Authors: Scott V. Duff
I took the secretary’s desk and Peter took the colonel’s. We were both silent for about fifteen minutes, except for the sound of rapid typing from both of us. Thorn was right. There was nothing in Pierce’s military record to show even the slightest hint of a problem. Multiple commendations from her commanding officers for superb performance, excellent ratings on all her continuing education classes, her caseload success ratio was amazing. On paper, or rather in pixels, Cpt. Pierce was a model officer.
“Shit!” Peter exclaimed. “Seth, I’ve got something.”
Logging off and wiping the screen, I darted into the colonel’s office. On Peter’s screen was a Google search window, not a Pentagon screen. He’d jumped the firewall. The cursor hung over a hyperlink dated eleven years ago. He tabbed over to another window and showed me a dating website.
“This is from a defunct site archived on Google now,” he explained. “Seems she got dumped too many times in her sophomore year of college and decided to join the computer revolution a bit late in life. Joined a dating service a few months before joining the ROTC, where she met her husband of nine years. This was her profile.” He clicked the mouse on her name. Once her profile lit the page, I saw immediately what the problem was: our Margaret Pierce and this Margaret Pierce weren’t the same person.
Little Brother
, Kieran called,
Pierce is not who she says she is. Ethan has found pictures from her husband on-line that show a completely different person.
“Yes, Kieran, Peter has found something similar just now,” I said, repeating it through the link he created. Jimmy was with them now. “First is there now. They’re about to go in with the counselor. I’ll intercept her there. Thanks for the help.”
Peter was already clearing the screen as I spoke and was standing up. I jumped us to an unfamiliar office in New York City a second later.
“Ana?” I called out softly as Pierce led her through the door into the counselor’s office. Ana and Pierce both turned quickly, Ana’s face lighting brightly as she saw me.
“Seth!” she cried out, jerking free of Pierce and running to me, exactly what I wanted. I picked her up and hugged her while I pushed outward with my senses, placing everyone else in the offices, including the outside hallway. Two Guards sat in the reception area and four more patrolled in the halls outside. I felt another two in the lobby downstairs.
This psychologist shared his offices with two others so there were other patients in the waiting room and two other doctors and a receptionist to consider as well. This wasn’t going to be pleasant regardless.
“I thought I should meet your new doctor, too,” I said to Ana sweetly. “That’s a lovely dress. Did you pick it out?”
“Yes, isn’t it pretty? I like the color,” she said, turning up the cuteness by smiling at me.
“Hello, Mr. McClure,” Pierce said politely. “First didn’t say you would be coming, too. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, Pete’n I were just following up on some information we found in London this afternoon,” I said, fully aware of the time difference, making ‘afternoon’ a confusing issue. “We were in the area, so it seemed appropriate. Shall we go in?”
I felt more than saw Shrank’s landing on my shoulder as Pierce led the way into the psychologist’s office. It was a medium-sized room, full of living plants and decorated in earth tones, complemented with bright colors. A desk occupied one small corner and several chairs and two large couches offered plenty of seating for family counseling. There were two other doors, one presumably for a restroom and the other leading out to the hall for private exit.
Jimmy was wandering the office, seemingly idly, but he searched quite intently below the surface. I’m sure he’d looked around when they first entered and now he was looking for the better-hidden aspects of magic, like the druids’ wardings or faery glamours. He progressed well considering the lack of training. Of course, my opinion on that really didn’t mean that much considering my lack of training and knowledge of my own position, but I thought we were managing well enough together.
“Hey, Donny, how are you today?” I asked, smiling at him sitting beside Mitch on the couch. He looked incredibly small beside the big Guard, but the paternal resemblance was unmistakable now.
“Fine,” he said simply, smiling slightly and nervously.
“Have you ever been to a psychologist before?” I asked him, curious.
“Once, when I was younger,” he said. “Mommy and Daddy took me to one before he ‘dopted me. They said it was part of the process.”
“Good,” I said with a smile. “At least you’ve done this once. Now, would you like to meet another faery? A pixie, this time, but this one’s a little different than the fairies you met yesterday.”
“Ooh, yes, yes, yes,” Ana said, clapping her hands together quickly and excitedly.
“Yes, please, Seth!” Donny said, excited too. “How is this one different?”
“He’s different in two ways,” I said. “First, he’s not one of mine. He’s Kieran’s pixie and his name is Shrank. Shrank is very proud to belong to Kieran, but he’s done me a number of favors as well. And second, I don’t have to call him. He’s already here. He’s been with you since you left the hotel, watching over you two for me because I got some bad news that has turned out to have some merit. You remember how the brownies could hide right in front of you? Shrank can do something very similar when he wants to, can’t you, Shrank?”
Giggling shrilly, Shrank chimed, “Yes, Lord Daybreak, though it’s a little easier outside.” He leapt from my shoulder and faded into view in front of them on a column of golden dust. “Hello, Ana and Donny Grimes. I am Shrank of Lord Kieran’s Court, the only Free Lord. It is a great honor to meet you.”
“Shrank, did you see anything?” I asked.
“No, Lord, nothing occurred while I was watching them,” he squeaked, turning in mid-air to answer. “But there is evidence of previous pinpricks on both children.”
“Any estimates on how long ago?” I asked him, dreading the answer already.
“Perhaps as long as two days ago?” Shrank trilled. “That is a beautiful dress, Ana dear! Violet is a wonderful color for you. And Donny. I bet you will grow up big and strong, just like your daddy and your father!” I wasn’t certain how Shrank knew to say that, but I was very proud of him for it. Donny beamed proudly at Mitch.
“Well, the good part of today is that you get to move into your apartment on Gilán today instead of tomorrow,” I said. “The bad part is that Miss Margaret isn’t going with you. Mitch will explain. Now, bug out.”
Mitch reached over and put his arm around Ana’s shoulder’s and shifted the three of them to Gilán without a word, leaving a very shocked Cpt. Pierce behind with First, Peter, and me. Peter asked, “We know you aren’t Cpt. Margaret Ann Pierce. Would you like to tell us precisely who you are?”
“Corporal Seiler, would you bring me Cpt. Pierce’s make-up case, please?” I called through the geas to the Guard currently searching her room at the hotel. Having searched her mind once Shrank identified the goal, the target objects were easily identified. Seiler shifted across the veil with the case.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Pierce said, trying to appear confused and doing pretty good at it.
“Here you are, sir,” Seiler said, smiling.
“Thank you, corporal,” I said, taking the case. “May I borrow your knife for a moment?”
“Certainly, sir,” he said, pulling the six-inch blade free from his boot and handing it to me. Turning the case over, I dumped the contents into the floor, retrieving two packaged perfume samples. Opening the packages, I showed Pierce the dark red vials just before I applied intense heat to both, destroying them into ash and melted plastic. Then I cut a very haphazard circle into the bottom of the fake leather of the case and peeled away the circle, revealing a small indentation containing five similar vials of dark red liquid.
I handed Seiler his knife, handle first, as he glared at Pierce hatefully. He took it and returned it to its sheath without looking. “Lord, we will be more than happy to take care of her for you,” he said darkly.
“I appreciate the offer, Cpl. Seiler, but we have some unfinished business with Cpt. Pierce,” I responded, boiling the vials into uselessness. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Who are you, woman? We won’t keep asking politely,” Peter asked angrily as Jimmy stalked toward them from the other side of the room. “First lost his family to a blood curse and suffered unimaginable torture because of it. Can you imagine the pain he will inflict on you just at the thought of you doing that to children? Can you imagine the pain that Daybreak will inflict? How long can a faery Lord make torture last? Do you know? I’ve heard it’s a very long time, indeed.” He was channeling and pushing her emotions, like he did weeks back with the waitress in Georgia. It wasn’t exactly a compulsion or brainwashing, but it was close.
“Yes, do tell,” Jimmy said quietly but tensely, his aspect a hair’s breadth from springing to life on him. “Tell us, woman, friend to druids and other blood mages, what name do we call you now that we know your secret? Which vile organization pulls your strings? Who tells you that it’s acceptable to prey on small children, the most helpless of our kind? Hmm?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pierce insisted again.
“I don’t sense any blocks on you, so why the bad acting?” Peter asked insistently. “Why hide behind ignorance we know is false? What are you hoping for?”
“Help, of course,” Pierce said, a small smile curling around her petite features. “And it’s finally arrived.”
“Oh, yeah, the psychologist,” I said, spying the man standing in the shadows of the room. “I’d forgotten about him. And doesn’t he look familiar, Peter?”
“Have we met before, sir?” Dieter asked, stepping forward into the light.
“Dieter!” Peter exclaimed cheerfully. “At last! We’ve been looking for you. You left the party so quickly last time.” Clasping his hands together and rubbing them briskly, Peter released a wide and strong wave of disassociation magic directly at Dieter, instantly disrupting the relationships to the static spells Dieter held ready. The vague cobwebs of black magic fell into the background noise of the energy plane, unnoticed by the blood mage.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that name,” Dieter said nonchalantly, pulling out a jeweled cigarette case and extracting a long, hand-rolled cigarette. Not like an American cigarette, this was longer and similar to a cigar with an outer leaf of dark tobacco. And the chopped tobacco inside was terribly different, too, being soaked in blood before being dried. The power of the spell was likely produced on burning the tobacco; the invocation provided with the inhalation and release of the smoke. A guess, though, since Peter reduced the spell to nothing.
“Well, while Peter and First reacquaint themselves with you, I’ll deal with your protégé,” I said with a smile. Turning back to Cpt. Margaret Ann Pierce, I called the Night Sword to my left hand and advanced on her. Daybreak seized her mind, breaking through the façade of Pierce immediately. Shattering it like glass, she faded into the psyche of Tomar Svoran. Pierce wasn’t real, at all. She had been once. I could see her in Tomar’s bridged mind. He was very much a protégé of Sondre, a body-snatcher. The bridges on the woman’s soul and body were visible to me now that Pierce’s image was gone.
The psyche underneath was a druid named Sara White. She wasn’t a Hilliard druid, though, and escaped the Accords compulsions, and she wasn’t a blood mage. Her Groves were American and she eschewed that branch as the Dark Arts they were. She was from Dayton, Ohio, where she worked in a nursery and helped with forest conservation campaigns. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time with the right abilities. She was in Delaware visiting a cousin, a naval fighter pilot.
Tomar wasn’t an innocent bystander. One of Sondre’s playthings, he was reaching discardable age, his sexual prowess waning, and his confidence in his performance in the rituals slipping. He was desperate to return to Sondre’s good graces and jumped at the chance to return to a youthful body to please his obsession. But he hadn’t been told everything. And even a submissive Slavic man has a masculine mind. He was ill-prepared to be plunged into a feminine mind, especially with two feminine psyches fighting for existence alongside him.
And then there was the matter of being suddenly hormonally challenged. The sudden drop of testosterone with growing waves of estrogen and similar glandular increases over time played havoc in his mind. While Sara was more accustomed to her monthly cycles, Tomar couldn’t use her druid abilities to make the menstrual process easier, as Sara normally would, because those abilities were being used to hold Pierce’s façade together and hide behind so effectively. But now that we knew how to see behind that amazingly natural-looking weave…
The Night Sword and I had bonded, somehow, I suppose. The Ebon Blade felt warm and supple to my touch as it read from me the two different songs their souls sang in the universe. One would be protected while the other was the sacrificial cow for the dragon’s supper. Our first strike went to the heart, breaking the binding to the body, the strongest of the blood ties. It was a metaphorical link in her brain that tied her heart with sixteen strands of gray chains that twined into three great corded and twined strands of power that shot up into the astral plane and linked again with Tomar’s soul.
The Night uttered a creaking sound. The chains were suddenly under immense torsion with no visible tension from above or below. I felt the dragon’s tongue flicker out of the Sword and each link of the chain around Sara’s heart exploded into dust then disappeared into an ebony field. Sara White’s body was free now and the Sword was eager for more.
The Night didn’t wait to be reseated. It charged up the cords of power through the astral plane and attacked Tomar’s soul directly, licking its outer edges precisely and stunning it with an almost narcotic effect. It caused a very strange reaction in his will, changing his obsession completely. Now, instead of needing to please Sondre more than breathing, Tomar Svoran wanted to be eaten by a dragon.
I found this most peculiar, but it sped things up. Tomar began releasing the deepest taper roots into Sara White’s soul as the tongue flickered out in my imagination. It licked at Tomar like a lollipop, removing layer after layer of his soul. The Sword held the song in place, resonating with him as it destroyed him slowly. I held off on destroying his mind watching his soul wither. Then I started roving through his memories and destroying earlier, less contentious ones.
The Night hummed in my hand. It was ready. Tomar’s soul was a tiny bud of energy, attached to Sara White by the power of the binding alone. That had to be broken at the same time as the binding to her mind or the feedback into one or the other would be disastrous for her. I swept in with a harmonic of Sara’s soul and welcomed the Night. Its hum changed slightly. I swear I could feel seventy-eight teeth surrounding the two of us, slicing us to less than ribbons as they pulled through us.
Tomar Svoran existed no more as I pulled the Night free of Sara White’s ribcage. She crumpled to the floor, unconscious from the shock of her release and the exposure to the Night. She’d survive her experience, but she’d need help, possibly for weeks or months, but she’d survive.
Mind and magic had once again played tricks on me with time. When I turned back, barely anyone had moved. Peter and Jimmy were watching Dieter, laughing mildly, as he repeatedly tried to strike a match against his thumbnail to light his vile cigarette. Jimmy had placed a small cap of energy on top of the match, preventing it from gaining any friction to light. It was a small practical joke that was frustrating the crap out of Dieter.
More importantly, though, Peter had cast another disassociation spell at him. It was a very general magic, designed only to break relationships not currently present. That made all of Dieter’s prepared magic worthless. Without the relationships to power the intent, it wouldn’t have the strength to raise the necessary magic anymore.
“Where are our manners?” I asked melodramatically. “Have we actually introduced ourselves, Peter? Seems such a shame for a man to not know who’s killing him, doesn’t it?”
“True, but he hasn’t been too forthcoming, either,” Peter said with distaste. “And he’s mean.”
“Tomar?” Dieter asked weakly, the cigarette hanging loosely in his lips.
“Oh, he’s not with us anymore,” I said casually, waving the Night vaguely back toward Sara. “I removed him.”
“Tomar… failed?” Dieter asked surprised.
“Nope,” Peter answered lightly. “Did an excellent job actually. Had us all fooled. Your plan failed, Dieter. You failed.”
“You were in the caves,” he whispered fearfully.
“I blocked the way out, yes,” Peter said, nodding.
“And I threw you out of the va-du-seet,” I said. “Our brothers, Kieran and Ethan, chased you through the caves to flush you out. You gave them quite the merry chase in the dark.”
“You! You crippled me? A child?” Dieter shouted angrily, snatching the cigarette from his mouth with his free hand. He twisted around to hide the fact that he was trying to light the match with his other hand.
“You were trying hard to kill us at the time, Sondre. Let’s not forget that,” I said, casually pointing the Night at him. The rapier provided a very nice whipping sound as it slashed through the air. It was a much better counter-argument than mine. “Now let’s get to the bread and butter of this. Why?”
Scowling, Dieter said, “That should be obvious, even to a dumb-assed kid like you. Look at you! All of you are staring at me like I’m trash! What makes you so special that you get all the power of this world? You, magicians and wizards, warlocks and witches, using the human population for your advantage—”
“Sorry, professor, but we’ve heard this lecture before,” I interrupted him. “Got anything new? Something less cliché?”
“How… dare… you!” Dieter snarled viciously.
“Oh, you’d truly be surprised by what he’s dared,” Peter said chuckling.
“First, would you mind lighting his match before he drives me nuts?” I asked Jimmy, mildly annoyed by the constant clicking.
“Yes, Daybreak,” Jimmy said smiling. At a flick of his wrist, fire shot from his hand across the room in a thin line and hit the match, startling Dieter. He took advantage of it, though, and lit the cigarette from the match, sucking the smoke deeply into his lungs while glaring at Jimmy with hatred. He sucked it down to ash in seconds.
“You may want to reconsider that,” I warned him mildly.
He didn’t. The smoke bit into his throat and lungs, drawing additional blood from Dieter’s body for the spell. Sondre and Dieter firmed their intent and will, forcing the smoke across his vocal chords as he called for the magic of destruction. Tomar’s blood was the power source and Tomar was his assistant here, his aide. That was the relationship they went for, choosing my First as their target and fire as their chosen weapon.
Dieter rasped the words out in an early Mongolian dialect demanding on the soul of Tomar Svoran for the heat of the earth’s fire to strip away Jimmy’s flesh to the bones. It was fairly poetic in Mongolian. The magic failed to fire, totally lacking the energy it needed to invoke a candle to light. And Dieter was hacking by the end of it.
“What part of ‘I removed him’ didn’t you understand?” I asked him, moving closer and calling the Night into its scabbard in my forearm for safety’s sake. “Can’t you even
sense
the relationships your rituals place in your objects? Why are you so jealous for something you can’t even see? Sondre, you don’t make any sense, dear. What are you trying to accomplish?”
“With what?” Dieter snapped, his head coming up to glare in hostility at me.
“By killing all the magic users, of course,” I asked.
“The damnable Fae off of our world,” Dieter snarled.
“And what would that achieve if that action caused that reaction?” I asked while gently probing further into Sondre and Dieter’s minds, following through the pictures and concepts they attempted to form. It wasn’t easy in their pain-addled condition.
“He said once the Fae were off of our plane that he could open his vault of secrets,” Dieter rasped. “Then we would be the Faery on Earth. And I would be the Winter Queen.”
“That’s not possible, Sondre,” Kieran announced, stepping out of the darkness behind Dieter. “The Earth is not built like Faery and there isn’t a magic made by man that could force that change.”
“
He
did it, beagle!” Dieter snapped at Kieran.
Ethan stepped around the chair on the other side of Dieter and said what we were all thinking, “Huh?”
“Oh, I get it,” I said shaking my head. “Very lame insult. Thinks he’s the clever fox. Beagles are foxhounds that follow them into their holes to flush them out. You went into the caves, ergo you are a beagle. Lame.”
“Oh,” Kieran said rolling his eyes. “Have you got what you need to finish up in Washington, then?”
“Yeah,” I said, no doubt sounding bitter. It’d been a rough and nasty day poking around in so many vile minds. “First, if we’re going back to the Pentagon, I think we need an entourage with full military bearing.”
“You mean, an honor guard?” Jimmy asked, his smile lighting his face.
“Yes, five minutes in the Throne Room,” I said, turning to Sara White again. “Eight will be enough.”
“See ya there, Seth,” Jimmy said, then shifted to the Garrison.
“Kieran,” I said quietly as I lifted Sara off the floor. “She’s only seen the one with the vault twice and neither time was very clear in her memory so tread lightly around those times.” I turned to face him again. “The most recent was just a few days ago, though. We’re going to have to exhume Lucian’s body.” His eyes shot to mine, startled.
“Then I will be exceptionally careful,” Kieran whispered, looking back at Dieter expressionless.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Dieter whispered to himself.
“You got caught, Sondre,” I said, simply. “It should have happened a very long time ago.” I shifted to Gilán then, to my bathroom pool, and gently settled Sara into the warm, rolling water. She gasped slightly, beginning to regain some consciousness as the pool exerted its healing magic on her. Holding the back of her neck to keep her head above water, I moved us to the steps and lodged her there so she wouldn’t drift and darted up the steps to change.
I wanted something impressive to shake them up. They might have been the big fish in their pond, but they weren’t swimming in their pond anymore. Someone had been foolish enough to stretch out beyond his reach and they were about the pay the price for it. My mirror gave me a uniform with concentric rings that matched the rings in the Throne Room with the sigils of my name magically imposed in the center of the chest. It had an energetic beauty that appealed to me in my urgency, so I stepped through the mirror immediately and made my way back to the pool to haul Sara out.
She was sitting up on the steps when I got back, looking around confused, lost. “Sara,” I whispered, squatting down at the edge of the steps. She looked up, only vaguely aware of her surroundings, but once our eyes met, her world coalesced more sharply. “Sara, do you know who I am?”