When it drew even with the chain-link fence, the eye stopped, like it had run into a wall. That, of course, was exactly what had happened. The factory grounds were warded.
Even so, the eye allowed me to see plenty from the edge of the site. The first thing that caught my attention was the metal tower extending from the roof of the building, maybe a radio antenna or satellite tower. Like the fence, the tower looked new and the unpainted metal dully reflected the sunlight. There were no power lines leading to the tower that I could see, but there did seem to be some kind of gadgetry at the top. I zoomed the eye in as far as it would go but still couldn't make out any details.
I couldn't see magic through the eye, but I could sense the ley line running under the factory, and I could feel something pulling at that magic, drawing it up through the earth to the surface.
I could also see that the entire site inside the fence was crawling with gangbangers. Papa Danwe had thugs out front, guarding the gate in the fence. There were patrols moving along the perimeter of the fence and the walls of the factory. There must have been at least thirty outfit guys in there, and those were just the ones I could see. They were armed to the teeth, in broad daylight. Even in Inglewood, that kind of thing draws attention. Clearly Papa Danwe felt the time for subtlety had passed.
I had no idea what this place was, but I knew I didn't like it. I also knew I'd have to get a better look at it, and that meant getting inside. I dropped the eye and spun my wallflower spell. It wouldn't make me invisible in any physical sense, but I'd go unnoticed by the gangbangers as long as I didn't get too close.
The warding spell was encircling the factory site, forming a massive cylinder of invisible force. The spell was powered by a small portion of the juice flowing into the site, tied into the graffiti network in four places-north, south, east and west-along its perimeter.
The ward was solid work, but it wasn't the kind of first-rate craft I would have expected from Papa Danwe. More likely, one of his henchmen had constructed the spell. That was good, because it meant I had a shot at disabling it. The simple approach would be brute force. If I hit the ward with enough chaos magic to undermine its structural integrity, it would come apart like a spiderweb in a strong wind.
Of course, the simple approach would be really stupid. It would drop the whole barrier and it would probably set off alarms. It would likely alert all the gangbangers that they were under attack. And while it would be simple, it wouldn't be easy. It would take a lot of juice, and I wasn't sure there was much left that wasn't already being pumped into the factory.
The easy approach was to pull the plug. If I severed each of the four connections between the warding spell and the graffiti network that was feeding it, I could probably drop the whole thing. I didn't really want to do that, either. In a best case scenario, it might be interpreted as a failure rather than an attack, but I didn't think the best case scenario was very likely.
Fortunately I had another option. I went around to the east side of the building and crept up to the fence. A gangbanger stood on the other side about thirty feet away from me. He had a MAC-10 slung over his shoulder, and his rings, gold chains and even some of his tats were juiced. He didn't look to be a particularly strong sorcerer, but he was prepared.
The gangbanger looked right through my wallflower spell as I went to work on the ward. The endpoint of the graffiti network charging the spell was a telephone pole about ten feet outside the fence. It was layered in tags, grabbing juice from the incoming flow and rerouting it into the spell. It was decent work, but I couldn't help noticing it wasn't as elegant or efficient as the tags Jamal had put down. Some of the juice was bleeding out of the glyphs, evaporating into the air. I started pulling in that lost energy to power my spell.
The chaos magic I hit the graffiti node with was about as complicated as a typical computer virus. It infiltrated the arcane structure of the tag and overrode it with conflicting instructions. It wasn't sophisticated enough to actually reprogram the tag. It just made it stop working.
The warding spell was still taking in juice from three of the four points, so it didn't go down. But the loss of one of the graffiti nodes was enough to weaken it at the point of failure. I spun my levitation spell and floated over the fence, punched through the compromised barrier with a little juice and landed inside.
I crept up to the building, being careful to keep as much distance as possible between me and the gangbanger on guard duty. I dodged a roaming patrol and approached the wall of the building, angling for a side door that didn't look like it saw a lot of traffic. I peered at the door with my witch sight and saw that it, too, was warded. The protective spells were being fed by the tags laid down on the brick walls around the door, and I used the same chaos magic I'd used on the perimeter ward to defeat them. I waited until another patrol went by, then I spun my B amp;E spell, opened the door and slipped inside.
Whatever the factory had manufactured at one time, all of the machinery had been torn out and removed. What was left was essentially one huge, high-ceilinged space the size of a modest airplane hangar. There were another dozen or so gangbangers inside, but most of them were lounging on cots that had been lined up along the walls, or sitting at folding tables eating, playing cards and generally wasting time. Whatever this place was, it seemed Papa Danwe's boys planned to stay a while.
When I'd first seen the antenna outside, I assumed it was just fixed to the roof of the building. Now, I saw that it was actually anchored to the floor in the middle of the factory. It extended up through a crude hole that had been cut in the roof.
The tower rose from the exact center of a metallic ring about fifty feet in diameter that had been set into the concrete floor. I used my witch sight and followed the flow of juice from the graffiti network into the ring. The magic surged around the ring like some arcane particle accelerator.
I moved farther into the building to the edge of the ring. I knelt down and examined it more closely. Silver metal glinted in the light from the overhead industrial fixtures. The ring was about two feet wide. I couldn't tell how far down into the concrete it went. For all I knew, I could have been looking at the top edge of a cylinder that extended all the way down to the ley line deep below the surface.
Whatever its actual dimensions, a lot of juice was flowing through the ring. I reached out for the juice, and I could sense that it was fed both by the graffiti network and the ley line. There was more juice coursing through the ring than I'd ever seen in one place, and I couldn't reach any of it. It was completely contained within Papa Danwe's ring, and I didn't have the access codes.
The tower was obviously meant to draw power from the ring, but I couldn't see any mechanism for it. There were no lines or spokes connecting the two. I got a mental image of raw magic arcing from the ring through the air and into the tower, like an arcane Tesla machine. Whether this was some uncommon design insight or overwrought imagination, I couldn't tell.
I decided I needed to get a closer look at the tower. This was tricky, because there were four gangbangers clustered around its base, standing guard. I crept close, willing myself to remain silent and unseen.
When I was still about twenty feet away, my right foot broke a concealed warding circle surrounding the tower. I hadn't felt it as I approached. I hadn't spotted it with my witch sight, and I should have been able to. Maybe I was dazzled by the magic show created by all the juice flowing through the silver ring.