Chapter 3
“Shooter ready?”
The afternoon after getting home from Paris, I found myself standing in an indoor firing range in a converted warehouse southwest of Philly. There was a paper target three yards in front of me—an outline shaped like a fat bowling pin, with an eight-inch circle marked at chest-height. My left hand was in a fist on my sternum, my right gripping the hem of my long-sleeved t-shirt in front of my belt buckle, and I tightened up the muscles in my lower back and upper legs, like a cat preparing to pounce. I took a deep breath and let go of all thought of tribunals, my parents, Johannes. I focused every bit of my attention on the eight-inch circle the same way I would focus to cast a spell, pushing all emotions to the side and thinking only about my target and what I was about to do. I let the breath out slowly and nodded.
A high-pitched beep split the air a second later, and I sprang into action. Feeling almost as if I were moving in slow motion, I pulled the shirt up with my right hand, pinned it under my bicep, and moved my hand back down to the now-exposed grip of a handgun. Three fingers curled under it and I pulled it free, my thumb sliding down to the other side of the frame into a proper one-handed firing grip as it rose into my field of view, the barrel turning out toward the target. I began to extend my arm, my index finger moving to the trigger and beginning to press as the front sight came into my field of view. The shot broke just as the sights lined up with the circle on the paper, the sharp crack loud even through my hearing protection.
I froze for a second with the gun extended, then moved my finger from the trigger up onto the slide.
“Slowly and safely holster.”
After the gun was securely in its holster, I allowed myself to look at the target. A single neat hole was visible about an inch inside the edge of the circle.
“How’d that feel, Quinn?”
I looked over at my instructor. John was surprisingly soft-spoken for such a large man, especially one with a full beard and arms covered in tattoos. He looked like he’d be perfectly at home on stage fronting a metal band, but sounded like a schoolteacher, or maybe a guidance counselor.
I shrugged. “Pretty quick.”
“Pretty quick is right.” John chuckled. “0.94 seconds, to be exact,” he said, holding up the shot timer so I could see for myself.
My eyebrows rose. That was the fastest I’d ever done that drill, by a significant margin. Before I’d started working with John and his co-instructors the day prior—a petite redhead named Melody and a hulking former Special Forces soldier named Chris—I considered myself lucky to manage 1.3 seconds with one hand, and even with both hands 0.94 seconds would have been among my better times. That was a hell of an improvement for less than a day’s work. Making it to this training course was well worth skipping out on the last day of the Conclave.
“A sub-second single-handed draw to first shot from concealment is pretty damn impressive,” John continued, “but I think you can get it even quicker. I’m still seeing some excess movement in your shoulder as you establish your grip, and the deceleration as you press out could be smoother, letting you pick up the sights just a bit earlier. Let’s do some drills to focus on the extension piece, then Melody will work with you on the efficiency of movement in the draw itself, and Chris will see if there’s anything to be gained from your stance that you can play around with the rest of today and tomorrow.”
“Alright, Quinn,” Melody said as I worked with her a few minutes later, “what I really want to see is aggression as you clear the cover garment and drive your hand to the gun. No wasted movements, and every essential movement should be as fast as humanly possible. What’s the most aggressive thing you’ve ever done?”
My mind flashed to my fight with Johannes next to the fountain at Logan Square, shooting him, trying to stab him, wrestling for my life as he got the upper hand and choked me almost unconscious before I was saved by a timely distraction and burned him alive with the ancient magic he’d taught me to wield.
“Combat.” I shrugged. One of my fellow students, a Marine Corps veteran who was waiting his turn for coaching, snorted in laughter as Melody was briefly taken aback. She was an extremely accomplished shooter and coach, but she was also a sweet midwestern mother of three with no military experience of her own, and clearly that wasn’t where her mind went when she thought of aggression.
“Okay, fair, but I was thinking more like boxing,” she said after a second. “Have you ever boxed?”
“Sure.” I nodded. Close enough to the truth. No need to traumatize anyone with details.
“Alright, think about the way you move when you’re throwing a punch—that’s how I want you to move as you’re clearing your shirt and getting your hand to the grip. Let’s do some reps of that.”
I continued drilling with her for a few minutes, then spent several minutes with Chris, who worked on my foot placement to better engage my core and back to manage recoil in longer strings of fire without tiring out my arms. This was day one of the course, and I’d come into it as a damn good shooter—with plenty of recent experience, at that—but I’d learned a ton already that would come in handy the next time I needed to draw a gun. And there was still another day to go.
A bit later, as other trainees took their turns working one-on-one with the instructors, I found myself sitting off to the side in a folding chair. I slipped into the highly focused state required to do magic, which after centuries took almost no effort. In the time I had before we moved on to the next part of the class, I wanted to check on the local ley-line network. Since the Tamesis, it had become a habit to make sure the network was stable at least once a week.
I reached out and felt the vibrating hum of the nearest ley-line’s power, and followed it along its length to a node where it connected with another, then continued. After months, I knew the whole network by instinctive feel and trusted I’d notice anything that seemed off right away, so I hurried through the process. After about ten minutes, I was just about done when my focused mind became aware of someone addressing me.
“Hey, it’s Quinn, right?” a woman’s voice asked.
Without breaking focus or opening my eyes, I held up a finger to indicate I’d respond in a moment, then returned to what I was doing. When my awareness made it back my starting point a few seconds later and I was satisfied the network was fine, I released my concentration and my mind returned to where I was.
I opened my eyes to see a petite Asian woman standing a few feet from my chair. She was wearing a shooting team jersey and a competition belt with a race holster; from what I’d seen earlier in the day she was a serious and highly skilled competitive shooter. She was familiar, like I’d seen her before, but couldn’t put my finger on where or when.
“That’s right,” I finally responded, trying not to sound annoyed at the interruption. “Can I help you?”
“My name’s Annette. Race Street is my range, so I’m just trying to introduce myself to all the students here and make sure you’re comfortable. Do you have everything you need?”
“Yeah, I’m all set.” I nodded, then looked around. “This is your place? It’s the nicest indoor range I’ve seen in a while. Is it new?”
“We just opened a few months ago,” she said. “Membership only, which requires demonstrating you can be trusted not to be stupid when left unsupervised. But anyone in this class already qualifies. Are you local?”
“Fishtown.”
“Oh, in the city proper, huh? Well, if you’re looking for a year-round range that lets you draw from the holster and won’t give you crap about rapid fire or any other Fudd nonsense…”
“Definitely,” I said, forcing a polite smile across my face. I was still out of the habit and it didn’t come naturally. “Don’t let me leave without getting the details.”
Sure.” She nodded. “By the way, weren’t you at Gabe White’s class down in Virginia a couple years ago?”
“Yeah, that was me,” I said. That explained why she looked familiar; we’d trained together before.
“I thought so—I haven’t seen anyone else work strong-hand-only draws from the holster like you do,” she said, taking a seat in an empty folding chair next to me. “I take it you’re focused more on defensive shooting than competitive?”
“You could say that.” I shrugged.
“Do you mind if I ask what you’re carrying?”
“A Glock 20,” I said.
“Ten-mil? Interesting choice.” She chuckled. “Are you using an Enigma?”
“A what?” I asked, one eyebrow raised in question.
“An Enigma,” she repeated.
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Oh, fair enough. It’s only been out for a year or two, so plenty of people haven’t heard of it yet, even those who train regularly. My friend invented it. Basically it’s a gun harness that holds your pistol on your waist independently from your belt and pants. You already carry appendix inside the waistband, so it might be worth looking into.”
“It’s like a belly band?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “Way, way better than a belly band. Here, I’ll show you.” She pulled out a smartphone and began looking for a website on its internet browser. After a minute she held it out to me. “Take a look for yourself.”
I took it silently and began looking through the website. I quickly saw the advantages of such a harness over a traditional belt-mounted holster.
“So it holds the gun in the same place, every time, even when your pants shift around during movement?”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “And because you don’t have to worry about your pants and belt holding up the weight of your gun, you can conceal more effectively in a wide variety of outfits. I wear mine daily, when I’m not dressed in gamer gear like right now.”
“Alright, I’ll give it a try.” I nodded. Improved concealment was nice, but consistency was my bread and butter. Especially drawing one-handed, while my mind was focused on magical defenses and my off hand was busy, it was critical that my gun be in the exact same spot every time I went to draw. A fumbled draw because my belt had stretched slightly and my holster had shifted an inch or two could literally be a matter of life and death, especially when dealing with supernatural threats that moved faster than a human could react.
“I’ve got a couple in stock at the range shop if you don’t want to wait on shipping. I could help you get it set up today after class, and you could see how it works for you in tomorrow’s session.”
“Perfect.” I smiled. This time it was easier.