Operation: Take A Bow - Mark & Amanda, Friday noon

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Now with some idea of what's going on, Mark and Amanda head downtown to figure out how to defeat immortal vengeance demons.


"I find it amusingly blasphemous that we're bringing demons to a church," Mark quipped, unzipping his jacket to enjoy the chillingly pleasant pre-spring weather. "On the other hand, priests should be happy that we're gettin' rid of 'em, eh?"

"The thing about magic, is it's got a sense of humour," Amanda said wryly, resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder. The Warwolves were out there, but lying relatively low. "Tho' I think it's more ironic that you and I get to come scope the place out. Churches and me aren't exactly things you put together, you know?"

A young girl with the letters NYU printed in big glittery letters on the butt of her sweatpants quickly crossed the street, and Mark turned to gawk. "Me neither," he said absently.

She laughed, and nudged him with her elbow. "Focus, Casanova," she teased. "Big bad Wolves, remember?"

"Next time maybe we shouldn't choose an exorcism out in the middle of barely legals." Mark turned his attention back, but spared a glance around to check for their stalkers. "It's really creeping me out that they're just following us like that," he said quietly.

"Biding their time. Maybe waiting for something specific - magical beasties have their own calendars, and they could be waiting for the right combination of events." Amanda spoke just as quietly, but there was definite tension there. "What bothers me the most is there's no marks on the skins that've turned up. If they were summoned, there'd be a mark - it's in the rules. So no mark means they weren't summoned and that means a whole lot of shite for us."

"Does that even work? I thought random dimensional vortexes are big super magical things that regular demons can't do." And the thought of a big super Warwolf was almost too frightening.

"It can, sometimes. The walls between dimensions might get a bit thin, there's the wrong combination of events at the wrong time, someone does the hokey pokey and shakes their magic gourd..." Amanda's brow furrowed. "I've been trying to get some firmer details on how things are generally magical dimension-wise, but after that stunt on the astral plane, resources are a bit clapped out. Best guesses are the Wolves managed to push their way through a weak place, and since they're vengeance sorts, guess who they're draw to?"

Mark stopped across the street from the church and gave it an appraising look. It wasn't particularly big and much of the building was new, but the site was old and from what he'd learned from Amanda, the age of the spirit of the congregation was most important. "So. You think you can push 'em back in and seal it up? I don't mind taking one night off Silver for this, but I don't want ta go back Saturday night and find I still have a pet."

"I think so. I've cobbled up a sort of combo spell out of some of the more traditional stuff and my warding spell - I figure I should get enough power out of New York to shove the bastards back in. And the church ought to help - faith's a pretty powerful thing, and this place is pretty symbolic of refuge, always has been." Amanda coughed a little self-consciously, as she usually did when talking about magic to the non-users - her language tended to get a bit flowery. "As long as someone can play babysitter long enough for me to manage - I'll have to concentrate on what I'm doing."

"There's Emma's sexy new bodyguard. Hell, I might just have to 'exhaust' myself and get him to carry me out when we're done. "Oh, Mister Bishop, Ah do believe Ah have the vapors!'" Mark fanned himself and sighed melodramatically.

They were being stalked by murderous revenge demons, she was having to jury-rig a portal spell, and they were doing the whole thing in a fucking church... and yet Amanda broke into helpless giggles. "Mark and Bishop, sitting in a tree," she sing-songed at him.

If Mark had one purpose in life, it's to put things in perspective. Mission accomplished. He stuck out his tongue at Amanda and gently nudged her with his elbow. "I guess we're done here. Wanna grab lunch? We can practice our people-watching skills on all the NYU kids."