there’s a number of reasons why.  The problem would be figuring out which one it was – had I been the target.”

“Ah,” Murphy said. “You can figure it out in protective custody. Come on.”

“There isn’t a need for that, detective,” he told her.  “I can detect the damn things.”

Murphy gave him a flat, unfriendly look. “Detecting’s no good if you get your throat slit. And then I have to explain a John Doe who appears to be a vampire or something. I’ve done enough creative writing for this month, so let’s go.”

“I’d prefer to talk to the Blu—ah, Saffir, really.  In any case, it wasn’t after me.”

She took a deep breath through her nose, and reminded herself that losing her temper with this person (whoever the hell he was) wasn’t going to help. “You can do that. He’s still in the hospital. As for protective custody… I’m sorry, did I give you the impression I was asking?”

“Actually, he’s probably out of the hospital now that the sun is down.”  Jaspis shrugged.  “He’ll eventually learn patience, but whatever.  And again, that droid wasn’t trying to kill me.  It wanted you, detective.”