“Get close to me,” I said. “I can’t veil all three of us unless we’re all within arm’s reach.”

They did, and after a few seconds of focus and concentration, I brought up a veil around us that should hide us from view and disperse our heat signature as well. It wouldn’t be perfect. We’d still show up on a night-vision scope, to one degree or another. I was counting on the fact that men guarding a building that isolated could not possibly deal with problems on a regular basis. They’d have a very comfortable, reliable routine, which was exactly the sort of thing to take the edge off a sentry’s wariness. That’s just human nature.

I beckoned, and the three of us began approaching the facility. There was no fluttering from shadow to shadow, or camouflage face paint. The veiling spell took care of that. We just walked over the uneven ground and focused on staying close together. That part may have been more fun if Martin weren’t there.

We got to within thirty yards of the fence, and I paused. I lifted my staff, pointed it at the first sentry camera, and whispered, “Hexus.”

I wasn’t used to holding something as demanding as a veil in one hand while performing another working with the other—even such an easy spell as a technology hex. For a second, I thought I’d lose the veil, but then it stabilized again. The lights on the camera had gone out.

We moved around the perimeter while I hexed the other two cameras into useless junk, but just as I’d taken down camera number three, Susan gripped my arm and pointed. The foot patrol was moving by on their sweep.

“The dog will get our scent,” Susan said.

Martin drew a short pistol from beneath his jacket, and screwed a silencer to its end.

“No,” I half growled. I fished in the pocket of my duster and found the second potion I’d made while preparing for the trip. It was in a delicate, round globe of glass about as thick as a piece of paper. I flipped the globe toward the path of the oncoming dog and heard it break with a little crackle.

The two patrolmen and the dog went by the area where I’d left my surprise, and the dog snuffled the new scent with thorough interest. At a jerk of the lead, the dog hurried to catch up to the guards, and all three of them went by without so much as glancing at us.

“Dog’ll have his senses of smell and hearing back in the morning,” I murmured. “These guys are just doing a job. We aren’t going to kill them for that.”

Martin looked nonplussed. He kept the pistol in his hand.

We circled around to where the fence met the canyon wall, opposite the large parking lot. Susan got out a pair of wire cutters. She opened them and prepared to cut through when Martin snatched her wrist, preventing her from touching the fence. “Electricity,” he whispered. “Dresden.”

I grunted. Now that he’d pointed it out, I thought I could feel it, too—the almost inaudible hum of current on the move, making the hairs on my arms stand up. Hexing something with a microchip in it is simple. Impeding the flow of electricity through a conductive material is considerably more difficult. I pitched my best hex at the wiring where it connected to a power line and was rewarded with the sudden scent of burned rubber. Martin reached out and touched the fence with the back of his hand. No electricity burned him.

“All right,” Susan whispered, as she began clipping us a way in, cutting a wire only when the gusting wind reached a crescendo and covered the sound of the clippers at work, then waiting for the next gust. “Where’s that distraction?”

I winked at her, lifted my blasting rod, thrust it between links of fence in front of us, and aimed carefully. Then I checked the tower guard, to be sure he was looking away, and whispered, “Fuego, fuego, fuego, fuego.”

Tiny spheres of sullen red light flickered out across the compound and into the parking lot opposite. My aim had been good. The little spheres hissed and melted their way through the rear quarter panel of several vehicles and burned on into the fuel tanks beneath.

The results were predictable. A gas tank explosion isn’t as loud as an actual bomb going off, but when you’re standing a few yards away from it, it could be hard to tell. There were several hollow booming sounds, and light blazed up from the cars that had been hit as flames roared up and consumed them.

The guard in the tower started screaming into a radio, but apparently could get no reply. No surprise. The second camera had been positioned atop his tower, and the hex that took it out probably got his radio, too. While he was busy, Susan, Martin, and I slipped through the opening in the fence and made our way into the shadows at the base of one of the portable storage units.

A car, parked between two flaming vehicles, went up with another whump of ignition, and it got even brighter. A few seconds later, red lights started to flash at several points around the facility, and a warning klaxon began to sound. The giant metal door to the interior of the facility began to roll upward, just like a garage door.

The two patrollers and their temporarily handi-capable German shepherd came running out first, and were followed, in a moment, by nearly a dozen other guys in the same uniforms, or at least in portions of them. It looked like some of them had hopped out of bed and tossed on whatever they could reach. Several were dragging fire extinguishers, as if they were going to be useful against fires that large. Good luck with that, boys.

The moment the last of them was past our position and staring agog at the burning automobiles, I hurried forward, putting everything I had into the veil, trusting that Martin and Susan would stay close. They did. We went through the big garage door and down a long ramp into the facility.

“Go ahead,” Martin said. He hurried to a control panel on the wall and whipped out some kind of multitool. “I’ll shut the door.”

“As long as we can get it open on the way out,” I muttered.

“Yes, Dresden,” Martin said crisply. “I’d been doing this for sixty years before you were born.”

“Better drop the invisibility thing, Harry,” Susan said. “What we’re looking for might be on a computer, so . . .”

“So I’ll hold off on the magic until we know. Got it.”

We went deeper into the facility. The caves ran very deep back into the stone, and we’d gone down maybe a hundred yards after moving about four hundred yards forward on a spiraling ramp. The air grew colder, to the ambient underground average.

More than that, though, it gained a definite spiritual chill. Malevolent energy hovered around us, slow and thick like half- frozen honey. There was a gloating, miserly quality to it, bringing to my mind images of old Smaug lying in covetous slumber upon his bed of treasure. That, then, was the reason the Red Court had hidden its dark treasures here. Ambient energy like this wasn’t directly dangerous to anyone—but with only the mildest of efforts it would protect and preserve the magical implements jealously against the passing of time.

The ramp opened up into a larger area that reminded me of the interior corridors of a sports stadium. Three doors faced us. One was hanging slightly open, and read, QUARTERS. The other was shut and read, ADMINISTRATION.

The last, a large steel vault door, was labeled, STORAGE. A concrete loading dock with its edges painted in yellow and black caution stripes stretched before us, doubtless at just the right height to make use of the large transport van parked nearby.

Oh, and there were two guards standing in front of the vault door with some hostile-looking black shotguns.

Susan didn’t hesitate. She blurred forward with nearly supernatural speed, and one of the guards was down before he realized he was in a fight. The other had already spun toward me with his weapon and opened fire. In his rush to shoot, he hadn’t aimed. People make a big thing about shotguns hitting absolutely everything you point them at, but it ain’t so. It still takes considerable skill to use a shotgun well under pressure, and in his panic the guard didn’t have it. Pellets buzzed around me like angry wasps as I took three swift steps to my left and threw myself through the open barracks door, carrying me out of his line of fire.